Dear Friends,

I have been immensely enjoying my time as the Friends General Conference Communications Manager.  I consider engagement to be a ministry—one that I take seriously.  

I believe that Quakerism is a good thing and that my role at FGC is to help monthly and yearly meetings gain access to tools which will help them tell their own story.

Quaker Cloud is one of those tools.  It provides a standard template for monthly meetings to share their values and activities with members, attenders, and the public.  When I was hired, an exciting plan was underway to upgrade the Quaker Cloud experience for all of its users.  Last autumn, an open house was hosted by FGC to discuss those plans.  

At that time, I shared that support for the current version of Drupal would expire this coming fall, 2022.  FGC has been working hard with our vendors to meet that deadline and have the new Quaker Cloud running ahead of that date.  Recently, the Drupal Community, concerned with COVID impacts on the user community, decided to extend support for the version of Drupal that we currently use to the fall of 2023.

While we wish to finish this project as soon as possible, this Drupal support extension means your sites and data will remain intact, safe, and updatable with no interruptions for an extended time.  This is very important for your meeting and FGC.  

While design work on the new Quaker Cloud template has been going well, content migration for all the Quaker Cloud sites, I’m sorry to share, will be more challenging than our vendor first thought and might require some creativity to solve.  We need more time to assess options and consider ways forward.

After the virtual Gathering is over, expect another communication from me in late July.  We have already spoken to an additional vendor and have ideas about how we might address the issue we’re facing.  However, we need some time to explore it further and talk with volunteer leadership within FGC.  

If you are someone who knows a fair amount about Drupal or website migration, feel free to contact me.  Quaker Cloud is a service for our community and we recognize a possible solution might come from one or more of you as site administrators.  

In any case, expect another email from me in late July.  Thank you for your service to your meetings and your partnership with FGC.

Rashid Darden,
FGC Communications Manager