Today it's time to get to know Fabrice better, our colleague from the CryptPad team, whose work focuses on the core of the project: the encryption that makes data unreadable. He ensures that users' data stays private, and remains so long into the future. His contributions range from theoretical proofs, to functional prototypes, and he even fixes minor bugs too!
Fabrice is passionate about open source, free knowledge sharing and also about interesting activities like origami, knitting, crochet, sewing and….swing dancing. We had the pleasure of interviewing him and found out that receiving feedback from the community is a new and engaging experience for him.
Let’s learn more about his journey at XWiki!
- Favorite artist: Tomoko Fuse (εΈζ½ η₯ε)
- Best book ever read: The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons
- Dream destination: A mid-sized city
- Quote you live by: “When your hands are busy, your heart is serene.” — Akira Yoshizawa
- At the office or remote? Hybrid, mostly remote
Tell us about yourself
Hey, I’m Fabrice, 32 years old, with 22 of these years spent tinkering with computers, and one of them working at XWiki. From this point of view, my interests lie in open source and free knowledge sharing in general, cryptology and ergonomic keyboards (both the relative placement of the keys on to each others and their actual physical location on a keyboard).
When I’m not in front of a computer it seems I can’t let my hands remain calm and I do origami, knitting, crochet, sewing… I also enjoy swing dancing to work up a sweat.
π The journey to XWiki
What were you doing before XWiki? Did you change careers when joining our team?
I did a PhD in cryptology, and more precisely on the design of privacy-preserving constructions. After that I spent 3 years doing different post-docs in academia or industry research labs. Feeling that theoretical computer science was not making that much impact in the real world, mostly with the lack of bridging between research and industry, I wanted to try my hands working with a private company with an R&D position. However, multiple factors lead to this position to be another researcher position, and I didn’t manage to collaborate with the product team. I thus decided to try my luck with CryptPad, being an open-source enthusiast, to try to close the gap between industry and academia in real-world software.
While it’s not a complete change of career, joining XWiki is more adjusting the trajectory to fit what I find the most meaningful.
What is it like to be working in the CryptPad team at XWiki?
I joined a year ago this team of 8, now 9, people working on CryptPad. While all of us are working remotely, we are two in the Paris region and could still meet each other from time to time. Being a small team allows us to have very fluid communications and ease collaborations and exchanges, with an active effort going to this direction (even if we are spread in multiple, quite independent, aspects of CryptPad). Moreover, the timezone difference is at most 2 hours, allowing us to reach each other out quite easily. One last point that I like as well is that in the team and in the company at large, people understand what open source means and entails. All in all, it’s a pretty nice work environment (:
π Open-source impressions
Was open source something you had an interest in prior to XWiki?
Actually, I met Ludo at an open-source event and that’s why I got to apply to join the company. I basically met open source almost when I discovered computers, as I wanted to know how a bunch of silicon and some electricity can compute, and open source naturally attracted me for this. As a personal rule, I try to use open-source alternatives as much as possible as long as it provides good enough results (reason why I mostly use OpenStreetMap to navigate, but not to find restaurants).
What’s the open-source value you identify with most?
I think the most important value of open source is sharing, and not only the source code but also the knowledge and the community that are built around a common idea. From personal experience, contributing in an open-source keyboard layout that has been integrated in xkb recently, it was really interesting to be able to exchange and finally manage to point out what inconvenienced me while typing. Unfortunately, not all open-source communities are that welcoming, but I mostly have good experience with projects I contributed to.
β Being an XWikier
How was the integration process at XWiki for you?
The integration went pretty well. I implemented a practice that was done in the former company I worked with, which was also decentralized: schedule an informal call with every member of the team to learn about each other and help to visualize people out of names in a chatroom. Moreover, as I’m in the Paris region, I went in the office to meet and exchange with other people. Finally, as I also attend open-source events, I also managed to meet other people there (and even corrupted one of them into getting an ergonomic keyboard).
What were the biggest ways in which XWiki changed during the time you’ve been around?
Apparently I arrived after the biggest changes as I’m one of the latest addition to the recent company growth (and the second-to-last addition in my team), so the question is not really relevant to me.
What would you say is the most valuable lesson you learned during your time at XWiki?
Basically working in a team around a long-term product. In research, the end result is usually a paper with your coauthors, which may or may not have follow-ups but mostly make the collaboration live during the brainstorming and writing. This idea of a long-term collaboration, around a project that also receives feedback from the community, is a new and interesting experience for me.
What has kept you at XWiki so far?
The freedom and the fact that working doesn’t eat up my personal life. Moreover, the colleagues are nice, and we can always discuss, without having to plan for several meetings beforehand.
If you could describe XWiki in one word, what would it be?
Empathetic
Favorite memory up until now at XWiki?
So far, the XWiki seminar was a very nice memory, being able to meet the colleagues in real life and exchange about many topics besides work.
