Ken Rickard

Director of Development and Professional Services

Ken built his first web site in 1995 while teaching at the University of Arkansas. He has helped develop corporate online strategies and served on the planning and development teams for some of the first newspaper sites built with Drupal. Ken has experience performing Drupal data integrations and site migrations for Palantir clients such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the University of Chicago Law School. Ken provides consultation, architecture, programming, and training services.

What three books would you recommend for anyone who does what you do?

Drupal 7 Module Development. (Shameless plug: many of us worked on that book.) It fills in many of the dark corners of Drupal development. Great for professional developers familiar with Drupal. The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond. This history of the development of Linux and Windows gives a great overview of the Open Source philosophy. That book changed my career. And since we do a lot of work with non-profits and civic institutions (and because I used to teach them), go re-read either The Social Contract (by Rouseeau) or Democracy in America (de Tocqueville). They'll remind you of what a civil society strives for.

If I wasn't an awesome web developer, I would be…

A manager of developers. Or a CTO. Or go back to teaching. Or I'd buy a B&B somewhere in Europe.

Three things you'd want on a desert island

Food. Shelter. At least 3 good companions. And air conditioning / heat.

Voted “most likely to”…

Smash.

What are your top three video games ever?

Wizardry (for the Apple ][). NHL 1995 (first “modern” game for me, on Windows 3.1). Civilization 3.

Google+, Facebook, MySpace, or Friendster?

Twitter.

iOS or Android?

iOS.