Hi!
The “Introducting yourself” category is empty right now, so I’ll start and I hope you will follow!
I’m Stéphane Gigandet, a 46 year old software engineer living close to Paris in France. I started the Open Food Facts project 10 years ago, and I’m very glad I did because it turned out to be a fantastic project thanks to the thousands of people from all around the world who have participated with a lot of enthusiasm!
A few things about me, in random order, so that you know me better. Maybe we have some things in common. 
- I have 3 kids, 2 daughters and 1 son. Well one of them is no longer a kid already, time flies!
- I have 4 hens in my garden.
- I love to code. I started in Basic when I was 8, then I used Turbo Pascal a lot when I was a teen, and even a little bit of 8086 assembly to participate in the demo scene, then for the last 20 years I mostly coded in Perl, but I’m learning a bit of Python like the cool kids, and I also started Flutter.
- I’m mostly working on the Open Food Facts backend: the API and website, and all the code to analyze product data like ingredients lists etc.
- I like drawing in Inkscape. I used Inkscape to draw coloring pages, and the Open Food Facts logo and many of the icons you can see on the Open Food Facts website today. Of course I’m not a designed, so please feel free to draw and proposed better icons!
- I studied in Nantes in the west of France, worked for 4 months in Dallas, Texas, 1 month in Copenhaguen, and 5 years in the Bay Area in California.
- I’m not doing a lot of sports, but I started stand up paddle one year ago and I like it a lot. I live right next to the Marne river, so I go paddling every week. In the summer, I like doing windsurfing like when I was a teenager. Windsurfing is not very popular nowadays, I guess I like old things.
- I created a number of websites for things I like, like composing pangrams https://pangram.me or playing logic games: https://digiblocus.com
- I spend quite a lot of time designing origami models and making video tutorials for them. There’s a very friendly and vibrant international community of people who do origami, and it’s great to be part of it.
Have a look at my YouTube channel Origami Plus.
I hope that’s enough to start the conversation on Open Food Facts or on any topic. If not, feel free to ask me anything!
And of course I’m very much looking forward to read your introductions!
Thank you,
Stéphane
