Ian Cairns on Being an Independent Project Advisor

Ian Cairns talks about being a project advisor in the Washington D.C. area helping Drupal projects as an independent consultant and non-vendor. He is helping coordinate between multiple vendors, but also advising on strategies for implementing Drupal especially when it's a cultural paradigm shift from proprietary CMS world. He talks about teaching people how to become their product manager with open source software, discussing long-term cost of ownership issues, different architectural implications of Drupal, how to navigate the software and community, and some the broader businesses issues of using open source software. Cairns also gives a little bit of history of the US Government's involvement with Drupal going back to the US military's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) and Bryght's consulting on the SPAWAR project, but that the White House's move to Drupal was a more recent tipping point.

He also names some of the big, prime contractors and "systems integrators" for the US government web site projects like General Dynamics Information Technology, IBM, Deloitte and SRA. He also discusses some of the differences between the Open Data and Open Government initiatives, and how Drupal fits into them.

Cairns worked for Development Seed for four years doing Business Development and Client Relations Manager, and his new consulting company is called Watershed Strategy.