Drupal has a liquid network

Last time, I talked about how Drupal's success as an innovation platform is in part due to the way the Drupal community continually expands the adjacent possible through an ever growing collection of modules and themes. I was introduced to the concept of the adjacent possible, the idea that innovative environments provide an expansive set of possible next steps, in Steven Johnson's book Where Good Ideas Come From which looks at six environmental factors that foster innovation and creative thinking.

Following up on the adjacent possible, Johnson calls the next key environmental innovation driver "liquid networks." And in many ways, his discussion of liquid networks and the adjacent possible go hand in hand; the main idea being that the adjacent possible naturally grows within a liquid network, literally expanding the realm of possibility for innovation.

So what's a liquid network?

Johnson does a good job describing this by offering contrasting examples. Some networks he says, are too much like solids - they are good at providing structure, but too rigid to allow the occaisonal random collision of elements that is so often crucial to innovative thinking. Other networks are too much like a gas - they continually allow collisions of disparate elements, but don't provide enough structure or consistency for the resulting new ideas to take hold and blossom.

Liquid networks, on the other hand, are constantly moving, but stick together. They are flexible without being rigid. They can flow into new spaces, without dissipating.

Drupal.org and its companion site groups.drupal.org (g.d.o.) provide the intriguing mix of structure and flexibility that characterize Johnson's idea of the "liquid network." There are excellent infrastructures in place for filing bugs and help requests, you've got discussion forums to bring up new ideas, and on g.d.o you've got endless opportunities to bump into other drupalers that are interested in using drupal for everything under the sun, including the very things you're interested in.

Throw in local drupal user's groups (DUGs), Drupal Camps, and DrupalCons (Drupal conferences), and you have a healthy mix of online and face to face interaction, organized and flexible systems of communication, and an infrastructure that accomodates (and encourages) a continually growing number of groups and communities: in short, a highly effective "liquid network."

As if that is not enough, the vast majority of Drupalers are just plain nice folks.

You can see why so many first get drawn in by, and then come to have such high praise for, the Drupal community, a liquid network that dramatically expands the adjacent possible.

- photo credits (cc) - Bert Kaufmann, Chaval Brasil