After a few years working on implementation projects, I joined the R&D as a product owner.
I really loved that job, with the responsibility to serve millions of users :-)
Now I'm back to my first consulting and coaching loves, as a freelance. I wanted to explore the horizons of the community.

Back in 2012, the product was still mostly dragged by the community. So everyone inside the boat got to know what was going on out there.

However, the main effort at Odoo was to deliver fast projects to small customers, with very few customizations, but with a close relationship to support and R&D.

So, I didn't really get the chance to embrace the community experience at that time.

Honestly, I'm just amazed of the number of modules. I'm still discovering new ones every week when looking for specific features.

The business expertise behind them is impressive too, and clearly way higher than the apps store mass. You directly see that in their description. I like it when someone explains the business issue before talking about the solution.

Generally speaking, they help me a lot. Whenever I get new customer demands not served in standard, I rush to the OCA apps store.

And if I don't find anything, I know I should rather challenge the customer again! Maybe what they ask is useless.

On the quality aspect, I used to be very picky on UX matters after my time around Fabien. I find some of them a bit complex to use or not generic enough , while very useful. It is clearly on that aspect that I would like to contribute.

On CE implementations, I always install the responsive interface. It's cool to navigate like in Enterprise. Thanks for this Pedro!

Lately, I spent a few nights playing with the Field Service suite. I found it solid and fun to use. I would like to use it on one of my projects.

I will also soon dive into the stock modules for a migration project. I'm quite eager to do it. I know the stock part is a world of its own.

That's it? Yes, I might disappoint you. But I'm still a rookie :-) I tell you in a few months.

I identify strong entrepreneur and product owner skills in the OCA, with people being mature on both technical and business aspects. It's not just a developer band having fun in their source code, but people aiming to bring significant added value to the workflows of bigger or more specific organizations.

Secondly, I find the governance super modern and efficient, while being decentralized. I was a bit afraid that the community could not follow the pace of the standard product. But I was wrong. With v16, the best OCA modules got already migrated way before the official scripts were ready. So we were able to make the clients test it very fast after the release.

The focus of Odoo R&D is the usability, to address the small and middle market. The new pricing should even increase this focus. So there is a huge need of keep bringing specific features and technical expertise to the ecosystem, in order to catch bigger and bigger projects.

I also think that keeping on counter balancing the Odoo SA approach on enterprise features such as on accounting, barcode, fsm, quality, etc or even on community ones like ecommerce (cfr shopinvader) considerably enpowers the ecosystem.

Do you have this feeling of sailing through bigger rivers and seeing the SAP ocean on the horizon? The great days of the OCA are still to come.