Manuel Vila

Web builder

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Biography

Manuel Vila was born on September 25th 1972 and grew up in the country (Céret, France). His artist painter parents moved to various hippie communities, and as a result Manuel knew of a childhood without clouds and the taste of liberty.

Chronicle of an announced passion

At the age of 7, Manuel moved to Montpellier (south France). Two years later, he took an interest in electronics and turned his bedroom into a laboratory. Legos and electronic components were his tools, his pastime, his universe.

Christmas 1984, he received his first computer, an Amstrad. Programming immediately became the main object of his curiosity. He would buy Hebdogiciel, a magazine dedicated to software and programming, and first discovered Basic, then Assembly; thoroughly exploring the machine and creating games and tools.

At 14 years old, he got his first second-hand PC and started using Pascal. At 15, Manuel developed business administration software for a small company as well as a backup tool.

In 1989, Manuel invested in his first Macintosh (Mac Plus) and discovered software such as Quark XPress, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. He graduated from high school with a scientific Baccalauréat and that same year went on to create Grafcet in Assembly language: software for programming and automated system control (robotics). He started dreaming about object oriented programming and draws arrows in his philosophy essays.

Autonomy of his beginning

At the age of 18, Manuel attended the University of Science to do DEUG A in maths and physics, as well as the University of Literature to do philosophy. Both universities being in Montpellier, France. He studied maths to assure a continuity in his education and philosophy because Manuel enjoyed questions about life. A duality which makes him human.

But Manuel wasn't content with these studies, he preferred to move onto jobs which brought him greater autonomy and concrete experiences in the professional world. In 1991, he met the head of VISA Congrès in Montpellier, France. Manuel proposed a software development project. The project was accepted and Manuel developed congress management software in 4D which consists of the management of customers, accommodation, social programmes, exhibitors and so on. He also created a small program for Mac called Chic DA dedicated to the Calvacom community (the French network similar to Compuserve before the internet age).

At 23, Manuel took a year sabbatical in order to experience life and put computing on the back-burner.

New start

In 1997, with his batteries recharged, Manuel fully dedicated himself to graphic design and layout. He achieved numerous publishing works and created a visual identity for the music label Logistic Records (logo, leaflet, website, disc cover). At the same time, he continued working with VISA Congrès for network and computer administration, technical support and software maintenance.

In 1999, Manuel came definitively within the scope of independent software authorship. He created e-bat, a business administration software for the building trade (quotation, invoicing and customer management), developed in 4D and published by Multimédia Print Réalisation (Montpellier, France). He reached the limit of 4D's capacity and created a virtual structure to bring an object oriented abstraction on top of the procedural 4D language. Multimédia Print Réalisation hired him as well for database works and tutorials for France Telecom.

Utopia

In 2000, Manuel founded grenouille.com, a non-profit organization to promote internet broadband growth in France. A vehicle of transparency, the organization helps internet users and becomes a mediator between user groups and internet service providers. With its automated quality measurement system, grenouille.com makes public the performance of broadband offers in real time. Manuel created the server software (Linux/Apache/PHP/MySQL) and the Mac client (REALbasic then Cocoa/Objective-C).

Grenouille.com went online in November 2000, four years later, there are more than 250,000 members and it has about 30,000 visitors a day.

In that same year, Manuel took care of the development part of batitel.com (PHP/MySQL) for Multimedia Print Réalisation, a website dedicated to the building trade, with a search engine, a quotation database, a market place and an ordering system.

Back to sources

In September 2002, Manuel returned to Céret. E-bat software gave him sufficient income and he decided to take a year out to improve his knowledge in C++ and cross-platform development. He looked after grenouille.com and contemplated web usability and database concepts. He then took an interest in Jakob Nielsen publications and admired the 37signals approach. He designed a website for the visual-music label Dalbin and conceived of a content management system as well as a new type of database. 3base is born, it's now a draft and an application.