Interview with Vincent

Vincent is our most recent team member. He joined us around three weeks ago and is our Communication Manager. To celebrate his joining our effort (and since we have time after the release of Movim 0.3), here’s an interview of our new teammate:

Vincent: My name’s Vincent, I’m 20 and a linux user for a year and a half now. I have a few projects of my own and a blog. I’m a third-year IT student. The 98% of Internet users – which I was still a part of not so long ago – who haven’t had a taste of Free software have no idea of what the remaining 2% are able to do. And it really changes one’s day to day life.

Etenil: How did you get to know Movim?

Vincent: I first came across Movim when it only started. I don’t quite remember how (I still used Windows back then), perhaps just by looking around.

Etenil: What is it that motivated you to contribute to Movim?

Vincent: Honestly? Edhelas! I’ve been waiting for Movim for a very long time. When I write articles about it, Edhelas always requested help to advance the project’s translations. Unlike this summer, I really didn’t have time back then. So a midday, I popped up on the website, saw the languages list and I thought to myself `Alright, how could I get languages from so many countries translated?”. I had the idea of going to get contributions myself on linux forums of two of the biggest communities for each country on the list, then I posted the same message describing the project and our needs. Contributions soon started to flood in. It’s pretty simple actually, if Movim get referenced abroad, we are likely to get more contributors and the project grows faster!

Etenil: What is your position in the projet exactly?

Vincent: I’m in charge of the communication, that is I’m maintaining the website, I advertise the project, I manage the referecing/SEO, I keep up to date with what blogs write about Movim so we can answer all requests. Obviously, I’m also pushing the translations It’s really exciting to be the link between the community, the contributors and the core developers.

Etenil: Are you a Facebook user?

Vincent: Not anymore for a year now, I closed my account. Nevertheless, I had to re-open a private account that only contains my family members who have given up on any other form of digital communication. It’s sad to have to choose between your convictions and what reality forces onto you. Fortunately, because Facebook uses XMPP, I can talk with them by only using Gajim. I don’t want to lose contact, but I really hope I can introduce them to something better in the near future.

Etenil: What do you think Movim lacks to be as appealing as facebook?

Vincent: I’m not sure the question is relevant; on the one hand, most users ask for games an silly applications, on the other a smaller number of people expects really useful features like audio calls, video conferencing, or that we surprise them with the many unexploited features of the XMPP protocol. Movim is expected to do everything, a sort of mixture between Skype, Facebook, Twitter and PiratePad!

Etenil: You’re new to the project, what do you think of the team?

Vincent: It’s a brilliant small team! Actually it’s human-sized, I mean by this that it’s like a family: we argue, we laugh, we work, we take decisions and we wish each other good night together. That’s a bit exggerated, but it’s great to be able to work with people who follow ideals we draw all our motivation from. We can barely feel the age difference .