Sponsor Spotlight - Four Kitchens
I took a different tack with Todd Ross Nienkerk, co-founder of Four Kitchens. I emailed Todd three questions so he could (re)introduce Four Kitchens to the community.
How did you come to use Drupal, what is your story, your "lore", within the Drupal community?
Our first Drupal site was That Other Paper, an Austin-area alt-weekly we published and edited for nearly two years. We were two weeks away from launch - pulling all-nighters to build it using MediaWiki, the CMS that powers Wikipedia - when co-founder David Strauss approached me apprehensively and suggested that we scrap all of our work and switch platforms. He had just heard of this thing called "Drupal," and was convinced it would made a better publishing and community platform.
He was absolutely right, and we completely rebuilt the site in Drupal in three weeks.
What can you tell me that is new or different that isn't available on your website, but you want the world to know about you and your company?
The founders of Four Kitchens met at the University of Texas at Austin while working on the Texas Travesty, the then-largest student humor publication in the country. We have a combined 10 years' experience writing and editing satire for publication!
Also, I was born in a subterranean cave in the future. (And I believe him!)
Where do you see Drupal in 2-4 years, what do you see impacting Drupal, and why?
The Drupal designer/themer community is exploding - finally! - and the influx of new talent is raising awareness of design issues in the Drupal community at large. With the level of attention being paid to usability and user experience for the Drupal 7.x release, I think Drupal 8.x and beyond will be far more user-friendly and intuitive than competing CMSs.
I also believe grid-based design CSS frameworks will become increasingly common. There's a good chance that Drupal core will include several grid systems or CSS frameworks in the next few releases. (Hopefully CSS 3 will be in use by the end of the 2010s!)
Thank you Todd for being a good sport about using email as an interview tool.
About Four Kitchens
Four Kitchens is a turnkey, one-stop solution for building big websites. Our work is handled almost entirely in-house in Austin, Texas, by experts in design, development, scalability, and user experience.
But we don’t just build websites. We also provide consulting for everything from project oversight to individual components and emergency fixes. If your Drupal website is slow or crashing your server, our optimization experts can enhance its performance by implementing long-term solutions. No bandages!
What does “Four Kitchens” mean?
Building a website is like preparing a feast. It requires a team of people with specialized and complementary skills working in parallel to create something that lots of people will enjoy. It’s part art, part science, and all about preparation.
Our name reflects this approach to web development and design — and our sense of humor. You see, our web chefs aren’t just a bunch of geeks. We’re a bunch of web geeks.