Meet, Darcy Carrié, our resident American (tech) girl in Paris. Coming from a long line of techies, she was destined to leave her mark on the tech world. As the program manager behind Nuxeo Case Management Framework, she’ll give us a sneak peek of what’s in store for the new release and share why she’s now an open source convert.
Nuxeo: How long have you been at Nuxeo and can you give us a little background on what you did before?
Darcy: Let’s see, I started on the 18th of October last year, so I guess it’s been about 8 months since I joined. Before Nuxeo, well, I did a lot of different things in the tech world…from project management posts to support, as well as doing my fair share as an application developer. So now, with Nuxeo, I’ve moved into more of a pure project manager role.
Nuxeo: Do you miss being a developer?
Darcy: I do because it’s a different way of working. As a project manager, you have to be aware of what everyone is doing and maintain a comprehensive view of the tasks that need to be completed. As a developer, you’re expected to do the exact opposite—you’re encouraged to focus on only one task at a time, which allows you to give each task your full attention. Of course, at Nuxeo our developers often have to break up their time to incorporate consulting and meetings with clients, but part of my job is to make sure they have the time to do this and that their normal development tasks are then shared between the rest of the team.
Nuxeo: As far as project management at Nuxeo goes, what have you been working on?
Darcy: My product team, Atlantis, has been focusing on the new release of Nuxeo Case Management Platform. Nuxeo, being open source, is very different from where I come from and from other software companies I’ve worked with. Like other Nuxeo products, CMF is built on top of a content management platform so it’s different from building stand alone apps. Plus, in addition to working on CMF as an internal project, we also work with our sales team, integrators and clients to build solutions and customizations directly.
Nuxeo: Can you explain what is specific to Case Management compared to Document Management or Digital Asset Management?
Darcy: Case Management is different from document management and digital asset management because it’s not simply storage, workflow and processing of a single entity. It is a case, a claim, an email, an idea, a project… If you think of a traditional paper-based system, many organizations and agencies work through cases (e.g. an insurance claim), which can be tracked with a folder in a filing cabinet. Communication, letters, and documents are stored in that folder as the case moves forward. Nuxeo CMF manages those same processes, but in an electronic format. Today, in Document Management and Digital Asset Management system you can construct the “folderish” package and construct a workflow around your document, asset (image, video, etc), but with Case Management this infrastructure is already built-in.
Learn more about content management for insurance >
Nuxeo: You mentioned that Nuxeo, having an open source model, is very different from what you’re used to…do you prefer open source?
Darcy: It’s definitely been a learning experience, but I can honestly say that I’m a convert. I don’t know why the open source model didn’t catch on 20 years ago. In the 90s, right out of university I took a job as an IT programmer analyst and worked in big corporate America—life insurance, banking, finance—and that corporate wheel moved very slowly…to the point where it became depressing. So, I made the jump from that structure and moved to start ups where we developed many software applications hoping to sell one or worked at privately owned software companies hoping to go public, which is a completely different environment and mentality than open source. With open source we would never lock in our customers to application license fees, doing so would stifle their growth and ours. What I love about being open source is that none of the development work that is done goes to waste. You don’t have the risk of working on a project for 8 or 9 months and having to scrap it in the end because a client decides to go with a competitor. With open source, and especially at Nuxeo, nothing we build goes to waste.
Nuxeo: Tell us a little about the next release of CMF and how you see it evolving.
Darcy: The next release comes out this week and we’ve added quite a few bells and whistles to make the UI as user friendly as possible and we’ve made enhancements to performance, content routing, added faceted search capabilities, and much more. For us, the next few months will be quite hectic especially as our user base expands. I foresee that our biggest challenge will be to determine what feedback gets priority so we know what we need to work on first. We’ll be busy, but this is exciting too as this means that our community is fully engaged.
Nuxeo: And on a personal note, what brought you to France?
Darcy: Well, in a way, technology brought me to France. After the dot-com bubble, I had been laid off so with my newly acquired spare time I began studying French. The more I studied, the more I wanted to learn, so after about 8 months of French classes I decided to come to Paris thinking that after staying here a month my French would be perfect! [laughs] That was eight years ago…I realized very quickly that I was only scratching the surface.
Nuxeo: Do you enjoy working for Nuxeo?
Darcy: I do, I’m constantly impressed by the intelligence of my colleagues, their motivation and dedication to their work, and the respect they show each other. As I mentioned, I’ve been in France 8 years now (pounded the pavement at times looking for work) and I wish I could have found this IT community years ago, but the best part is that in the end they actually found me!