About me

My name is Dries Buytaert. I'm an Open Source developer, technology executive, academic, hobbyist photographer and father of two wonderful kids.

I'm the founder and project lead of Drupal, an Open Source platform for building websites and digital experiences. Drupal is used by 2% of the world's websites and has 35,000 active contributors around the world. I spent my entire professional career in Open Source, and believe it to be a superior innovation and collaboration model.

I'm also co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Acquia, a venture-backed technology company. Acquia employs over 750 people and provides the technology platform that helps many large organizations build and operate their digital experiences using Drupal.

I'm a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum.

I hold a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University and a Licentiate Computer Science (MsC) from the University of Antwerp.

I love learning about innovative ideas that might change the world for our generation or generations to come, and love interacting with the people who bring them to life.

I'm passionate about investing and personal finance, and occasionally invest in startups.

My friends describe me as a "workaholic". It's true I work a lot, but it's exciting to see how many people and organizations Drupal and Acquia touch and the impact we can make.

I was born and raised in Antwerp (Belgium), but moved to Boston (United States) in 2010. I love to travel and usually fly over 250,000 km (155,000 miles) a year. When I'm not working or traveling, I enjoy the simple things. Watching a good movie with friends and family, reading non-fiction, playing tennis, having fun with spreadsheets, or trying out a new restaurant.

All of these interests — Drupal, Open Source, startups, business, investing, travel, photography and the open web — are themes of this blog.

I've been writing on this blog for over 10 years. Writing pushes me to think; it is my process to flesh out ideas. I use this blog to think out loud in a public space, and to start conversations with people thinking about the same topics. I also try to follow the principles of POSSE and use my site as my primary digital hub for blog posts, photos, thoughts, etc rather than posting on third-party walled gardens first.

My Myers-Briggs personality type is ENTJ.

Work

Co-founder, CTO and Chairman of the Board, Acquia

2007 - current

In 2007 I co-founded Acquia. Acquia helps enterprises build digital experience quickly, easily and with a lower total cost of ownership by leveraging Drupal. Our SaaS and PaaS products enable companies to leverage the power, flexibility, technical innovation and economic value of Drupal while simplifying the experience, removing the complexity and minimizing the risk.

Acquia currently employs more than 700 people across 10 offices in the world, and has raised over $180 million dollar. In 2011, Forbes elected Acquia as one of the Top 100 Most Promising Companies. In 2012, Inc declared Acquia the fastest growing private software company in the United States.
Co-founder and CEO of Mollom (acquired by Acquia)

2008 - 2012

Mollom is an intelligent content moderation platform for the web. Mollom uses machine learning to evaluate the quality of user generated content to help organizations identify spam, profanity or generally unwanted material. Mollom has caught over 10 billion spam comments over 60,000 websites. We bootstrapped Mollom without external capital and sold Mollom to Acquia after 4.5 years.
Co-founder and President of the Drupal Association

2006 - current

The Drupal Association is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing Drupal. The Association funds and operates the Drupal.org website and promotes Drupal through events and other marketing activities. Today, the Drupal Association is headquartered in Portland, Oregon and has about 30 full-time employees.
Founder and Project Lead of Drupal

2000 - current

In 2000 I founded Drupal. Drupal is a free tool for building customized websites quickly and easily. A huge international community has grown up around Drupal, with over 30,000 active contributors. Drupal powers 2% of all the website on the internet, and is used by organizations like Sony Music, Verizon, World Economic Forum, Al Jazeera, Time, White House, NBC, eBay, Harvard, MIT, and more.
Board Member of Inventive Designers

2014 - current

Inventive Designers is a Belgian technology company that builds software for multichannel customer communications.

Education

PhD in Computer Science and Engineering

University of Ghent

2003 - 2008
- Thesis: Profiling Techniques for Performance Analysis and Optimization of Java Applications
- Promoters: Koen De Bosschere and Lieven Eeckhout
- James Gosling (inventor of Java and VP at Sun Microsystems) and Michael Hind (Research staff member and senior manager of programming technologies department at IBM T.J. Watson) were part of my PhD defense committee.
Licentiate Computer Science (MsC)

University of Antwerp

1996 - 2000
- Grade: magna cum laude (with great distinction)
- Thesis: Java AWT for embedded systems

Awards

ACM SIGPLAN award for the most influential paper published 10 years ago at OOPSLA 2007
The Boston Tech 30, Boston Magazine
2015 ILC Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year in High-Tech
CTO of the Year 2014 by Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC)
DataNews ICT Personality of the Year 2014
2013 second fastest growing technology company in the United States according to Deloitte's FAST 500. 84,171% growth in the past 5 years.
2012 fastest growing private software company in the United States by Inc
Most promising company of 2012 by BelCham
2012 Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young for New England
The 50 Most Powerful People In Enterprise Tech: Business Insider include me on top 50 most powerful people in enterprise technology.
CIO of the Year 2012: the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech recognized me as 2012 CIO of the Year in the Emerging Technology category.
BusinessWeek Young Entrepreneurs of Tech 2008: BusinessWeek included me on their list of top 30-and-under innovators for 2008.
MIT TR 35 Young Innovator 2008: MIT's Technology Review included me on their list of young innovators whose inventions and research they find most exciting.
Top 5 most influential people in Open Source 2009: as part of MindTouch’s 2009 open source best practices research, they asked C and VP level Open Source Executives who they thought are the most influential people in the industry. I made it to the top 5 influential Open Source executives of 2009.
CIOnet Innovation Award 2009
University of Antwerp Alumnus of the Year 2010

Academic publications

Java Performance Evaluation through Rigorous Replay Compilation, Andy Georges, Lieven Eeckhout and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '08), Nashville, USA, October 2008.
Using HPM-sampling to drive dynamic compilation, Dries Buytaert, Andy Georges, Michael Hind, Matthew Arnold, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '07), Montreal, Canada, October 2007.
Statistically rigorous Java performance evaluation, Andy Georges, Dries Buytaert and Lieven Eeckhout. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '07), Montreal, Canada, October 2007.
Javana: a system for building customized Java program analysis tools, Jonas Maebe, Dries Buytaert, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '06), Portland, USA, October 2006.
Building Java Program analysis tools using Javana, Dries Buytaert, Jonas Maebe, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '06 companion), Portland, USA, October 2006.
GCH: Hints for Triggering Garbage Collections, Dries Buytaert, Kris Venstermans, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. Transactions on High-Performance Embedded Architectures and Compilers, 1(1):52-72, June 2006.
Garbage collection hints, Dries Buytaert, Kris Venstermans, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 3793, Springer-Verlag. In proceeding of the international conference on high performance embedded architectures & compilers (HIPEAC'05), Barcelona, Spain, November 2005.
FPGA-aware garbage collection in Java, Philippe Faes, Mark Christiaens, Dries Buytaert, Dirk Stroobandt. In proceedings of the international conference on field programmable logic and applications (FPL'05), Tampere, Finland, August 2005.
Bottleneck analysis in Java applications using hardware performance monitors, Dries Buytaert, Andy Georges, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '04 companion), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 2004.
Method-level phase behavior in Java workloads, Andy Georges, Dries Buytaert, Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere. In proceedings of the ACM conference on object-oriented programming, systems, languages, and applications (OOPSLA '04), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, October 2004.
Wonka, Oswald, Rudolph and friends: Java 2 goes mobile, Dries Buytaert. In Cappuccino, BeJUG's six-monthly printed newsletter, January 2003.
Dynamic delivery of end-user services using Java, Chris Gray and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the Java and embedded systems symposium (JAES'02), Gent, Belgium, November 2002.
A selective runtime compiler for the Wonka Virtual Machine, Dries Buytaert, Frans Arickx, Steven Buytaert and Johan Vos. In proceedings of the symposium on program acceleration through application and architecture driven code transformations (PA3CT '02), Edegem, Belgium, September 2002.
A profiler and compiler for the Wonka Virtual Machine, Dries Byutaert, Frans Arickx and Johan Vos. In proceedings of the second Java Virtual Machine research and technology symposium (JVM '02), WIP session, San Francisco, USA, August 2002.
A dynamic service delivery framework based on the OSGi model, Johan Vos, Steven Buytaert and Dries Buytaert. In proceedings of the international conference on advances in infrastructure for electronic business, education, science and medicine on the internet (SSGRR '02), L'aquila, Italy, January 2002.

Miscellaneous facts

Advisor to NowPublic (acquired by Examiner.com)

2005 - 2009

NowPublic is a participatory news network which mobilizes an army of reporters to cover the events that define our world. In recent months, the company has become one of the fastest growing news organizations with thousands of reporters in over 140 countries. In 2009, NowPublic was acquired by Examiner.com. To learn more about NowPublic, read my blogs posts on NowPublic.
Founder and maintainer of the Linux WLAN FAQ

1999 - 2000

In 1999 I started and maintained the Linux WLAN FAQ. Today, I no longer maintain the FAQ but the work has been picked up by others in the Linux WLAN community. My aged version is no longer available at the original URL (http://linux.grmbl.be/wlan/) but has been archived at http://www.buytaert.net/files/wlan-faq.html. Maintained editions of the Linux WLAN FAQ can be found at http://www.linux-wlan.org/.