This is a real life story of how we turned a team of takers in to a team of makers by convincing the company to allow the whole Drupal team to spend a day every other week innovating, working together to do Drupal better and make Drupal better. We call it the "Drupal Innovation Programme" or "DRIP" for short.

Prerequisite
Many people get in to Drupal because it's free. Now it's time to give back. It's not all about earning Drupal credits and we also use it to investigate best practice, refine the way we work to do Drupal the best we can.

Outline
What is DRIP and how can you implement it where you work.
What are the benefits to the:
* Drupal Developers - the benefits of volunteering are well documented. We can step away from client work for a while and do some blue sky thinking. The devs love it.
* Drupal Team - we don't all work with all the other Drupal developers as we're often on long projects, so this means we all get to work together. We learn the strengths of every team member and know who to reach out to when we have issues
* Drupal Project Teams - knowledge sharing strengthens all project teams. We can implement best practice across more projects more rapidly. We work with other teams such as UXers and designers to build efficiency in to how we create Drupal websites.
* Company - Earning our Drupal certification was a marketing win. We can strengthen pitches to show we're active in the community, so when clients undertake due diligence, they can see we truly are Drupal experts. Happy developers stay at the company. Not all innovation is non-billable, so we can bill a client for work that ultimately comes back in to the community as a new module.

How do you protect the time being eaten by project work?

How do you share progress with the company?

DRIP is generally remote, but we try and meet up in person every quarter to do a DRIP session in person. It's a real highlight for the team.

Learning Objectives
It's hard to convince your boss that working for free is worthwhile! We'll present how we achieved this, the benefits it's brought through increased developer job satisfaction, team cohesion, better websites, marketing opportunities and stronger pitches.