No blabbing,
but scrubbing
“Rotterdam is a very special city,” Dries opens, “and there’s a saying here I never expected to say on stage.” It’s Dutch, and it translates to stop talking, start working. The whole keynote is about to prove the city earned it.
“Good morning Rotterdam! My keynote will have live captions — scan the QR code to follow them on your phone. Are you ready? Let’s do it.”
“There’s an important saying here in Rotterdam — it literally translates to ‘no blabbing but scrubbing’. It means: stop talking and start working.”
“Some of you who have been around since the early days of Drupal might remember me saying something very similar: talk is silver, and code is gold. We’ve since updated that to ‘talk is silver, and contribution is gold’ — because Drupal is built on much more than code. It’s built on events like this, on documentation, on mentoring.”
“And starting today, we’re going to amplify one element of contribution that I think we’ve been neglecting a little bit. I’ll come back to that later in the keynote.”
Foreshadowing, planted early. That “neglected element of contribution” returns in Chapter 09 as the Drupal Advocacy Program. Rotterdam rewards patience — so does this keynote.
Rotterdam saw the future, moved towards it, and came out first
Dries walks through two centuries of the city — and every stop is really about Drupal.
The canal that made a city
Rotterdam dug a giant canal giving deep-water access to the North Sea — and connecting major German industrial cities all the way to the sea. That infrastructure is what made Rotterdam grow into a big city.
Bombed because it worked
The very access that made Rotterdam prosperous — the route to the North Sea and to German industry — made it a target. The city was bombed and completely destroyed.
Rebuilt around the future — which was cars
Rotterdam didn’t rebuild the past. It embraced the newest style of its era and reorganized the city around the car — which is why, Dries notes, “it may feel a little more like an American city than a traditional European one.”
Bold architecture, everywhere
Embracing the future rather than staying stuck in the past produced Rotterdam’s famously modern skyline. Fun fact from the stage: the Markthal — the spectacular food hall a five-minute walk away — inspired part of the design of these very Driesnotes.
First port in Europe to welcome container ships
Container shipping transformed the industry, and Rotterdam was the first European port to let the future dock. Hard work, no blabbing.
The largest port in Europe
Bigger than any American port; worldwide, only ports in Asia are larger. All of it, Dries says, thanks to an attitude: no blabbing, get scrubbing.
“To me, that resonates — because I feel like we have this in Drupal. Our ability to see the future, our willingness to adapt, is something we have always been very excellent at. It’s one of the things I’m most proud of.”
“And it takes a lot of hard work — as we’ve been doing for 25 years.”
The metaphor for the whole talk: like Rotterdam, Drupal expands by making it easy for people to ship things — first goods, now ideas — and by never being afraid to move to where the future is. That growth story starts in Chapter 03. But first, a detour into childhood chores.