ONLYOFFICE contributor community: interview with Marie-Jo Kopp Castinel

Our contributors help us improve ONLYOFFICE solutions and make them available for millions of users from all over the world by creating connectors, reporting bugs, writing documentation and translating content into their languages. Today, we would like to tell you about Marie-Jo Kopp Castinel, her passion for open source and office suites, and her role in ONLYOFFICE.

Marie-Jo is from Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. Her professional background is really impressive: after 4 years of administrative and accounting functions, she continues her studies to become a developer and then a trainer.

In 2007, Marie-Jo founded the project OpenGo whose mission is to handle with care and attention the enterprises’ migration to open source office suites. Since 2010, she has been working, in partnership with professional trainers that share the same values, to help employees easily adopt new tools.

Today, the trainings on office suites represent 90% of my activities. Digitization is more than technical. It’s also procedural and cultural. It can change how employees do their jobs, work on documents, and collaborate across the company. When an organization migrates to a new office suite, I help to transfer all the existing content and files to the new environment. I also organize training sessions for other trainers.

Besides, Marie-Jo continues to develop office suites using VBA tools.

Marie-Jo has been involved in the open source community since the early 2000’s when she started contributing to Openoffice.org (current name LibreOffice).

Open source software is aligned with my personal values: transparency, sharing of ideas, sustainable development. I can be sure that the tool I use respect my privacy and does only the things that it is supposed to do. And I often repeat that «open source» does not mean free of charge.

However, she didn’t put aside MS Office suite. It allows to know better all the available features, be able to compare different solutions, and retain loyal customers:

I train the employees that don’t choose their working tools. My role is to bring them the necessary know-how. Tools are not so important. I get the same pleasure by sharing my knowledge in MS Office, LibreOffice or ONLYOFFICE!

In 2017, Marie-Jo received the newsletter from ONLYOFFICE. Since that time, she has been following the further evolution of the office suite. In 2020, Marie-Jo carefully explored ONLYOFFICE features while she was preparing a training course on Nextcloud. It was the beginning of our beautiful friendship:

This time, I was really fascinated and impressed by online collaboration tools and compatibility of formats.

She especially appreciates :

• ease of installation and use;
• advanced co-editing features;
• free desktop and mobile apps;
• clear business model.

Open source is about people as much as it is about code:

I think that an engaged team is the first key to ONLYOFFICE’s success. Everybody agrees on this point. You are open-minded, have nice communication skills, and are always ready to face new challenges.

As for the ways of improving, Marie-Jo, a fan of ODF, would like to be able to open and edit these files online without their inner conversion. She is also waiting for some advanced features in the desktop version, such as pivot tables in spreadsheets.

ONLYOFFICE online suite is a very nice office solution. As for the desktop editors, I hope that this app will replace the well-known tools offered by the biggest software companies.

During this period of transition into remote work, the employees have to learn how to use online collaboration tools. To help them, Marie-Jo created the video tutorials explaining how to make the most of ONLYOFFICE editing and co-editing features. The first tutorials are already available in French.

• • How to edit documents stored on Nextcloud with ONLYOFFICE:

• • How to share docs and co-edit them within Nextcloud with ONLYOFFICE

• How to review documents with ONLYOFFICE within Nextcloud

These guides will allow remote workers to get comfortable with online document editors, acquire new work habits, and become more efficient. And personally, I think and bless all the tutorials I watch when I have to cope with new tools.

Get inspired? If you also would like to become an ONLYOFFICE contributor, contact us directly at documentation@onlyoffice.com.

To learn more about requirements and rewards, read this post or visit this page.

If you still have any doubts, Marie-Jo encourages you to participate in open source projects:

Contributing to an open source project is the way of getting in touch with other experienced people working on the project, giving you valuable insights and feedback, as well. We can be actors, not just paying users! I think the current situation will change our minds about freedom, independence, and data sovereignty.

We look forward to having you on board!