If you want to know a bit more about myself, this is the right place.
My full name is Xavier Ivars i Ribes, and I’m from Benissa, a small town from Valencia.
Studies and work…
After studying at my town’s High School Josep Iborra, in Benissa, I started my Engineering degree on Computer Science in Alacant’s University in 2001. By then, I moved to Sant Vicent del Raspeig. I lived there for 5 years, and I met very good friends, and learned a lot.
After a year back in my town, working at Connecta Front-Back, and while I started with my PhD Aplicacions de la Informàtica, I went back to the University, specifically at Taller Digital, as a software engineer. And after a year, I joined the SCABD project at Transducens Group of the Language ad Information Systems Department. It was in this context when I presented my master thesis [ca] about word models. After that, and until the end of March 2012, I was working as a software engineer at another project, European in this case, and also related digital libraries: the IMPACT Project.
In May 2012 [ca], I moved to Barcelona to start working at Vistaprint, where I’m currently Principal Software Engineer.
A bit geek…
I’m a huge fan of Internet and all the information technologies. Not only because that’s an important piece of my studies, but also because I love my home town, and I want everyone to know about it. Because of that, I founded Infobenissa with a friend. Infobenissa is a local news site about Benissa.
And I’ve always liked building websites. I built the first one using FrontPage back in 2000, and I haven’t stopped since then: first plain HTML and server-side includes, later on vanilla PHP, soon I moved to WordPress for hobbie/NGO websites, but also a lot of other technologies at work (starting in JSP back in 2008 through ReactJS with GatsbyJS, touching other stuff in the meantime like WebForms or ASP.NET MVC)
Music and “festa”…
Another big hobbie is music. I’ve always loved it, and I still play the oboe in my home town’s local orchestra, Banda de Benissa, as well as in La Valenciana in Barcelona. In the past, I’ve also played the saxophone in Xaranga la Morralla, and other musical instruments like dolçaina, a tipical Valencian instrument.
I’m also part of the Filà Califes since the day I was born: I first was part of the big entrada at the Moors and Christians festival in my home town in June 1983, when I was only 3 months old.
A bit more stuff…
Also in the techie area, but also lingüistic, I’ve been volunteering since October 2004 at Softcatalà, a non-profit focused on localizing (translating and adapting) software to Catalan, and also part of the Valencian, Softvalencià.
My main role is keeping up to date the linguistic tools (translator and proofreading tool), web management and social media. But I also take care of other stuff when it’s needed: from translations, development of other software we own, etc. In the past, I was deeply involved in translations of Mozilla products: Firefox, Thunderbird and extensions.
My digital me…
As every techie, I have an account at pretty much every social network, but that doesn’t mean I use them at all 🙂
Here you have some links
Facebook – Twitter – Instagram
If there’s anything you need from me, just let me know! 😉