dreamformula.com

Hello, I'm Joe Shindelar.

After 16 years creating developer education at Drupalize.Me, I'm exploring what's next. I'm pursuing remote-first Senior/Staff roles in Developer Experience, Developer Advocacy, or Technical Education.
Let's connect

I'm also a total music nerd. I enjoy snowboarding, biking, and playing around with technology. You can find me on the internet in most places as @eojthebrave.

About:

I'm a forty-something artist and internet nerd living, working, playing, and most importantly raising my two kids in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

I love bicycles, working on bicycles, riding bicycles, and looking at bicycles on the internet. I enjoy snowboarding and am a certified level II and freestyle accredited instructor. After the sun goes down I enjoy going out to concerts, or putting on a new album, sitting down on the couch, and just listening.

For 16 years I led developer education at Drupalize.Me as Lead Developer and Lead Trainer — producing 200+ video lessons, 800+ tutorials, and leading dozens of workshops. I'm an active member of the Drupal community and spend time working on documentation-related projects and hanging out with other local Drupal users.

Find me on the internet:

I like to make art.

It's what I went to school for. Though to be honest, these days it seems like I think about it a lot, but don't actually get the supplies out and create as often as I should.

Code:

I write code for both work and play. I like that it allows me to express both analytical thinking and creativity in the same medium. And despite having done so for over a decade it still feels magical every time I can convince a computer to do my bidding.

The last few years I've been digging into AI and how it can be used to enhance productivity and creativity, and just generally exploring how and where it can be applied. It often reminds me of some of my earlier experiences learning to code where things felt magical, the experiments were weird and fun, and the potential felt huge.

I'm a stickler for coding standards, and quality documentation. A passion I do my best to share with others through my role on the Drupal Documentation Working Group. I love reviewing other people's code. I have no problems calling people out, but I like to think that the years I spent doing art critiques in college taught me how to give good constructive feedback and to start conversations instead of scare people away.

I play Tetris.

Talks/Presentations

As an educator and speaker I've presented at numerous events locally and internationally about everything from code-level development to user interface, design, and community involvement. As Lead Trainer at Drupalize.Me I taught classes both in-person and online, and developed a knack for distilling complex technical ideas into everyday language. I still get nervous every time I speak in public, but love the challenge. Most of all, I like empowering people, sharing whatever information I have, and the opportunity that speaking provides to learn new things.

Selected highlights:

Full speaking history (click to expand)
Date Event City/Virtual Type Title/Topic Link/Notes
2025 DrupalCon Talk Keynote DrupalCon Atlanta 2025: Keynote - The Future of Drupal CMS YouTube
2024 DrupalCon Atlanta Atlanta, GA, USA Session Documentation Initiatives for Starshot and drupal.org Medium reference
2024 Drupalize.Me Remote Workshop Online Training Remote Drupal 9 and 10 Theming Workshop The Drop Times listing
2024 Drupalize.Me Remote Workshop Online Training Remote Drupal 9 and 10 Migration Workshop The Drop Times listing
2023-06 Twin Cities DrupalCamp 2023 Minneapolis, MN, USA Session The Potential of Single Directory Components The Drop Times
2022-04 DrupalCon Portland Portland, OR, USA Training Introduction to Drupal 9 Module Development events.drupal.org/portland2022/speakers.html
2022-04 DrupalCon Portland Portland, OR, USA Training Theming - Drupalize.Me events.drupal.org/portland2022/speakers.html
2020-07 DrupalCon Global (Virtual) Virtual Session Altering, Extending, and Enhancing Drupal Slides/announcement available
2019-06-06 Twin Cities DrupalCamp 2019 Minneapolis, MN, USA Session Gatsby and Drupal drupal.tv
2018-06-07 Twin Cities DrupalCamp 2018 Minneapolis, MN, USA Session Ready? Set. Contribute! drupal.tv
2018-04 DrupalCon Nashville Nashville, TN, USA Training Theming Drupal 8 Trainer credit via Lullabot announcement
2017-09 DrupalCon Vienna Vienna, Austria Keynote Everyone Has Something to Share events.drupal.org
2017-03-30 MidCamp 2017 Chicago, IL, USA Training/Workshop Theming Drupal 8 (with Blake Hall) MidCamp schedule / joind.in
2017-03-17 Midwest PHP 2017 Bloomington, MN, USA Session Altering, Extending, and Enhancing Drupal 8 Midwest PHP schedule
2016-05-11 DrupalCon New Orleans New Orleans, LA, USA Session Documentation Is Getting an Overhaul DrupalCon NOLA program PDFs
2016-05-10 DrupalCon New Orleans New Orleans, LA, USA Session Altering, Extending, and Enhancing Drupal 8 DrupalCon NOLA program PDFs
2016-04-07 DrupalCamp Mexico Guadalajara, Mexico Keynote Keynote (title TBD) University of Guadalajara news confirms keynote
2015-10-19 ZendCon 2015 Las Vegas, NV, USA Session An Overview of the Drupal 8 Plugin System; The Dark Art of Debugging ZendCon 2015 schedule (talks listed)
2015-09 DrupalCon Barcelona Barcelona, Spain Session Altering, Extending, and Enhancing Drupal 8 YouTube
2015-05 php[tek] 2015 Chicago, IL, USA Session The Dark Art of Debugging joind.in/event/phptek-2015
2015-05 DrupalCon Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA, USA Session An Overview of the Drupal 8 Plugin System YouTube
2015-02-10 DrupalCon Latin America (Bogota) Bogota, Colombia Session An Overview of the Drupal 8 Plugin System events.drupal.org/latinamerica2015
2014-06-04 DrupalCon Austin Austin, TX, USA Session A Developer's Primer to Managing Developers events.drupal.org/austin2014
2014-03 Drupal Developer Days Szeged, Hungary Workshop/Training Community Tools Workshop Mentioned in event promos/recaps (with Amber Himes)
2012-05 DrupalCon Munich Munich, Germany Session Introduction to Drupal: What I Wish Someone Told Me in the Beginning events.drupal.org/munich2012

Writing & Tutorials

Over the years I've written 800+ tutorials and documentation guides covering Drupal development, theming, site building, and more. Here are some selected examples.

Selected work:

  • Drupal CMS User Guide: Helped write the initial version of the official Drupal CMS documentation, including governance, community coordination, and enabling contributions from others
  • Drupal User Guide: Co-author and ongoing maintainer of the Drupal User Guide — writing, project governance, community building, and leading contributor enablement
  • Module Developer Guide: Comprehensive tutorial series on Drupal module development for Drupalize.Me
  • Create a Custom "Hello World" Block: Tutorial + video walking through building a custom block plugin from scratch

So yeah ... that's cool! :)