Nick Dickinson-Wilde (nickdickinsonwilde)

As Backend Drupal Manager with Taoti Creative, I am responsible for a team working on a variety of concurrent projects - rarely less than a 15 in any week. When not supporting my team, I am the primary maintainer for our company dev-ops systems, and somehow fit in heads down coding time as well as. On my own builds I primarily do backend code and site building, but also participate in both estimates and planning of projects/features. I am unnofficially our evangelizer for Drupal contributions.

Due to freelance history, I have and can do it all codewise - just don't ask me to design something I lack an eye for what looks good - but have a preference for backend code. Do note that 'can do' and fast and with expertise aren't quite the same thing - at this point I'm a bit behind on latest front end fun although I can do grid and certainly handy with flex boxes.

"Community taught" is my background. First got into coding with HTML sometimes with Server Side Includes... tables win for layout right 😜. My more formal coding started with modding for The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind and then the Elders Scrolls IV Oblivion - where I had the good fortune to get significant mentoring predominantly in Python - also used Tescript which is a Bethesda special kinda like JavaScript (looooosely).

Later I started doing freelance web services - including building my own custom PHP based CMS - and then around 2014 discovered Drupal and by 2015 was all Drupal when possible (although I still occasionally support things in WP or other more esoteric platforms). Since then I've been active in issues queues, IRC (2014-2016) and now Slack (2016-ongoing) and have switched to a full time agency role from freelance. I have over 300 issue credits and maintain a bunch of modules for better or worse. First Drupal 8 production site launched halloween of 2015.

Recent large scale web projects I've been involved with include:

• Heart Rhythm Society
• Fulbright Awards
• US Figure Skating

Dev-ops Session Team Member for DrupalCon 2020 NorthAmerica, and scheduled to speak in the Development & Coding Track: Extending views - views plugins

When not coding, I hang out on Southern Vancouver Island and bike and hike a fair bit. Black belt in Kimura Shukokai Karate, I consider teaching to be quite awesome whether it is little kids or adults - karate or code.