Alain Le Tanter
These meetings have provided an opportunity to share insights and discover that we face some common challenges, which, while not unique to the digital realm, include:
- A decline in contributions from our associations
- Difficulties in renewing memberships due to the retirement of our veterans, the aging of our communities, and the challenges in renewing our local authorities
Revitalizing Our Communities
We all agreed that since the pandemic, the activity of local groups has declined, and fewer conferences are being organized. Understanding the reasons behind this trend is difficult to untangle: there are societal changes such as reduced investment in professional activities, a desire to avoid extra work outside of working hours, and prioritization of personal interests and hobbies.
But hopefully there are areas where we can have a positive impact, such as addressing the reduced interest in CMSs and PHP, and combatting people’s fatigue with the event formats offered by local meetups and conferences.
Future Initiatives
We have tried to identify our common DNA and the purpose of our future joint events, keeping in mind the specific context of France and the Francophone community.
We are currently working on the following tasks:
- Creating a manifesto and a name to make the collective official and visible in our respective communities.
- Organizing a joint meetup to discuss our CMS platforms and collaborate on cross-disciplinary web topics such as quality, GDPR, and accessibility.
- Considering the idea of a joint website competition (inspired by the Splash Awards from the Drupal community and Awwwards for web design).
- Investing in education in the medium to long term by creating a joint program to present the four CMS platforms in IUTs, universities, and schools.
