Papa’s story: finding purpose in open source community

How do a university student in South Africa, an old laptop in the Netherlands, and a technology partner in Italy come together? Through the Liferay open source community, of course.

Prior to working for Liferay in South Africa, Greg Gatherer, who is now an account manager at Liferay, interviewed a young, enthusiastic developer called Papa Vilanculo at his former employer. Papa was too young for the role, but even at the age of 17, he was very intelligent and motivated to enhance his development abilities.

Greg and Papa maintained contact throughout the years, and it was then that Papa showed interest in learning Liferay. Due to the fact that Liferay is open source and has a community of more than 200 000 users, Papa was able to quickly master how to develop on Liferay while completing his studies at the University of Cape Town.

“I choose the Liferay platform because it’s open-source and saves time from a developer’s perspective, it is simple to install and easy to learn. Liferay platform allows you to create web applications in a short space of time. It enables you to combine content from different sources so you can have multiple web applications on the same page like the blog, weather, wiki, etc.”, said Papa.

The community has been instrumental in Papa’s journey. As a developer not only has he been able to learn how to use Liferay to build apps and websites from the guidance of other community members, but he has also been able to forge connections with people from around the world.

From South Africa to Netherlands 

Through the community, Papa was able to connect to different developers around the world, like Liferay sales engineer Jan Verweij in the Netherlands. Upon seeing the solutions Papa had built with Liferay, Jan could tell that this young developer had great potential. But the version of Liferay Community Edition that Papa was using was extremely old. This was because of the limitations of Papa’s aging laptop.

Upon hearing this, Jan remembered the older laptop he had and wanted to give it to Papa so that he could access the newest version of Liferay to create even more powerful solutions.

Coming from a poor area of South Africa, Papa didn’t have access to many resources. In fact, around the same time Papa was connecting with Jan, he was mugged and had to go to internet cafes in order to use a computer. The package from the Netherlands came at a serendipitous time, allowing Papa to not only finish his schooling and projects, but also to work on the latest version of Liferay.

Papa continues to be an active member of the community as he finishes his final year at university. The community continues to provide opportunities for growth as Liferay partners in Italy have expressed interest in employing Papa once he graduates.

Currently, Papa is working on a pharmaceutical delivery platform that will enable customers to order from various pharmacies online. His goal is that “users won’t need to physically hand their prescriptions to the pharmacists and instead upload them online to get their orders delivered.”  

None of this would have been possible without the support of the community. Developers and partners were able to come together from all parts of the world to guide and teach a budding dreamer to build and achieve new solutions. This is a story about more than just Liferay or technology, it is a story about the power of people growing and getting better, together.

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