I originally wrote this blog post on November 18, 2016 when I was first hired as the Agency and Community Training Manager at Pantheon. I’m reposting it here (potentially with minor edits) for posterity, but you can read the original article there.
I witnessed the birth of Pantheon from my desk at Chapter Three. I was there as Pantheon grew, as they launched, and as they moved out of the C3 office and around the block (but somehow still in the same building). They’re in a bigger building now (a pagoda!), and they have a much bigger team.
In early 2013, my wife and I decided to move to Minnesota where I helped start a non-profit organization named Enjoy Creativity. I served as the Executive Director and ran the day to day operations like a Drupal shop, as I learned from my mentors at C3.
We were a small company and worked with small churches and other nonprofits to provide web development, branding, and long term support and hosting. I taught myself DevOps and with the help of Brad Erickson’s Git-Dev-Workflow, I spun up Ansible environments in a Linode VM. I ran our shop that way for a couple years without any great emergencies, but looking back, I was playing with fire. I had a few clients already on Pantheon and felt more confident in the reliability of those sites. I dreamt of using Pantheon for all of our clients. Then it occurred to me. Maybe I could.
Initially the cost seemed prohibitive. Our sites were small, and at $25/month per site, it was significantly more than we were paying out of pocket for our VM. I sat down with former Chapter Three colleague and Pantheon CEO Zack at the Twin Cities Drupal Camp to discuss our situation. He told me about the new Fast Track program for agencies, and suggested I meet with the team to talk through the specifics.
So, I met with Drew, Director of Agency & Community Outreach. He said that they could help us move all of our websites onto their system. For free. Our monthly bill would still be more than we pay on Linode, but when I factored in the time I spent doing DevOps and considered the added benefit to our clients, it was a no-brainer. I jumped in and set out to build an efficient DevOps workflow that would help us deliver more value to clients.
As a Pantheon agency partner, I felt taken care of. I knew Pantheon had my back. And now, as the Agency & Community Training Manager at Pantheon, my job is to make sure all of our agencies have the resources they need to thrive. I look forward to helping agencies find success. Let me know how I can help make your job easier!
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