What do you do?

ei8fdb

Apologies for the maybe pointed question - but as a UX Designer I'm curious about the backgrounds of Cloudron users.

I'm interested in knowing people's jobs/professions/what they spend most of their day doing.

I'm interested if people are mostly "infrastructure profession users" (sysadmins, devops), "developer/programming users", not-technical users (gross over-simplified term, no insult meant), scientists, academic, or someone like me ux designer/graphic/visual designers (somewhere in between the technical and non-technical user).

My reasoning for asking is to see if there are similarities between people here and UX designers I meet and work with who say "oh I can't be bothered/don't have the skills to move away from Google/Office265/Dropbox".

I was thinking of creating a simple survey. Would there be any objections?

will

I'm a senior security consultant for a silicon valley company and I consult on network security for the U.S. Department of Defense.
I am very much in the "do it yourself" category digitally, but tempered with productivity/ease of use.
My background is System Administration, and I have no programming skills. But I'm learning!

scooke

You could install LimeSurvey and give it a try for all of us!

ei8fdb

@scooke I use Limesurvey a lot. It is comprehensive, and very powerful but (how do I put this diplomatically) takes a long time to achieve what is much quicker with other tools. I'll put one together.

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.

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?

mehdi

@humptydumpty Interesting. What sorts of things are you working on, mostly?

ei8fdb

@humptydumpty said in What do you do?:

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

Don't worry thats common - I started life as an electronics technician, then became a systems administrator, then a networks engineer, and now a UX Designer - most of my family and friends still introduce me as "working in computers".

And my family have always assumed I do coding even though I cannot code to save my life.

You've got an interesting background. Welcome!

marcusquinn

@ei8fdb said in What do you do?:

most of my family and friends still introduce me as "working in computers".
And my family have always assumed I do coding even though I cannot code to save my life.

Same here. TBH I have no idea what people do that don't work with computers

humptydumpty

@marcusquinn I don't mind. He's interested in jewelry manufacturing, CAD/CAM, or both? DM me their email address when ready.

@mehdi Other than custom jewelry design jobs that I do for jewelry retailers, I work on creating accessories for all kinds of products. I aim for the hobbies (RC toys, gamers, etc.) because they spend without thinking logically lol.

@ei8fdb Thanks. Most people that ask me what I do, don't even know what 3D modeling means. I get that blank face and then I just say "computer stuff" and they're like OHHHHHH.

marcusquinn

@humptydumpty said in What do you do?:

I don't mind. He's interested in jewelry manufacturing, CAD/CAM, or both? DM me their email address when ready.

He does a lot of metal-detecting, so looking at reproduction for very old stuff, Roman & Celtic. I'll pass it on.

atridad

Guess I can contribute to this too. I'm a computer engineer graduate who ended up liking software development more, but still tinkers with hardware projects. I also work at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada as a software developer for the eLearning team doing updates for our Moodle instance and building out our suite of applications that integrate with Moodle via LTI. I also love working on FOSS apps and started on EleutheriaPay which I hope to get on Cloudron once its stable: https://eleutheriapay.atrilahiji.dev/

Specialties dev-wise:

Vue.js frontend
AWS/GCP Serverless Development
Node.js API development
Embedded systems development
FPGA development using Verilog (A hardware description language)

subven

Hey community, I'll give it a shot: I'm a 34 years old sysadmin from Leipzig/Germany. Doing devops, IT support and a lot of hardware tinkering but will be unemployed in 2 weeks ^^ I'm also co-running a large (night)club and participate in some projects around events, arts and the culture scene here.

I my scene there is neither money nor space for business consulting and business solutions but there's a high demand for own, free and flexible IT infrastructure. I have been using Cloudron for about 3 years and helped some projects and freelancers to host their own.

nebulon

@subven very nice, I will definitely visit mjut once corona again allows for it. Been couple of times in so&so till it closed

marcusquinn

@nebulon Apparently, we all just need to use mouthwash now and it'll all be fine again

robi

Rob here (robi is my Croatian nickname and often computer username) for those in other cultures, short for Robert.

As a Strategic Advisor and (Business & Innovation) Catalyst, I'm mostly a full stack janitor

As a leader in several startups, I reserve a keen eye for emerging technologies (hi Cloudron and it's Apps); I have been a speaker, mentor, advisor for Google, NASA, IBM, and many more, finding safe, creative solutions all the way from the mundane to the complex with equal ease, which is one thing that keeps my passion ignited.

Remember WinAmp? Yeah, I was there during the mp3 revolution, in the credits until the recent reshuffle.

I've invented a bunch of stuff, including the first PCIe flash storage device in small form factor (SFF), now you'll recognize it as the M.2 PCIe SSD device for which there is now a slot on every motherboard being made. (didn't make a dime.)

Made core discoveries (read blunders) in physics (magnetism, light, water), mathematics, statistics, AI, ML, medicine, law, etc, which you can ask me about outside this thread.

3 decades ago I got bitten by the sysadmin bug and never left, despite all the C level gigs.

After 15 years, I am still on the board of directors for https://BayLISA.org which is one of the oldest meetups in Silicon Valley. We've had the Cloudron team speak at one of our meetups which should be online on YT.

I play a long running pickup soccer game every Saturday (same folks come out for 8+ years) and tennis 1-2 times a week if possible. Love ping pong and ultimate frisbee too.

If you want to see a small part of my other crazy projects, see https://venture.toldyouso.com

Otherwise a few here have found me on Twitter.

There's more, but that's plenty for now

Benoit

@scooke Hi i'm Benoit the Medias-Cite and Osinum manager. We sell a service with Cloudron in its core. our customers are ok with that and they know it's Cloudron behind but they don't care about it because they don't want to have to deal with the server side (and they want a server in France). It's the same thing when developing services based on Wordpress, the client wants a site that works under Wordpress but does not want to have to do it himself because he does not necessarily have the time or the inclination to do it himself.
We support our customers with others services addons to our offers (Example : we deploy BBB for us outside Cloudron), we are thinking about making some webinars to help them to use Nextcloud, wordpress etc... We try to sponsor some new developpments in Cloudron (internationalization), and new packaging of apps (Dolibarr for the moment, with @eric a Dolibarr team developer).
@girish and @nebulon know our activities, nothing is hidden. The only line we change on our website is "le logiciel libre Cloudron" because this is no longer totally true.

Conclusion, we don't sell Cloudron but services based on it. Cloudron is a master piece in our service but without humans behind it our service is dead. And by the way, Medias-Cite is a non profit organization (cooperative) and it will remain so.

I hope you understand what we do

Sorry for my english

jimcavoli

@benoit A far better job than if I tried to write anything in French! I have a particular interest in this sort of MSP model to help improve the access to the platform - many small businesses or groups could see big benefits from Cloudron but cannot afford the dedicated IT pros to operate/support it, so I think such options are a great part of the ecosystem. I have an interest in doing something similar for local clients as well in the future, or at least to standardize my deployment of some custom applications.

luckow

First of all: Thank you for this thread. I like it

My name is Stephan Luckow and before I did "something with computers" I made a bet that I would be successful as a musician (playing bass guitar). But that was a dream in the mid 90s. Btw: this was our contribution to the European song contest in 1994 -> https://peertube.luckow.org/videos/watch/53b4c661-a308-44ab-9491-de6f14daa90b

In 1995 I founded my first Internet full-service agency in Berlin, and my whole business was based on open source software. Part of the proprietary software was downloaded from news servers. In 2006 I realized that giving back to the OSS communities is not only a return in software development. I'm not a developer, so I decided to help with other topics as well. In 2010 I took the position of president of the German Drupal association and in 2013 some people and I founded CMS Garden e. V. as an umbrella organization for the most active Open Source Content Management Systems.

Today I'm the managing director of the company for the development of things. A Berlin-based consulting & development company that supports clients in making decisions for their digital transformation and sovereignty.
We have learned in a customer project that there is Cloudron. In terms of content, we wanted to find out whether it is possible to address the SME market with software in which the system administrator is built-in. And because Cloudron exists, we decided to stop our own investments in the product, to change the process to promote the growth of Cloudron.

scooke

@benoit My apologies for not responding sooner, for some reason I never saw your comments until today. I think it is great you are aiming to help people. And your explanation, and comparison, does make sense. Thank you. Merci.

JOduMonT

@scooke What I do ?

Since COVID

from 4:30 to 7:00 AM: Kundalini Yoga
from 7:00 to noon: Educate my kid with Best-effort delivery which I try to keep up 99,9%
from 1:00 to 5:00PM: Linux Admin / NetSecOps

I am a ten-day newbie to Cloudron but have over twenty years experience working as a technical writer for mostly Montreal-based companies like Autodesk Media & Entertainment (compositing/editing film and tv), Moment Factory (live event multimedia) and Genetec (physical security).

However my hobby and real passion is plain writing and getting this out in as many mediums as possible. This led me to shared hosting WordPress blogs and eventually VPS with DigitalOcean. Along the way I tried to set up and run maybe ten or more apps that are in the Cloudron store so it is a revelation to find it as it simplifies and brings together all this experimentation basically onto a single server.

I am very excited to find Cloudron and this community and hope to contribute perhaps initially more in-line with my past experience as a technical writer: which means asking lots of questions

scooke

@jodumont 5pm to 4:30 am - Browse the Cloudron forum?

nebulon

@scooke haha indeed, daily newsfeed

JOduMonT

@scooke said in What do you do?:

@jodumont 5pm to 4:30 am - Browse the Cloudron forum?

While, not really
Sometimes I sleep and eat

Oh and don't worry, I also give some hardtime to the Nethserver community, not only to the Cloudron's one

jagan

I am a Physician and a Medical Informaticist.
I am also into Medical Education, work at a University.

What I am not is a software engineer or system administrator.
This is exactly why Cloudron is nothing less than magic for me.

Thanks @nebulon and @girish for such a fantastic software.

I was on sandstorm earlier and came to cloudron very early on.

Cloudron has empowered me to run a dozen or so apps without a fuss. Customer support (hands on by the founders) is the single greatest and top feature of cloudron.

JOduMonT

@jagan said in What do you do?:

What I am not is a software engineer or system administrator.
This is exactly why Cloudron is nothing less than magic for me.

Bah I'm Linux SysAdmin and teached docker to devs and still while I understand and probably able to do something similar, I'm using Cloudron because of the community (support, debug, upgrade, ...) and the team maintain properly their project which save me a lot of time

smithsera88

I am a smith sera and I am a professional writer and work for a cheap essay writing service.
We give modified custom writers pto Help administration. During higher investigations in schools, students frequently need to set up numerous reports, tests, and shock tests.

timconsidine

@ei8fdb
Partially retired, in the sense that I passed on a business that was sucking me dry in terms of energy.
So mostly gainfully UNemployed !!
Free now to pursue my interests, which include staying abreast of all the great tech that is out there nowadays.
An uncommon mix of legal, finance, business management, project management, business consultant, BPR solutions, training and implementor of tech solutions : 'wannabe developer'. I'll never be a real dev, and don't need to be, but it's rewarding to build solutions.

DevelopVlad

I'm engaged in web and mobile app development, AdTech, FinTech.
My site postindustria.com

frederickgragg

Pretty cool post. It’s really very nice and useful post. Keep it up!!

rodber

I'm a software developer from Chile. I created https://chevereto.com about 14 years ago and I've some other projects, I'm mostly into development of self-hosted software. I'm also a metallurgical engineer, 35 years old.

I also speak Spanish and I'm looking forward to distribute my software to more users. Thanks cloudron for providing this tool for guys like us.

atridad

@frederickgragg Hello robot.

qwinter

I'm the CEO of a machine learning training company. I'm just getting into self hosting (nodebb).

This started with me reading Farnell's 'Digital vegan' and then HN discussing a post I made on geminispace telling how Tiktok recommended me a video of my son... with the interesting twist that neither my son nor me had a Tiktok account.

I'm a ML practitioner (20yrs) in the field so I know how the sausage is made. But this woke me up to work harder on degoogling myself, and potentially stop using a smartphone.

I'll be lurking in this forum before contributing, if you don't mind.

girish

@qwinter said in What do you do?:

Farnell's 'Digital vegan'

Had to look this up - https://digitalvegan.net/

mehdi

@qwinter said in What do you do?:

a post I made on geminispace telling how Tiktok recommended me a video of my son... with the interesting twist that neither my son nor me had a Tiktok account.

Quite curious about that ! Could we have a link ? I couldn't dig it up.

marcusquinn

@qwinter Good find - just ordered copies of that book to read and share, been preaching these things ever since DRM on music became a thing and SaaS became a trojan horse subscription ransom.