Hi, my name's Renoir. I'll be your DevOps for the Web Platform
Hello everybody!
This is my first post here as the new Developer Operations engineer on the WebPlatform project and I am very happy to be part of it!
Like many web developers, I got very excited when I discovered this project, and I’ve come from time to time to contribute on the documentation.
How I started
My career started as a web developer working with Graphic Design/web agencies to offer web sites to their clients. I created a few web integration libraries and I participated in the development of various specialized web applications. The favorite part of my work is to build HTML/CSS/JavaScript patterns making re-usable components.
Throughout my career, I’ve always used GNU/Linux as both my personal computing and as my platform of choice to manage web hosting services. Although it was not my main focus, I became proficient at architecting, automating deployment, and managing infrastructure; as a result, I used this skill at every position I was hired for. Therefore, it is routine for me to have a terminal shell opened, and to replicate my shell configuration environment, everywhere I have access to.
Community involvement
In another aspect of my life, I’ve always been part of communities and I led some of them. In my youth, I was involved with Canada’s Youth Movement, such as the Royal Canadian Army Cadets, and the Scouts of Canada for more than 17 years.
Some years ago, I decided to divert my focus from the youth movement and find a place where I could contribute to the Open-Source movement. This is when I decided to be involved in the web Development Communities. In addition, I hosted a cross-platform weekly meetup called devLAB Montréal.
Recently, I also participated as member of the board of directors of a local web standard promotion non-for-profit organization called W3Québec. As for my contribution to sharing my knowledge, I published a talk about ‘How to evaluate the quality of a website according to the latest web development techniques‘ (in french) and I created a “fork-me on GitHub” tutorial site called HTML/CSS The Right Way which I may fold into my work on the WebPlatform.
What will I bring
The main part of my work at the WebPlatform.org will be to maintain site stability, improve the site features, strengthen the site hosting and deployment infrastructure, act as a technical liaison with Open-source communities, and contribute to the success of the site.
I have a few ideas, but one proposal that I have in mind is to enhance the front-end development workspace using tools such as Yeoman, Grunt, and RoughDraft.js. With those in place, anybody who is willing to contribute to the WPD skin would only need to have NodeJS and the rest of the dependencies will be handled automatically without the need to install the full backend stack.
If you see me around the web and you want to talk about anything web and Open-Source technologies, web Accessibility, vim keyboard combos, ways to evaluate quality of a site, or just to talk about Time Travel or Zombie Apocalypse survival plan, I’m your man.