Work on MoodleNet continues at a rapid pace as we draw closer to the first beta release, scheduled for January 2019. As part of those efforts, we’re delighted to welcome Alex Castaño as a backend developer to the team!

Alex is Spanish and grew up in Andalucia, went to university in Seville, and now lives and works from Barcelona. He joins us on an initial six-month contract to work with Mayel de Borniol, MoodleNet’s Technical Architect, to create the infrastructure for a decentralised, federated, resource-centric social network for educators!

We asked Alex a few questions to find out more…

We would love to hear a bit about your work history?

I realised that using computers and programming were my passions when I was very young. Since then, I have been using only free software in my personal and professional life. For this reason, I’m really happy to collaborate in a project so open like MoodleNet on daily basis.

My professional career has been very varied: I created my own business, I’ve helped to “start up” startups, and I’ve fixed scalability problems in very consolidated companies. Now, I’m looking forward to creating an open source project which makes a difference.

What do you love about what you do?

One of the best sensations you can experience is to see how your work makes other people’s lives simpler, more enjoyable or just better. I’m hooked on that feeling.

In addition, I absolutely love learning new things. It is incredible how people are continuously creating and developing new stuff to make computer engineering more interesting.

What are your interests outside of work?

I like doing any kind of sport: football, tennis, gym, hiking, kitesurfing… I’m a regular reader and, of course, life wouldn’t be the same without travelling around the world.

Where is your favourite place in the world, and why?

“Sevilla tiene un color especial”, what means, “Seville has a special colour”. A lovely city with a lot of history. It has a nice river and bridges, absolutely incredible places to have a good meal, beautiful buildings and palaces, people are very open and kind, and last but not least, it has “Ramón Sanchez-Pizjuan” the stadium of Sevilla F.C. my football team!

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If you would like to find out more about MoodleNet, and get involved in the project, please check out moodle.com/moodlenet.

Update: we’ve now crated a wiki page overview for this workshop!

This week, the MoodleNet team were in London to work with Outlandish for a workshop on front-end development. Doug Belshaw (MoodleNet Lead) and Mayel de Borniol (Technical Architect) worked with Kayleigh Walsh (project manager), Sam Gluck (developer), and Rob Cornish (designer) on various aspects of how MoodleNet is going to work, look, and feel.

Given that we went into the workshop with a number of assumptions, it was useful to get these out onto the table. Doing so in an open way allowed us to challenge these assumptions in productive ways, leading to some useful decisions.

Everything from the three-day workshop can be found on our GitLab issues board, the highlights of which are perhaps:

• Build on UX milestones 1 & 2
• List intentions of MoodleNet users (verb-based)
• Agree on front-end toolkit and make decisions on components
• A list of smaller decisions made during front-end workshop with Outlandish

We’re planning to continue working with Outlandish around front-end development as we lead up to the beta release, scheduled for January 2019. This will lead to a couple of new front-end development milestones, which we’re currently thrashing out.

Excitingly, next week we’ll be welcoming a new member of our team. More on that soon!

As mentioned previously, we’ve moved away from Trello cards to keep track of the MoodleNet project. The best link to get an overview of all the issues we’re currently working on at the moment can be found at this link or by clicking on the image above.

We’ve also updated the overview slide deck to v0.7, accessible here.

As ever, you can find everything you need relating to MoodleNet at https://moodle.com/moodlenet

Product management is a delicate balancing act between allowing enough ‘wiggle-room’ for innovation while imposing enough discipline to get things done. After all, scope creep applies just as much to the tools we choose to use to complete the project as the output of the project itself.

We’ve been using Trello to keep ourselves organised since the start of the MoodleNet project. While we really like and value that platform, we’ve made the decision to take a different approach for the next stage of the project.

Going forward we’re going to streamline things a little by using the following platforms:

• Teamwork.com – internal updates, planning, and potentially sensitive information (Moodle HQ members only)
• Changemap – community-suggested ideas and features
• Moodle.org – discussions with the Moodle community
• GitLab – contribute code and find out more about the technical side of MoodleNet

The Trello board we were using remains as an archive of the first five sprints. As ever, the canonical URL for the project (i.e. the one to share) is moodle.com/moodlenet.

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Note: we’ve updated the Contributing page on the wiki to reflect these changes.

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed a mention of Mayel de Borniol, our new MoodleNet Technical Architect in our previous post about last week’s Design Sprint. After receiving over 70 applications for the role from all over the world, we interviewed candidates from Europe, Africa, North America, and South America.

We couldn’t be happier to welcome someone with Mayel’s knowledge, skills, and understanding of open source. Originally hailing from the Basque Country (north of the Pyrenees mountains), he currently lives in Athens, Greece.

Mayel describes himself a hacker and social/cooperative entrepreneur who enjoys understanding and hacking systems, and occasionally designing and building new ones – such as MoodleNet!

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We would love to hear a bit about your work history?

Check out my site to see what I’ve been up to: http://mayel.space

What are your interests outside of work?

Nomadic / slow travel, Sci-Fi & Solarpunk, Decentralised & Federated systems, Free Software / Open Source, Co-operative organisation & production (would love to be part of a beer brewing or winemaking co-op!), my cat and dog!

Where is your favourite place in the world, and why?

Greece (Athens and its crazy graffiti and rebellious vibe and also the islands where time stands still) closely followed by Buenos Aires and its 1am BBQ dinner parties.

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Mayel will be working closely with Doug Belshaw, MoodleNet Lead to turn the prototype we came up with last week into reality!

In a couple of weeks’ time, we’re running a Design Sprint for the MoodleNet project. To inform that work, we need input from Moodlers and educators worldwide!

Our survey is now live at the link below, and there’s a chance to win Amazon e-vouchers and credit for our online store!

http://bit.ly/moodlenet-survey

Please click here for more information and to apply.

(Note that we’re talking to candidates as soon as applications come in, so get yours in quickly if you’re interested!)