Why Choose Drupal?
| Date: | Thursday, January 31, 2013 |
| Presenters: |
Kirsten Burgard, VA |
On-Demand Webinar
NOTE: Large files will take more time to download.
- Webinar recording: Why Choose Drupal? (WMV, 193 MB, 63 minutes, January 2013)
- Transcript: Why Choose Drupal? (TXT, 38 KB, January 2013)
Description
Embracing the idea of "do more with less," many federal agencies are migrating their websites to open-source Content Management Systems. Drupal is one of the most popular open-source CMS tools, but it is right for your agency?
Hear from the experts—Mike Jennings and Kirsten Burgard—who lead the Drupal4Gov group and will discuss the pros and cons of choosing Drupal as your CMS.
What You'll Learn
- Introduction to Drupal.org and why Drupal is a good choice for federal agencies
- Demo of how to create/edit/publish a page using Drupal
- Overview of how Drupal supports open content, content types, and tagging
- Differences and advantages of open-source CMS, and discussion of the skills and resources needed to support a Drupal site
- Benefits of joining the Drupal community and Drupal4Gov group
About the Presenters
Kirsten Burgard is a Program Analyst at the Department of Veterans Affairs in the Office of Information Technology providing Web-based assistance to multiple offices. She is currenlty on a detail to the data.gov project at GSA.
Kirsten also founded the open source government group known as Drupal4Gov. Drupal4Gov members use open source projects to develop websites and applications for governments worldwide. Members use open source content management projects like Plone, Drupal, and Joomla as well as other non-CMS based open source projects.
She entered federal service in 1997 as a loan specialist at the Cleveland Regional Loan Center (RLC), an office of the Department of Veterans Affairs. She moved to VA's Office of Information Technology (OIT) in 2004 as a Web manager. Outside of her work at VA, Kirsten collaborated on Drupal sites and began training government employees on the use of Drupal. By 2009, Kirsten was detailed to the General Services Administration (GSA) to develop go.usa.gov. Kirsten continues to provide experience, organizing and presentations on Drupal and the power of the Drupal community for government Web development, including quarterly Drupal4Gov half-day events and a yearly Drupal Government Day event.
Mike Jennings directs Web operations in support of traditional and new media communications programs at the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSIT).
In the summer of 2007 Mike’s Web innovation and market research team established a sandbox on a commercial Web hosting site and reviewed the available open source content management systems (CMS). When Drupal was chosen as the technical platform for OSTI’s Web 2.0 research and development, Mike quickly became the lead subject matter expert for Drupal and defined supporting roles and responsibilities. He has provided hands-on training and procured onsite training for OSTI’s government and contract staff. As a new media program lead and web operations technology manager, Mike has designed and developed Drupal based homepages for several DOE offices and programs including, The National Science Bowl®, DOE’s Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), OSTI’s own Homepage, and Intranet. Currently, Mike’s staff is implementing expert publishing workflows and personalized social media functionality for OSTI’s long-tail outreach strategy.
Tracy Taylor is a communications specialist with the Peace Corps. She is a member of the information technology staff and focuses on intra- and interagency strategic communications. One of her key projects is working with Peace Corps posts around the world to help them establish and maintain an online presence.
Prior to joining the Peace Corps in 2010, Tracy spent more than 20 years planning and implementing strategic marketing communications. In addition to heading her own international consultancy in communications capacity building, Tracy has served as executive director of the Natural Products Foundation and as a senior vice president of public affairs and communications. Her background includes achievements in strategic planning, stakeholder communications, event management and producing award-winning online and offline marketing communications.
Content Lead:
DigitalGov University Team
Page Reviewed/Updated: February 1, 2013
