Finally restarting Private Beta with MVP2!

After a 6+ month slog to rebuild GreatAlbum with MVP2, we're finally relaunching our Private Beta today! As I in my July post, things have gone much differently during than expected in our transition from MVP1 to MVP2.  Some major changes have included:

  1. Rebuilt on top of Open Social
  2. Implemented the ability to import Google Photos... 
  3. And to organize clusters of photos into events with the click of a button
  4. Transitioned from Pantheon to AWS, due to some key Pantheon limitations
  5. Implemented a completely new user interface design

While we still have tons of bugs and feature gaps, we're excited to restart our Private Beta today and reengage with our most trusted users while we work feverishly to fix bugs and help our customers realize our dream!

Drupal Tags
Google Photos API

Happy 17th Drupal Anniversary to Me

I just realized that today, November 12, is my 17th anniversary of being a member of the Drupal community. Back in 2005, I was a member of the reunion committee for the Class of 1986 at Crater High School, planning our 20th reunion. I was the technology lead, so I decided to build a class website! Why not?

I spent a week or two researching various open source content management systems, including Drupal, Joomla!, Wordpress, and a couple others. In the end, I chose Drupal, because I felt it had the best range of functionality and the best community. We built that class website (no longer running) on Drupal 4.x with CiviCRM 1.x. What an experience that was! 

Seventeen years later, I still think Drupal is the best open source content management system on the market. I've been incredibly impressed with the way it has matured, with the help of great leadership by many volunteers, including founder & Project Lead Dries Buytaert, investments from companies like OpenSocial, Acquia, Lullabot, Pantheon and many, many others.

Now, as I invest in building GreatAlbum, I look forward to achieving my dream of not only creating the most compelling site for organizing personal photos/videos and celebrating people's lives, but also giving back to the Drupal community as part of our 3-part mission.