What do you do?

[girish]

I am one of the co-founders. Before I started Cloudron, I used to be a C++ developer (contributed a lot to Qt, WebKit, Crosswalk, KDE). Back then, I used to self-host things but it wasn't a conscious choice, it was just what people did (for example, i used to self-host gitosis before github, mediawiki etc). I think the turning point was Google Reader shutdown which forced me to make a conscious choice. And now I am a web developer

[iamthefij]

Software Engineer turned Director at a Silicon Valley company.

After the switch to management I was eager for a technical project and decided to take on self hosting for privacy and ethical reasons as well as the technical challenge. I’ve made several attempts at managing all my self hosted services from scratch and eventually found Cloudron.

[YurkshireLad]

I'm just a boring s/w developer, nothing exciting about me.

[d19dotca]

Great question! I'm currently a Senior Technical Support Engineer for a large Fortune 150 tech company, that's my day job. My roles before that were more sysadmin oriented for two smaller companies. Then I run my own business (freelance work) for web design & hosting, email hosting, tech support, etc. for local small businesses and individuals. That's where Cloudron comes in for me, it's basically for helping me save time while I manage customer websites and emails, etc. and so far I'm quite impressed with Cloudron and the team behind it.

[A Former User]

I am Head of the service desk in a software company in Germany and responsible for data protection issues. My roots lie in activities as system administrator and consultant for LAN / WAN topics.

Privately I am interested in IT topics and data economy also and try to free myself more and more from the data kraken.
I am certified as CCNA, MCSA (Server and Desktop), SLCA, ACSP, ACTC, SLCA and plan to become more of an admin in the future again, towards Linux Graduate and Kubernetes. Especially regarding the new European program Gaia-X and the growing possibilities it offers, this seems to be future-proof.

[mehdi]

I'm the co-founder and CTO of a startup specialized in data encryption : https://seald.io if anyone's interested

[thetomester13]

I'm a software engineer and always loved web technologies. I got into self-hosted because Google Reader shut down (@girish isn't alone!). I felt pretty strongly about it and even wrote a blog post about how I got into it - featuring Cloudron of course. Now self hosting is a hobby on the side of my main work.

[will]

I didn't realize we had such a group of badasses here. Glad to learn a little more about each of you.

[necrevistonnezr]

I‘m a lawyer working in the field of i.a. data privacy law who is just very interested in tech and likes to run things at home. Also, the rules of our profession require us to not give data of our clients to any third party which rules the use out most US based web services.

[murgero]

I am an IT Consultant and Web Developer.

[msbt]

I'm a web developer for a startup and run my own little company on the side which offers programming and hosting for designers, agencies and other customers.

[jeau]

I am in charge of publishing and communication for a centre of scientific, technical and industrial culture located in France.

[JOduMonT]

I start programming with a Commodore64 than manage network and system (BSD, Mac, Linux, Windows, Cisco, Juniper, ...) than went back to school and became certified Cloud+, Linux SysAdmin and Ethical Hacker and now I would like to pass to a next level (Teaching, Coaching, Empowering, ...) with OpenSource and CommonSense.

[nebulon]

Hi all. Next to @girish I am the other founder of Cloudron. Before that I was working at Nokia where I basically got into webtech as a developer. I used to be a C++/Qt developer after coming even from Gtk/XFCE back in the days.

I host my own things since some time around 2000, but prior to working on Cloudron never really got deeper into sysadmin topics, which also meant I couldn't really host everything I wanted and needed. That was a big driver for me to work on Cloudron, just to be able to run more things besides the LAMP stack scripts basically.

[rmdes]

I have no idea what I am but I have been hosting different CMS's over the last 2 decades (for friends and clients) which lead me to gradually move from shared hosting to self-hosting.

I learned a lot in the process and sometimes around 2016 launched a very little digital/tech consulting project with @ruihildt and it's in this context that we went full Cloudron not just to host clients needs but also some friends and personal needs/wants, it has been an even more interesting ride ever since !

Since Covid-19 I'm at a crossroad, there has never been so much need for coaching, teaching and pivoting people into digital solutions and entrepreneurship, I'm divided between this or learning to code towards working as backend devop, so I'm using this second lockdown to figure out my next steps

[ei8fdb]

@rmdes Good luck with the decision on which road to take.

[marcusquinn]

I run an ecommerce company I started with someone 18 years ago, by accident really as I was quite happy freelancing.

I still haven't tamed the technology stack beast but Cloudron has been a huge inspiration and saviour there.

Also developed high-frequency trading algos in MetaTrader but shelved that project for a few years to focus on the ecommerce.

Also love making music, if ever there's time, with Ableton and anything that makes a noise.

Also lost all trust with SaaS. Having pushed our whole company from on-premise to GSuite & Freshdesk, I'm now trying to take it all back with Cloudron.

Same for AWS & Azure, all in when it was shiny and new, and pulling back out now it's become a data ransom racket.

Always been a fan of open source, open file-formats and contributing however possible.

Fuck the cloud, everyone should own their own data, and if that means learning how to setup a domain name and Cloudron, sobeit.

Now inspired to do everything we can as a business, and I can with any network influence, to be an example for how to have at least equivalence, if not better with FOSS.

[necrevistonnezr]

@necrevistonnezr said in What do you do?:

I‘m a lawyer working in the field of i.a. data privacy law who is just very interested in tech and likes to run things at home. Also, the rules of our profession require us to not give data of our clients to any third party which rules the use out most US based web services.

BTW I also founded in 2001 (!) and these days occasionally administrate/moderate the Essential Freebies Board or short EFB.nu, the/one of the biggest German speaking forums for freeware & open source software (mostly Windows).

[humptydumpty]

I started training in my teen years to be a bench jeweler and over a decade later in the jewelry manufacturing scene and after the advance of tech, I found myself becoming a 3D modeler. I've given up on my hammer and torch a while back. CAD and 3D printing are mostly what I do all day long now. I'm in the process of expanding into other fields as I'm using my knowledge in CAD/CAM to create all sorts of things. It turns out if you know CAD/CAM + Rendering + general knowledge in coding/tech, there's nothing you can't create and sell online. At this stage, I'm not sure what my job title is. A modeler, a creator, or a retailer? This question always makes me pause and I end up telling people, "I do computer stuff" and they assume I'm coding all day long

[marcusquinn]

@humptydumpty very interesting and quite a coincidence, I have a friend that's determined to get into this exact thing. I'll ask him the best way to connect with you if you don't mind?