About
Created in 2005, KDE e.u.r.l. was a web agency specialized in email marketing and content management systems.
Here is how it all began.
Couple months after leaving an independant French record label (naïve) promotion department, I realized the need for the music industry to embrace online presence in order to face what would later be called digital transition. Facing the rise of mp3 and the social network hatching (MySpace was big in 2005) the whole sector had to reinvent itself with a drastically new approach.
After meeting Eduardo Makaroff, one of the founding member of band Gotan Project internationally know at the time, KDE accepted his challenge to accompany his young record label Mañana through this journey. And this is where the activity of the company spread from strictly tech services to businesses administration, contracts negotiations, rights and artists managements.
Among its clients, KDE is proud to have served:
- Mañana
- Hollie records
- Naïve
- Because
- Radio Nova
- M/M Paris
- Renault
- Millimages
- Loewe
- Syndicat de la Presse Sociale
- Mélanie Elbaz
- Vert Libre
Tech
In 2005, just before launching KDE, lots of Internet users were still deep into Flash, especially in the music industry where html appeared like a silent world. Like every decent developper at the time I was cultivating high actionScript skills interpolating objects with bouncing and elastic transitions and playing with alpha transparencies at a time when png were still very rare.
As a php/mysql early adopter (I started php in 2000), I convinced my client that content management systems were the future, as well as client relationship management and that php was the best tool to achieve those goals. Fortunately, css came to the rescue so that the result wouldn't be too ugly compared to those flash components, still proliferating at the time. After deploying a few homemade cms, KDE provided its clients (mostly artists) WordPress solutions.
Before Node, there was Javascript.
Still in competition with the old flash, html had to transcend itself to compete. At this time the solution were called Javascript libraries : remember MooTools? Probably not. But jQuery lasted longer and Ajax of course. All those efforts aimed the same goal: provide a fancy interface without flash and adapt to a new way of consuming the Internet with the arrival of smartphones... As the navigators became more powerful, it became clear that the client side had won the battle against the server. And ten years later around 2015, I'd still make e-cards for my clients like I used to make in flash in 2005 but it was all Javascript then.
Before Symfony, ther was php.
The same story happened on the server side. Starting with php 4 I followed the evolution and was very satisfied with scripts like WordPress and PhpList (for mass emailings). Then, suddenly, on Twitter around 2011, I discovered the Symfony framework. I've never understand the appetite for frameworks, but with my php experience I really appreciated all that Symfony was bringing to this technology, like dependencies management, clean code and good practices. So here again, I dived into it but it was already the end of KDE and I've only put a couple of Symfony app in production.
During all this time, hosting was pretty simple and straightforward. It was called: Linux dedicated server. I started with a little bit of FTP long time ago but switched very rapidly to ssh (scp, rsync) and all its power.
There was no version control system, nor testing, nor containers, nor cloud deployment at KDE. There was no Node.js, nor React, nor Switch, nor Rest API... But the will to use all those and the basis to get to it was already there!
All that is the past. Would you like to know what the future is made of?
Legal services
Beside the purely technical web services, having a record label as its main customer had many consequences on KDE activity. The promotion and PR of course were a kind of community management ancestors. But another critical aspect of KDE mission was to provide legal and administration services, especially in this specific field that is music and rights management.
French commercial laws and regulations can be tricky regarding accounting, manufactured goods, social security and all types of specifications. Therefore part of the work provided by KDE was focused on those legal aspects.
Among the main KDE realisations in that matter, KDE excelled in day to day accounting and financial supervision for small businesses, annual accounting checks and balances, studio recordings organization, musicians contracting (tour/studio sessions), goods manufacturing and importation (books, clothes, records, goodies), taxe administration control, registering trademarks and companies, negotiating publishing licences and synchronization rights in France and overseas, recruiting interns and subcontractors.
Contact
Since 2017 KDE has ceased its activity but I didn't.
I'm still looking for new challenge to take. Now entirely dedicated to modern web infrastructures, I'll be happy to help you managing your next cloud native apps and finding your way in an ever changing world made of images, containers, clusters, pods and other instances 😀
Shoot me an email, hit me on LinkedIn, let me know what's up!
