DrupalCon Chicago CxO Exchange

This year at DrupalCon, the Drupal Association organized a CxO event for owners of Drupal-based businesses. The event included talks by four business experts who discussed business strategy, leadership, HR, and finance. It also gave attendees a chance to connect and network with other Drupal business owners.

Here's a summary of the talks from the event:

Keynote: Mike Marasco

Mike Marasco is an expert in developing strategy and project management expertise at technology companies. He encouraged consulting shops to take a strategic role in projects, rather than just a development role. Even if business strategy is not part of the mandate for a project, taking a strategic role will earn their trust in the long run. He specifically talked about how this works when building a new product for a client or working with a start-up. Mike recommended reading Brad Feld's Entreprenuer's Guide to Custom Development for more insights.

Adam Goodman: Fundamentals of Effective Leadership

Adam Goodman talked about how to improve leadership skills. He advocated the process of identifying leadership strengths and weaknesses, and developing a strong management team with this in mind. He also pointed out the importance of clarity in a company's leadership goals. Most Drupal shops are small companies with small management teams facing a variety of challenges. These include recruiting and retaining Drupal talent, ensuring quality work, and managing the demand for Drupal. Ensuring that everyone in the company, particularly the management team, is focused on the same goals is key.

Debbie Cohen: How to Hire and Retain Talent in This Economy

Debbie Cohen presented on one of the most pressing topics for most Drupal business owners: recruitment and retention. Because of the demand for Drupal, finding developers with Drupal experience is difficult, and retaining talent seems to be one of the top goals of most Drupal shops. Glenn Hilton from ImageX and Dave Terry from Mediacurrent presented on this topic on the last day of DrupalCon.

While Debbie's advice was not specific to Drupal, she had good advice about building an 'employment brand'. She advocated using each recruitment interaction, from social media to recruitment events, to the interview process to promote this employment brand. An employment brand for a Drupal shop should emphasize an environment where developers can work with other bright people, make meaningful contributions to the community, and quickly gain credibility by building their Drupal expertise.

Steven Rogers: Numbers Alone Can Tell A Story: The Analysis of an Income Statement

Steven Rogers provided a talk about finances to wrap up the day. His talk consisted of analyzing an income statement for a business in order to determine its value. He reiterated that you can tell a lot from a company just by looking at the numbers, without knowing the specifics of the company's industry. Different business activities lead to different income statements. For example, hourly consulting, hosting, training, and selling software as a service will each lead to a different balance of revenue, fixed costs, and costs tied directly to revenue.

In the future, I hope we'll see more Drupal-focused presentations at these type of CxO events. Since Drupal shops tend to be more open than most businesses, I think there's a good opportunity to have an open space where business owners can share their ideas about common challenges such as employee retention, intellectual property, and contributing to open source. The Drupal Executives Meetup in Brussels organized by Kristof Van Tomme in October 2010 had great success with this model.