Resume

Bio

Picture of Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal open source web publishing platform, used by 2% of the world's websites. Buytaert serves as president of the Drupal Association, a non-profit organization formed to help Drupal flourish.

Buytaert is also co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. 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.

A native of Belgium, Buytaert holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University and a Licentiate Computer Science (MsC) from the University of Antwerp. In 2008, Buytaert was elected Young Entrepreneurs of Tech by BusinessWeek as well as MIT TR 35 Young Innovator. In 2012, Ernst & Young gave Buytaert the Entrepreneur Of The Year Award for New England. In 2013, Buytaert was elected a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum.

Work

  • Co-founder and CTO of Acquia
    2007 - current

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

    In 2007, I helped secure $7 million in a Series A financing led by North Bridge Venture Partners, with additional investment from Sigma Partners and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. In 2009 we raised a $8 million round Series B, in 2010 we raised a $8.5 million round Series C, and in 2011 we raised a $15 million round Series D.

    Acquia has offices in the US and Europe, and currently employs more than 300 people. 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.

    For more information, see http://acquia.com.

  • Co-founder of Mollom (acquired by Acquia)
    2008 - 2012
    The web is changing. User contribution is now what makes or breaks a site. Allowing users to react, participate and contribute while still keeping your site under control can be a huge challenge. Mollom is a web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop comment and contact form spam. For more information, see http://mollom.com.
  • "We chose to go with a Drupal-based platform because it is open source, has a dynamic developer community, and offers a powerful and flexible platform for building online communities."
    Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
    Co-founder and President of the Drupal Association
    2006 - current
    The Drupal Association is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing the open source Drupal web publishing and collaboration platform. The Association funds and operates the Drupal.org community web infrastructure and promotes Drupal through events and other marketing activities. For more information, see http://association.drupal.org.
  • "We consider Drupal to be the leading open source platform and development environment."
    Marc Canter, co-founder of Macromedia, CEO of Broadband Mechanics, Multimedia visionary
    Founder and Project Lead of Drupal
    2000 - current
    In 2000 I founded Drupal, Drupal, a free tool for building customized websites quickly and easily. A huge international community has grown up around Drupal, with tens of thousands of 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, NBC, eBay, Harvard, MIT, and more.

    A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of active committers who contribute to the open source technology, including nearly 10,000 community-developed modules for extending Drupal functionality.

    For more information about Drupal, you can look at my Drupal press corner, you can check out some Drupal sites or visit http://drupal.org.

Education

  • PhD in Computer Science and Engineering
    University of Ghent
    PDF icon
    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

  • 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

  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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.
  • PDF icon 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 Apperian
    2011 - current
    Apperian helps enterprises take mobility beyond email, calendar and documents to the transformative use of mobile and tablet devices. The EASE platform is the first to allow businesses to create, deploy, and manage applications for Apple iOS-powered devices, and in the near future Android devices.
  • Advisor to Akiban
    2009 - current
    Akiban Technologies provides cloud-scale database virtualization solutions for the open-source community. Its solutions automatically restructures tabular data along various dimensions, as well as organizes data in a way that is actually used. The companies solution enables companies to automate schema optimization, distribute data across servers, distribute users across access nodes, and maintain compatibility with existing SQL database applications.
  • Advisor to OSUOSL
    2008 - current
    The OSUOSL is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and over 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally.
  • 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/.
  • Myers-Briggs personality type: ENTJ
© 1999-2014 Dries Buytaert Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Drupal is a Registered Trademark of Dries Buytaert.