Hey guys, how are you? It’s a pleasure to meet you. You are both working on the Drupal Capitalization at Smile, under the patronage of the Direction de l’Innovation. First guys, tell us about your career at Smile and how you got here, bonus question, where are you from?
I am 
Florent Torregrosa, currently tech expert 1 in Drupal at Smile’s Marseille agency. I have been working at Smile since December 2013, minus a short shift in 2016. I started working at Smile as a development engineer and quickly have grown as a tech lead.
I started using Drupal in 2011, in my engineering school for the school’s students association and my end-of-study internship. The following year, I started to get involved in the Drupal community, I attended many Drupal meetups, furthermore, I also attended and organized DrupalCamps and different Drupal events. I also contributed to translations, modules, patches, and got involved in the French Drupal association board, etc.
I’m 
Michael Fanini, 36 years old, I began my career as a student in Operational Research and after trying out different jobs, I am now a pre-sales consultant at Smile and a Product Owner of our contribution to Drupal.
We already know about the Magento Capitalization and the amazing job Romain Ruaud is doing there. Tell us about your role in the Drupal Capitalization and how you’re interacting with each other.
Michael Everything started 5 months ago when the Drupal Capitalization program (sponsored by our Innovation department) became official with a dedicated budget line.
Before this officialization, we (a group of Drupal enthusiasts throughout the agencies) already organized ourselves with a kind of governance (monthly meetings, common repository, …) because we believed something had to be done in that field of contribution and capitalization.
As we needed to find a way to drive more people to join the dynamic, we decided to launch, during July, the Drupal Contribution Tour at Smile.
The Drupal Contribution Tour at Smile was an event where Florent Torregrosa and I visited all of Smile’s agencies to organize a contribution sprint with our Drupal colleagues.
Florent In the morning, we met with the managers of the agencies to explain the process of contribution and all its benefits. In the afternoon, we met with the development teams and we also explained the way of contribute to the project and immediately followed up by asking the devs to perform translations and patches. We prepared a list of easy-pick issues to get people to try and use the process of contribution.
Each agency has at least two delegates. And a monthly time-budget is allocated for one of them to organize a meeting. Its purpose is to share information about what has been done during the month and share new ideas.
Pragmatically, we have two Gitlab projects. One private for Michaël, myself and the delegates. Where we organize the contribution and the tools people can use. The other one is public-facing. People using Drupal can track public issues on drupal.org, suggest new module ideas, ask for help, etc. It also has a Wiki to easily find information on how to contribute.
What are the next steps after touring the different agencies?
Michael First, I have to say that the tour has been a huge success in terms of engagement, motivation, and fun. Today, our results are incredible compared to our situation on March 1st :
- Number of folks: jumped from 71 to 157
- Number of issued credits (3 months): 10 to 94
- Rank: 215 to 59
More and more people are getting involved in the Drupal community contributing on the project, which, in turn, makes Smile more visible and attractive to the developers.
Now, our main objective is to design Smile’s modules roadmap, build them and support them in the long run.
Florent Also, we’ll communicate intensively about our ranking evolution.
On September 25th, I presented Entity Share, one of our main Drupal assets, in an internal webinar. Originally, we designed this webinar to reach our Ukrainian teams which are spread between multiple small agencies, but we quickly jumped to the conclusion that this webinar should be open to any Smilian.
Furthermore, I got a BoF slot (birds of a feather) at the DrupalCon Amsterdam 2019 to discuss content-sharing solutions with Drupal, and I will be able to present Entity Share. We’re also looking for a spot to talk about it at the Paris OpenSource Summit 2019.
Where can we see the result of your work?
Michael You can simply visit Smile’s profile on drupal.org
Florent And see our rank on Drupal.org :
Before the tour, we weren’t even listed in the top100. Today, thanks to all our hard work, we just entered the top50!
How are you interacting with the capitalization work done by Romain?
Michael I would say that we inspire each other. The idea of hitting the road to visit all agencies came from the Magento capitalization program.
We went a bit further by organizing code sprints, and I heard that Romain was looking to do this as well ^^
Florent We’re working closely with him to find new ways to get a sustainable capitalization effort.
How people can get involved and help…?
Florent There is the Gitlab repository where people can submit ideas but they can also reach their capitalization delegates or send an email to Michaël and me.
Last but not least, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?
Florent Send us an email.
Michael Don’t’ hesitate to contact us directly.
Photographer credit Ben Kolde