jenlampton

Hi! I'm Jen Lampton, and I am one of the Co-Founders behind Backdrop CMS.

I make websites.

I have been actively building websites since 1997.  I run a one-person web development company named Jeneration Web Development. My day-to-day work involves building websites for local government, educational institutions, and local businesses. 

I make software that makes websites.

I have been an advocate for Open Source software since 2005, and today I am a passionate core contributor to both the Drupal and Backdrop CMS Open Source projects. I am also a maintainer of some modules for both Drupal and Backdrop CMS.

Many of the websites I work on require new modules to be written, old ones to be ported from Drupal to Backdrop, or bugs to be fixed. It's built in to my process to contribute all of this work back to the communities that generated the code I am using on that project. 

I believe software should be self-evident.

I want software to be both easy to use, and easy to learn. I have spent years teaching, and watching students of all experience levels struggle with complicated user interfaces, and code patterns that weren't intuitive. 

In the fight to make Drupal easier to learn, I spent almost 2 years as the Twig "initiative" lead for Drupal 8. I had the pleasure of working with dozens of fantastic contributors to get the Twig template engine into Drupal core.

I also volunteered my time to the Drupal Usability team for a few years. I helped conduct several usability studies, and helped with usability improvements as a result of those studies.

I now serve as the usability constituent on the Backdrop Project Management Committee. My position there is to ensure that our CMS is easy to use for editors, site architects, and developers alike.

I run events to foster online communities.

From 2007-2017 I served as one of the lead organizers for the largest free Drupal event in the world, the Bay Area Drupal Camp (also know as BADCamp).  In 2010, I was also on the organizing committee for the last independently-organized DrupalCon, held in in San Francisco. 

I rely heavily on my experience working with enthusiastic contributors in Open Source communities, and I hope to apply those skills here in the Backdrop world as well.