Blake Newman

At Agileana, I prefer to hire Acquia Triple Certified (Full Stack) Drupal Experts. But the Acquia registry was not exactly search-friendly. So, I created the DCoE to find Drupal Experts and create a profile around then with data pulled from Drupal.org, Acquia.com, and other sources. That was Feature #1.

Then, I wondered how Agileana faired against other contractors so I identified all the Drupal shops in the world, associated them with their Acquia certified employees, and ranked them… Show more

At Agileana, I prefer to hire Acquia Triple Certified (Full Stack) Drupal Experts. But the Acquia registry was not exactly search-friendly. So, I created the DCoE to find Drupal Experts and create a profile around then with data pulled from Drupal.org, Acquia.com, and other sources. That was Feature #1.

Then, I wondered how Agileana faired against other contractors so I identified all the Drupal shops in the world, associated them with their Acquia certified employees, and ranked them according to the number of Drupal experts they have on staff and filtered them by country and whether or not they were certified government contractors. That was Feature #2.

Then, in 2025, I realized that for every one request for proposal (RFP) that I responded to, I had to look at and consider probably 100 RFPs that I decided not to pursue. Rather than just throwing away those 99 RFPs, I decided to publish them on the DCoE so others could consider them. That was Feature #3 and when the DCoE started to really get traction.

I got a letter from Dries Buyteart's office (he is the founder of Drupal and owns the Drupal trademark). They asked me to rename the site so people don't confuse it with the Drupal Association. So, I rebranded it from the Drupal Center of Excellence to the Digital Center of Excellence. This was better anyway because most Drupal shops and Drupal professionals are capable of doing things other than Drupal.

Then, later in 2025, we started adding Drupal jobs to the mix. That was Feature #4.

Stay tuned for future features. Show less

The Agile Podcast is an NPR-style podcast that talks about how we need to be agile and practice agility in our careers, businesses, projects, and software development.

The first series discusses the scheduled retirement for Drupal 7, a content management system that powers (powered) about a million websites including very high level government, university, and nonprofit websites.

The second series discusses how we need to be agile with our careers, especially in times of global… Show more

The Agile Podcast is an NPR-style podcast that talks about how we need to be agile and practice agility in our careers, businesses, projects, and software development.

The first series discusses the scheduled retirement for Drupal 7, a content management system that powers (powered) about a million websites including very high level government, university, and nonprofit websites.

The second series discusses how we need to be agile with our careers, especially in times of global pandemics, climate change, regional conflicts, and the obsolescences of entire industries.

The third series will discuss agile startups, how to create a business in a lean and agile way.

So, I hope you find this podcast and subcribe. It should start dripping out week by week starting in September, 2020. Show less

SEO Quotient™, a global leader in search intelligence, provides integrated reporting, business intelligence dashboards, website search engine optimization analysis, keyword rank monitoring and real-time web analytics software that helps organizations make better decisions. Join our community of business owners, webmasters and SEO professionals to stay on top of emerging search and social media marketing trends.

For website owners, SEO Quotient helps them evaluate how well their website… Show more

SEO Quotient™, a global leader in search intelligence, provides integrated reporting, business intelligence dashboards, website search engine optimization analysis, keyword rank monitoring and real-time web analytics software that helps organizations make better decisions. Join our community of business owners, webmasters and SEO professionals to stay on top of emerging search and social media marketing trends.

For website owners, SEO Quotient helps them evaluate how well their website is prepared to rank on search engines for important keyword phrases. It provides actionable intelligence to resolve problems and improve rank potential. SEO Quotient also provides website owners with access to a directory of qualified digital marketing professionals.

For SEO experts and digital marketing professionals, SEO Quotient provides tools to do a better job of assessing websites, identifying opportunities to improve, generating solid leads, and improving their bottom line.

For students of SEO, SEO Quotient provides opportunities to learn, get trained, ask questions, get answers, and become certified to compete in the field of search engine optimization. Show less

The Spartan Race is a military-style obstacle course and endurance race which involves running, swimming, rope climbing, wall climbing, dead lifting, truck tire flipping, and spear throwing aimed at confidence building, team building, and physical fitness. Identified, analyzed, and trained for the 13 obstacles which included strength training, endurance training, cardiovascular conditioning, balance, agility, and swimming. Participated in a scrum team of 7 colleagues who all successfully… Show more

The Spartan Race is a military-style obstacle course and endurance race which involves running, swimming, rope climbing, wall climbing, dead lifting, truck tire flipping, and spear throwing aimed at confidence building, team building, and physical fitness. Identified, analyzed, and trained for the 13 obstacles which included strength training, endurance training, cardiovascular conditioning, balance, agility, and swimming. Participated in a scrum team of 7 colleagues who all successfully negotiated obstacles and finished race. Show less

Conceived, planned, financed, sponsored, organized, and project managed a startup weekend hackathon in Colombia that attracted the attention of 100+ web professionals, members of the media, local chamber of commerce, and local government for an intensive three-day event that resulted in the design, development, and launch of a web and mobile application and the formation of a company of which all participants are shareholders of the company.

The goals were to facilitate economic… Show more

Conceived, planned, financed, sponsored, organized, and project managed a startup weekend hackathon in Colombia that attracted the attention of 100+ web professionals, members of the media, local chamber of commerce, and local government for an intensive three-day event that resulted in the design, development, and launch of a web and mobile application and the formation of a company of which all participants are shareholders of the company.

The goals were to facilitate economic empowerment and provide economic opportunities for talented web professionals in a developing country in order to slow the brain drain of talented professionals from countries that need to retain this talent in order to stimulate the economy and improve the civilization of the region.

StartupCali resulted in formation and development of new professional relationships among all the participants, rapid learning and practice in the areas of Lean Startup, Agile Development, Rapid Prototyping, Responsive Design, Social Media Integration, Big Data, Python, and Django. Web professionals were exposed to entrepreneurship, innovation, and Silicon Valley style start-up incubation and acceleration of ideas and market validation. Show less

Conceived, planned, founded, funded, ans managed the design, development, and deployment of BizPulse, which is a transparency dashboard intended to calculated earned value (EV), burn rate, and estimated end-of-month invoices in order to reduce invoice shock, avoid invoice disputes, and increase cash flow due to prompt payment of invoices by satisfied customers because expectations were managed well.