Community

ACM Member

I have been a professional member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the premier organization for scientific research in computing, since 2001.

I read their publication Communications of the ACM to keep abreast of the latest advances and developments in computer science. CACM is my ear in the lab; outside of an academic environment, I've found it hard to otherwise stay connected to what happens in computing research.

AdA USA

2000-present - Recognizing the importance of maintaining professional contacts and relationships in a community of peers, I founded the North American branch of the Association of Alumni of ESSI — l'Assocation des Anciens Élèves de l'École Supérieure en Sciences Informatiques. Operating since 2000, AdA USA now has members all across the United States, and offers various services, among which the wildly popular "ada-usa" mailing-list. See our homepage at http://www.essi.fr/ada, or subscribe to our official mailing-list ada-usa@essi.fr.

Read more about the ESSI curriculum.

ADE ESSI

1993-1996 - While a student at ESSI I was a member of the ADE group (Administration du Disque Étudiant): it allowed me to experiment with new technologies in the context of a large computing environment (i.e. something requiring more care and planning than a Linux PC at home).

The ADE is an informal group of hackers (in the good sense of the word), enthusiasts dedicated to exploring the system and exercising its functionalities. They play a small but useful role in system administration, by providing additionnal fun services to the ESSI user community. For example we were in charge of miscellaneous software such as computer games, alternative Web browsers, picture viewers, etc.

While a member of the ADE, I helped install and maintain the very first Web server at ESSI! For a couple of years we hosted the only Web server for our school. I also promoted the Java language inside ESSI, lobbying for Java courses that are now part of the standard curriculum My Java applets on graph search date back from that time.

Macintosh User Group

1990-1992 - I founded the La Rochelle Macintosh User Group based in La Rochelle, France. The very first and only MUG in La Rochelle, we held monthly meetings where all kinds of topic of interest to Macintosh users were discussed.

I personally gave a presentation about HyperCard and how to apply the object-oriented paradigm to designing graphical applications.