Drupal Experts Japan

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Drupal has grown into an internationally used platform for enterprise level websites and applications. So where are all the Drupal Experts in Japan?

Drupal in Japan

Drupal for those who don't know is a popular open-source web development platform/CMS used to build extremely flexible websites and applications.
Globally well know and increasingly used for Enterprise level sites and systems it is still relatively unknown in Japan.

This lack of penetration is nothing new. I remember trying to introduce Drupal to a local web company about four years ago, and they really didn't like it, or make much effort to use it, despite the clear speed and ability to add functionality to builds. I pushed a little more into this when the next Dreamweaver had Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress integration. I thought this would validate it more in their eyes, but the comment was disappointment that Dreamweaver did not include integration for MoveableType, which sadly as I had to show them on Google trends, was long dead.

One of the answers I had later after it became clear Drupal was popular globally was that where Drupal filled the gap between custom and blog level cms type frameworks, they preferred to just go custom.
Although honestly I didn't take this as a serious answer, and I sort of knew it was really the lack of information and support in Japanese for Drupal, whereas the popularity of Wordpress and Moveable Type was partly due to the amount of resources and documentation.
Moveable Type having strong Japanese connections still is widely used in Japan, despite it being practically dead by comparison to the well known CMS platforms.

Drupal is infamous for a high learning curve when starting out, which is off putting enough for many, so its not such a surprise regarding the lack of adoption. Unless there is a compelling reason to get out of the comfort zone, and have to take on something difficult to learn, in another language with no resources you know nothing about, it isn't likely to happen.
This was highlighted when I was asked to learn Cocoa for iOS since the Apple resources had yet to be translated to Japanese. As Apple was trendy and iPhone Apps on demand from the main client, there was a push in effort to get iOS Apps working by using me and then even to the point of hiring a tri-lingual foreign developer expressly to create iPhone apps.
With Drupal nowhere nearly worshipped like Apple ... sorry, no chance.
 

Drupal in Japan?

Of course Rain has long used Drupal as the favoured tool for the task at hand when building complex websites that don't need a fully custom implementation, and this is where Drupal really shines, which is a shame for Japanese web development, and kind of a bonus for us. However as part of the Drupal community in Japan, we continually work to increase Drupal's profile and have local web developers understand how useful it can be as an alternative to custom builds or having to hack Wordpress to pieces. So 2 years ago we had contacted Acquia to try and understand their partnership program and see about the possibility of Acquia as a company putting resources into promoting Drupal for Enterprise in Japan. This created a catch 22 situation in that Acquia were interested in entry if there were big enough clients wanting to build their sites in Drupal to justify it.
A fair business decision, BUT big Japanese clients are in the same way, not going to use a technology not already proven to work by other big Japanese clients. This presented the issue that unless some influential companies or local web developers produced great sites in Drupal, the local enterprise level companies were not going to be overly confident in a Drupal based system. What may have global validation, doesn't mean it has any value in Japan, until it is in Japan (or you are Apple).

The Drupal Black Ships Are Coming

Cheeky title I know, but what has begun to happen is international enterprise level companies with a presence in Japan have Drupal based systems. Their international service, system or site is Drupal based, and these sites become passed to the Japan-based office.
This presents a clear problem because the local Japan office is given a platform they know little about, and with a very small local developer base. It's then also in the hands of the IT or Web team to handle, and they are given a hard to learn enough system in English, with very little knowledge base in Japanese and tiny community.
Which is also a problem for Multinational companies because the Japan based office is going to struggle to manage the system the rest of the international offices are using, and there is very limited knowledge resources not just in the local office, but the surrounding pool of development companies and developers. This will further extend to server configuration, which is important for high traffic Drupal sites, and even less experts in that field with trusted access to company servers!
 

Drupal Experts in Japan

So due to all the above factors, where are the Drupal Experts in Japan?
Well mostly we all know each other, the community is that small. Small enough to know there are not enough, and very hard for Japanese developers to learn and use Drupal when the demand for skills is not for Drupal unless they are building full sites and systems themselves for clients.
ie. Not staff of a normal web development company.
Also the majority of Drupal experts are non-Japanese living in Japan,  making the skill pool even smaller, and from a local perspective harder to communicate with.

As Drupal is adopted more and more internationally by enterprise, more local IT teams are going to be faced with learning Drupal, or finding the people who know how to use it.

Building Drupal Expertise

Currently in the works of the Tokyo Drupal Community (although attended by some people as far out as Tochigi) is a full Tokyo Japan Community site, which will aim to provide resources and knowledge in Japanese. It's something that has been and is kind of still a long time coming, because of the current climate and gathering enough people with available time to really get it moving.

However there are now companies in the community building bigger and more prominent sites in Drupal, which hopefully will increase its profile, encourage more Acquia involvement, and larger Japanese companies to establish Drupal in Japan.
KDDI the huge Japanese communications corporation do deserve a mention for being one of the big companies that support Drupal in Japan.

Japan is very innovative when something becomes the trend or new fad. Coming from a Flash background, Augmented Reality for Flash in the form of the FLARToolkit came out of Japan about 6 years ago, where currently AR is one of the global trendy things but as iOS or proprietary development platforms. 
http://wonderfl.net/ which has been around for a long time, is like the JSFiddle for Flash, and another example of Japan doing some really innovative work around technology that gained popularity.
So it would be really interesting to see what would occur if the developers in Japan suddenly could access and see the value in Drupal for building out sites.

 
We've started to see a trend where even the Drupal houses we know are looking for Drupal experts to bring into their own teams in order to handle the growing size and scale of current projects. Drupal is still very niche for sure, but the demand is there due to the void in experts.
We'll have to see how this trend plays out.