A Bit of Drupal History

By Deane Barker
From Issue #30

I enjoy finding early mentions of CMS in mainstream publications. As near as I can tell, this is the first mention of Drupal in the NY Times, from 2009.

Software System’s Fans Gather to Talk Code

The article was about a “Drupal Camp” (not a “DrupalCon”) that seemed to have about 70 people.

Interestingly, this might have only been the first explicit mention of Drupal. Back in 2003, Drupal got a big boost when it was used for “DeanSpace,” which was a virtual collaboration platform for supporters of Howard Dean: The Dean Connection

Zack Rosen […] started the project, originally called Hack for Dean, after reading about Dean on the campaign Web site for 20 minutes. […] He recruited an unpaid team of nearly a hundred programmers to write software for the campaign that would allow the many disparate, unofficial Dean Web sites to communicate directly with one another and also with the campaign.