Drupal has always thrived because of its passionate developer community. But the future of Drupal depends on something bigger: the ecosystem around it. Designers, communicators, strategists, web managers, and decision-makers all influence whether Drupal gets adopted and sustained.

Over the past three years, Alex Dergachev and Maya Schaeffer have experimented with ways to bring these broader audiences into the Drupal ecosystem through the EvolveDrupal (now EvolveDigital) summit series. When the first events launched, about 60% of attendees were technical, and many non-technical roles were hesitant to attend something branded as a “Drupal event.”

Through intentional outreach, personal invitations, ecosystem partnerships, and programming focused on real digital challenges, the audience gradually shifted to roughly 30% technical and 70% broader digital roles across higher education, government, agencies, nonprofits, and tech vendors.

In this session, we’ll share what we learned from organizing 11 summits designed to get “off the Drupal island.” We’ll explore how outreach, branding, programming, and collaboration can bring new voices into the ecosystem—and how agencies, community organizers, and contributors can act as force multipliers for Drupal’s future.