10000 days and moving on to a new venture

Published 7/19/11 10:13 AM

Version française ici

tl;dr

Today, I'm celebrating my ten thousandth day on our good old earth! Today is also XWiki's company seventh birthday. And finally, for what it worth, it is also the 200th days of the year.

Also, this week is the last week I am spending aboard the XWiki SAS boat. After a four year long adventure on open source collaborative software seas, I have decided to embark a new ride and sail to new horizons - to pursue on a lexical field already over-used by the Lulz boat. Starting next week, I will dedicate my time to building Winesquare, a web site and online community around wine.

XWiki

Those four years aboard XWiki (the company)  have been very rich and very dense. To see a start-up grow from 7 persons (when I joined in 2007) to more than 30 persons in two timezones today (and without venture capital) is a unique experience. During those four years, I have learned a job, the one of Web Developer, that I now want to sport proudly, especially the Web part of it. When I've finished my studies, I had the desire, I imagine like lot of my schoolmates, to do "serious software". Embedded, real-time, image-processing. Software for men!  We had then that light bias of considering the Web a bit like the dumb cousin of the software industry. I've joined XWiki with this a-priori (it was the open source aspect that seduced me then), and now I am leaving with a passion, with the Web engraved deep inside me, in my DNA. Lastly, and that's the most important aspect, I have during those four years had the opportunity to learn next to extremely talented people. I've written it on this blog two years ago, and I maintain, this is a huge advantage in working in a company that does real open source. That's the kind of experience I would like to advise to students who just graduated, and XWiki is really an ideal place to make it happen.

Winesquare

Now I will be dedicated full time to Winesquare, a project still in the embryo state. I'm very excited by this new venture, for several reasons. First, because I am teaming up with a very good friend of mine. I know Louis from high-school benches and working together is something we've envisaged doing by that time already. Next, because the project itself is very exciting, very young so still completely open to possible directions and developments. Our mission is to help wine amateurs to discover and share the wines and vintages they love. And, as the story is well-written, I am of course one of the first customer of this kind of fixture. I enjoy wine a lot, and for a long time, but to be honest I don't really know it. Building Winesquare will be an opportunity to learn. Lastly, I am excited because I will express myself in an environment that is not solely technological. Even though technology will remain a cornerstone of the adventure, we are creating a site that addresses the senses, where the design will be a capital element and where the user experience will be a decisive factor.

Last note

And, finally, I am not leaving XWiki completely. We are building Winesquare partly on top of XWiki, which besides being a collaborative software solution is also a very advanced development platform. I will remain close to the community, and I hope will be able to continue contribute to its development like I could do in the last years.

So here it is, 10000 days, and the beginning for me of a new adventure, with as we would say in French lot of "work on the bred board" ahead of.

Vin Jaune by Arnaud 25 on wikicommons