Meet Dirk – P2PU’s New Team Member


Welcome P2PU’s newest staff member Dirk Uys of South Africa. He’ll be joining our development whiz Zuzel Vera in making P2PU more awesome and more usable for all of us.

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P2PU: Dirk, we’re so excited to have a new staffer. What are you going to be doing for P2PU?

Dirk: I’m also very excited! I am going to be involved in the technical side of things. Specifically, I’m going to help out Zuzel with the development of Lernanta (the open source application running the P2PU website). I will also try to participate as much as possible in the other parts of the community.

P2PU: How did you find us? Have you worked in a open community before?

Dirk: I’ve been following Philipp’s blog [Director of P2PU], sharing-nicely.net, for some time now. So I always knew about P2PU. Then at the beginning of this year I saw that P2PU were looking for a software developer, so I thought that it is a good opportunity for me to set my skills to good use.

Before this I was involved with a private company, a semi-state agency doing some defense contracting and the horse racing industry. This will be the first time that I form part of an open community. I think that I have a lot to learn and I’m looking forward to sharing and cooperating with everyone!

P2PU: Imagine: time has no limits and you can learn anything outside your profession. What would you pursue?

Dirk: When I was still at school I used to love a television show called “The Pretender”.  The show is basically about a guy capable of doing any job! I would love to be like that (less the pretending).

But to give a list that is not simply everything, I’d say that I would really like to learn to write a novel. One day I plan on writing a novel, but maybe only when I have small kids that will think that my writing is cool!

Other areas that I would really like to dig into are economics and philosophy.

P2PU: You’re from South Africa, the birthplace of shangaan electro music. Can you boogie like Shangaan dancers?

Dirk: I don’t know if all my limbs will stay attached if I attempt that.  I can however “langarm“, but I’m not a big fan of the “langarm” music.

P2PU: That’s still pretty cool. Perhaps you can teach us your moves at the next P2PU event. In case you don’t know, we love music, and we love to dance.

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You can join forces Zuzel and Dirk on the development team by volunteering your time and django skills. Find them on Github and on the P2PU Development mailing list.


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