We are excited to announce one of the latest additions to the FFW team, Jesus Manuel Olivas. Jesus is joining us as a Drupal 8 Solutions Engineer. In this position, Jesus will be essential in driving FFW’s contributions to D8, helping us to ready our internal teams and develop external training offerings. He'll also play a key role in our relationship with Sensio Labs as we prepare our next generation of FFW Center for Excellence training offerings. We look forward to what he will bring to our organization as well as the Drupal community. Keep an eye out for Jesus's blogs and activity as D8 gets closer to launch.

How long have you been working with Drupal?

About 5 years.

What about Drupal did you like best when you first started working with it?

Nothing. I was a Java developer when I started working with Drupal 5 and I didn’t get it. Now I realize I didn’t try hard enough. All I saw was that that it was bare out of the box. I didn’t like the way it looked and I didn’t understand how to extend it. It felt very complex and at first, I just gave up.

So, what brought you back?

I decided to give Drupal 6 a try and this time I tried harder. I read the documentation more carefully and the second time around I got more involved with the community. That was when I discovered the greatness of Drupal. I wish I would have stuck with it the first time and paid closer attention. The good thing about me giving up is that when people come to me with similar complaints I can help them discover the greatness through their frustrations.

We’re glad you came back! Now what is your favorite thing about Drupal?

A lot of things. One of my favorite things to say about Drupal is how easy it is to add external libraries and you don’t have to build it all on your own. I also embrace the concept of, “Proudly invented elsewhere.” Above all, the community. I have met people all over the place and I get to talk to people about my passion. It’s amazing when I get to meet new developers and learn from them. It’s one thing to submit an issue online but it’s priceless to do so in person. I am constantly meeting developers who I can learn from. No matter what level you are at, in the Drupal community there is always someone who you can learn from.

You’ve been doing a lot of Symfony development. Will you share a bit about your work with Symfony and Drupal 8?

Symfony is actually another big reason I came back to Drupal. For the last three years I was focused on Symfony development. Once I learned about Symfony’s involvement in Drupal 8 I knew it was time to revisit the platform.  I’m really excited about how Drupal 8 will make it easier to use external libraries, depending on how you build modules. Drupal 8 is much easier to code and you can easily move all configurations. That’s just the beginning, there’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in Drupal 8.

Where can fellow Drupalists stay up-to-date with your current projects?

• Drupal.org
• GitHub Projects: jmolivas, hechoendrupal
• My Blog

What drew you to FFW?

After I stopped doing development work in Drupal, I started working with Symfony for almost two years. I decided it was the right time for me to look for new career opportunity where I could apply the knowledge I had acquired but also take advantage of my Drupal background. Working with Drupal 8 sounded like a great opportunity and I couldn’t turn it down.

Earlier this year I received a scholarship to attend NYC Camp and FFW was highly recommended by a friend. I had a chance to talk with John DeSalvo and Ray Saltini about FFW, the FFW Center for Excellence and their plans with Symfony and Drupal 8 and those fit perfectly with what I was looking for.

Another big reason I chose FFW is because I was looking for a company interested in contributing back to the community and they are giving me the chance to do that by spending time working on Drupal 8 projects.