Annertech’s Tony Barker to head up Starshot’s media management track
Frontend Specialist Tony Barker has been selected to lead the media management track for the Starshot initiative.
We are thrilled to announce that Frontend Specialist Tony Barker is taking a leadership role in the development of the exciting Drupal Starshot initiative, which aims to broaden Drupal's appeal to marketers and a wider range of project budgets, allowing them to launch brilliant websites quickly and easily.
Tony will be leading up the Media Management track, which covers how images, documents, videos and audio will be handled in this new version of Drupal.
“I’m really happy to be involved, and it’s important work, because media is intrinsic to both the performance of a website and to the experience of editors.”
Tony’s first task is to do an assessment and propose a “recipe” or starter kit for a media management solution that will result in better and more intuitive media management.
Tony has significant experience in this area. As part of his role in Annertech, he is continually finding solutions to issues for editors, improving the media experience for users, and creating accessibility and performance reports for our clients. He will be able to draw on this experience and his extensive statistical skills in his role as the Media Management track lead.
He plans to research and document industry best practices, evaluate the feasibility of creating a recipe, analyse Drupal's current capabilities and compare it with alternative solutions.
“We plan to be ambitious and think both about the initial release and for the longer term. I will be considering accessibility, performance and privacy. I’m conscious that poorly optimised media is one of the biggest factors that can affect the size of pages and slow a website down, whilst ensuring we deliver an accessible and enjoyable experience for all users, both on the front end and for editors, will be vital to the success outcome of this initiative. Additionally, the platform from the Starshot initiative is going to be used internationally across jurisdictions so privacy compliance is another key consideration.”
A key part of Tony’s task will be to make media items easier for editors to work with, and for interfaces to be intuitive.
“I’ll learn more about the media requirements needed by the various features going into Starshot, gather people’s ideas and identify gaps - so uncover where people might have common issues, common irritations and opportunities to innovate. My role really is to find out what those are and mould them into a solution. Whilst I can lean on my experience, I’m also going into it with an open mind – to see what’s out there by researching systems I might not encounter in my day to day work, and focus on the issues and opportunities in this one area.”
The timeline is short – the goal is to have ideas ready in time for DrupalCon Barcelona in September and to launch Starshot by the end of the year.
“I’m thrilled and very excited to be part of a great leap forward for Drupal because I think we’re going to be able to make a lot of rapid improvements. I’m looking forward to collaborating with the other tracks and contributors to see how media management is going to be used by other features because many of them will be incorporating media in some way,” he said.
“Personally, I think it’s going to be a fun challenge. Sometimes progress can be quite slow and incremental whereas this feels like it’s going to have quite a significant impact over a short space of time. It feels as though there is great momentum behind it and I’m really excited to see what can be achieved.”
Want to get involved in Drupal Starshot?
Find out more about the initiative, how to get involved, and sign up for updates.
Stella Power Managing Director
As well as being the founder and managing director of Annertech, Stella is one of the best known Drupal contributors in the world.
