My name is Steve Purkiss and I am a Drupal Consultant and Trainer. Last year I was voted in as the first ever community-elected Director of the Drupal Association, a U.S. Educational non-profit tasked with supporting the Drupal community, a one-year seat in which I focused efforts on setting up a Drupal Branding and Marketing Committee. I attended DrupalCons in Denver, Chicago, Copenhagen and London, along with Drupal Developer Days, Design Camps, and Drupal CxO Days in Brussels, Rome, Vienna and Amsterdam. I also founded the Brighton Area Drupal Association, and have been running the Brighton Drupal User Group since I moved to Brighton in 2008.
I help organisations communicate and collaborate with their community online. I provide Internet Strategy Consultancy and Web Application Development services, and am passionate about Free/Libre Open Source Software. The freedom it provides to build infinitely flexible systems enables organisations to utilise one of mankind's greatest innovations in communication technology to its full extent.
I have been on the web for the past twenty years, and ten years ago I worked for a proprietary Java-based Content Management System / Web Application Platform, helping grow the company from six to sixty people in three years. I then moved into freelancing in 2001 and I have worked exclusively with Free/Libre Open Source Software since then, the last six of those focusing on the Drupal CMS/Platform. In 2008 I moved to the new media hub of Brighton on the South Coast of England and set up as a Drupal shop, working with a close network of experts to deliver larger, more complex projects.
Drupal provides a standardised platform of development which enables the building upon shoulders of others as opposed to re-inventing the wheel for every web application built. Adopted by major corporations including ITV, Sony and Turner Broadcasting, Drupal is freely available for anyone to use, for any purpose.
Drupal is a Content Management System and Web Application Platform with tens of thousands of add-on modules enabling rapid development through configuration of existing modules instead of re-inventing the wheel each time a web site is built. It powers 2% of the web and is used by corporations and insitutions around the world for sites ranging from single-page micro-sites to complex web applications with millions of site users.
Software is highly expensive and time-consuming to create, test, and maintain - by using already existing, tried and tested technology not only are ongoing costs lowered but risk is also considerably lowered. Access to new modules is also of great benefit as organisations can make benefit of these by simply plugging them in and configuring.
Using my thirty years of software development experience along with my knowledge of the community that surrounds it, I enjoy helping cut out some of the stumbling blocks and mistakes people make when first encountering Drupal, and work with them to create a site that will change and develop along with their business.
I educated in best practices for site building with Drupal and where project size or skills require, partner with a close network of Drupal experts in order to provide flexible development and site maintenance services.
In September 2011 I organised a Drupal Discovery Day as part of the Brighton Digital Festival. This was a business-focused conference, and I won a grant from the Drupal Association which I used to create the video below:
For further information about how I can help your organisation, click here to get in touch.