Enough with the fun and games already: Drupal is serious business, and the Business and Strategy Track is here to prove it. With a focus on strategic planning and business management, this track will provide insight on meeting the real-world challenges of today’s economy for organizations adopting Drupal. Sessions will cover topics including best-practices for managing development teams, identifying and avoiding common pitfalls involved in large-scale migrations, recognizing and selling the value of open source in your organization, solving the unique staffing problems in our field, and all-things business.

On the subject of serious business, we are thrilled to introduce three featured speakers, each of whom brings a unique perspective and wealth of experience to the Business and Strategy Track.

Bryan House, VP of Marketing at Acquia, will speak on championing open-source solutions in organizations traditionally committed to closed-source. Since 2008, Bryan has led the product marketing team at Acquia, an organization that has played a monumental role in promoting Drupal adoption across the globe. Bryan’s experience successfully pitching open-source, combined with his passion for helping others share in that success, make his contribution to the Business and Strategy Track invaluable.

Matt Westgate, Co-founder and President of Lullabot, will talk about the unique challenges for staffing Drupal development teams. Over the past 5 years, Matt has been instrumental in growing the Lullabot team from 2 to nearly 30 people, with an incredible cast of Drupal contributors. Matt will discuss his experience, the challenges, and the successes of staffing a Drupal consultancy.

Frank Febbraro, CTO of Phase2, will identify common pitfalls for large-scale Drupal migrations, both for development teams and for client organizations making the move to Drupal. Frank oversees software development and technology execution at Phase2, a company building large-scale content platforms for clients in the publishing, public sector, and advocacy spaces, and maintaining widely-used Drupal products including OpenPublish, OpenAtrium, and OpenPublic. Frank’s insight on the complex factors involved in large-scale migrations is highly valued.

We are excited about the line-up of featured speakers in the Business and Strategy Track, and there is undoubtedly more to cover. Are you involved in the serious business of strategizing and managing in an organization that uses Drupal? Do you have a unique perspective to share on the challenges of winning business, managing projects, monetizing products, staffing, or anything else in this field? Consider submitting a session. It will earn you strong karma points, benefit the community, and market you and your organization as members of this ecosystem.