Onto new adventures!

This blog post is cross-posted at nodeone.se.

My Drupal journey started some five years ago, and it is now about to end. It's been a fantastic journey.

A year ago I started studying to become a school teacher in maths and physics. While studying it became clear to me that teaching and Drupal are two passions that are so big that they don't fit in my head at the same time, and while Drupal is one of the most fun and engaging things I know, the competition from teaching and education was just overwhelming. I know that teaching and education is what I want to dedicate my professional life to, and if that means stop doing Drupal then so be it.

I will miss Drupal. One of the most remarkable things with Drupal is that it has, over at least five years, allowed me to learn new stuff all the time. That Drupal allows you to always learn more useful things and expand the things you can do with it is, I think, one of its most important and compelling characteristics.

But, as all Drupalistas can testify, the real thing about Drupal is the people. I have been lucky enough to meet so many great people and have so much fun. Here are just a few highlights:

• Playing Drupal-Dixit with fago, Klausi, John Albin, fubhy and more at DrupalCon Denver, and laughing ourselves silly.
• Playing Broken Picture Telephone outside a vegetarian restaurant in Denver with a big bunch of Drupalistas, laughing ourselves silly.
• Discussing really stupid module ideas with Sun, Lin Clark, frega and others in Berlin, laughing ourselves really silly in the process.
• Coming back to the lobby at Drupal Tower (Chicago) two days after the official DrupalCon has ended, to still find a few Drupalistas hanging around – and noticing that I feel at home.
• The wonderful people at NodeOne (now Wunderkraut – best of luck!), with all the great time and crazy ideas we shared. I will probably never work at such a lively and dynamic place again.
• The awesome Swedish Drupal community, where I started my Drupal time.

One thing that I have really learned in the Drupal communit, is the power of open source. There are people eager to do Good Stuff, and to help each other (and others) for no other reason than that they care about others. I hope I can make other teachers believe this as firmly as I do, to help us increase collaboration and sharing within education.

Thanks for a great time. Onto new adventures!

//Johan Falk (Itangalo)

PS: I won't completely stop doing Drupal. But I will scale back my comittment to only working with things that will be relevant to my teaching, such as the Skill Compass project.

Photo credit to hisks at rgbstock: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhYevzm