There’s a particular kind of developer story that often shows up on Community + Code. Someone falls sideways into technology, gets obsessed, spends years getting really good at one thing — and then decides to pour all of it into something they’ve been building in their head for years. Fons Vandamme’s version of that story involves a panicked three-month self-education sprint, an accidental decade in sales, and a Drupal starter kit called Webhaven.
Fons has been building with Drupal since the version 6 days, spent ten years at Belgian agency EntityOne growing from developer to Scrum Master to reluctant (but surprisingly effective) salesperson, and is now channeling everything he learned into Webhaven — a premium, modular Drupal project starter that he describes as “the Olympic minimum”: not everything, but exactly what you need to start right.
We talked about how AI transformed what was possible for a solo builder, his surprisingly adversarial approach to prompting LLMs into giving honest feedback (“if it says great idea, something is wrong”), and his genuinely mixed feelings about whether AI is overhyped or actually underhyped depending on the day.
We also got into Drupal’s current moment — whether it’s positioned for a resurgence, what Drupal Canvas changes for editor experience, and why change management might be the most underrated skill nobody’s talking about right now.
This is a great deep dive into product development and Drupal. Check out the episode and subscribe to never miss an episode.
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