The slides above are from a core conversation I would have presented in San Fransisco if a certain ash cloud hadn't gotten in the way:
- Drupal can do anything. There's always a module for that.
- Drupal core does nothing (really well). No specific use case, and that's by design.
- Yes, decouple framework from platform from product specific features and configuration.
- Wouldn't it be awesome if the installer would let you choose from a list of pre-configured products like Awesome blog, Newspaper, Portfolio or Team toolkit, etc? Yes it would.
That was 2010, and even then this wasn't particularly new thinking.
It's a given that core alone can never be turned into a full-fledged product serving one specific use case. Instead, providing a useful onramp experience is what we should focus on. What can we do to get people 60% of the way there, so that they are invested and want to dive deeper and explore contrib?
What kind of products? For whom?
The two hardest questions. It will make things a lot easier if we allow ourselves to think in multiples here. Three is the magic number. These are the three high level use cases I think we should brainstorm around:
- "I" - The individual site. Working title: Portfolio (it is not a blog). For content creators.
- "Us" - A small group project. Communicate among each other and the outside world. Working title: Snowman, for site builders.
- "World" - A tour d'API for developers, exposing the best new core concepts that live under the hood. Working title: Butler.
We had tremendous fun with the #drupalfilms meme on Twitter. Drupal trainings are modeled around 'build Flickr, Twitter, YouTube in a day. We could use some of that playfullness here.
I'll have another go at this in a core conversation in Denver. But what do you think?