X-Team’s mission to empower developers to be able to change the world from anywhere certainly keeps us busy. It also means traveling around the world to find the right heroes to give that mission rocket fuel.
One such place I recently visited in hopes of finding those heroes was the Philippines.
The Philippines has a mixed reputation in the tech community, but some consider it a growing hotbed for specialized developers.
After some X-Scanning (our top-secret, internal recruitment tech), it became apparent there was a growing development community lead by seasoned experts.
So, being the global development pioneers we are, we set off on a journey to Manila, unaware we would soon find some of the most passionately dedicated and talented developers we’ve ever met.
Interestingly enough, being passionately dedicated appears to be a default quality of a Filipino. They are very proud of their country and nationality, they are dedicated to their family and community, and they put in an incredible level of effort into everything they do. And this applies to a street vendor just as much as it applies to a seasoned developer.
And although no one from the Western world would expect to find seasoned senior developers in the Philippines, X-Team has for many years been experts at finding passionate, #sleepcanwait engineers in even the most unexpected places.
X-Team now has two such superheroes on our team: Gerald Villorente and Paul de Paula. Both of these gentlemen have been making magic happen with Drupal, with a decade of combined Drupal experience.
But what inspires me most about Gerald & Paul is how they are leading a movement to make the Philippines the #1 hotspot for Drupal development.
They organize Drupalcamps, they maintain a Drupal mentorship program, and they even travel to remote schools to teach and empower students by learning Drupal. Paul’s wife, Gem, hosted 40 Drupal events just in 2013 in the Philippines. Gerald even invites people into his home if they just want to learn Drupal. They’re true Drupalista evangelists. And consequently, they’re true proactive X-Teamers.
Any time we travel the world and meet people like Paul, Gerald and the many others we met in Manila, it’s a constant reminder of why our mission to empower people to change the world from anywhere is so important.
What Gerald & Paul are doing isn’t just about coding and helping organizations empower themselves with platforms like Drupal; even more importantly, what they’re doing is infusing their Filipino pride into a tech community, helping provide jobs for a large number of people, and helping people grow both mentally and professionally to better their lives.
When code does that, every pocket of the world starts to change.
/five to our new friends Gerald & Paul and many more to come from the Philippines who will no doubt help us lead this inspiring movement. We’ll see you at Drupalcamp Manila on April 26th.