Edouard Mercier visit card

This page is a kind of visit card that enables to understand more into detail my professional profile. Throughout this page, I strive to provide additional information useful for an employer who needs to make up her/his mind: I present what are my real motivations, what are my professional expectations.

Above all, do not hesitate to contact me!

Who am I?

An engineer

My initial education is an engineer's one. I have been studying during three years in a French engineering school named Ecole des Mines de Nancy, which was formerly a school aiming at educating future mining engineer. Since mining is not anymore attractive enough, the school has been opening to other fields, like energy, computer sciences, material sciences, earth engineering... This school is part of a consortium that gathers the Ecole des Mines de Paris, de Nancy, de Saint-Etienne. I joined this school after three years of preparation school after the baccalaureate.

What did I study there? The education was rather a global one, trying to provide to the students an overall engineer culture. However, I found my way in computer sciences, which was my major option, and in the material sciences as a minor option.

A software developer

I am rather found of computer sciences. I have always been working on computers (from the age of 12 at least, an age at which I was at last able to convince my parents to purchase a friend's computer), programming first in Basic (to provide my father a stock exchange little software for instance, trying to understand machine language) on my monochrome Amstrad CPC 664. Then upgrading to the Commodore Amiga 500 (a big technological step indeed), spending most of my time playing games and realizing for the first time what an operating system could be. Afterwards, purchasing the incredible Hewlett Packard 28 S and programming in machine language on this 4-bit SATURN microprocessor, disassembling the ROM to understand how it managed to offer so wonderful features. And at last discovering the PC world as I was entering the engineering school, as well as the UNIX universe.

A man who likes technique

At the moment, I feel like keeping on experiencing the computer sciences field. I do not want to get away from the opportunity to work in a deeply technical field, so as to keep in touch with the latest technologies. I would like to gather as much experience as possible, in various fields if possible, so as to be able to upgrade to a more abstract layer in the future.

My skills?

I will not present my professional and technical skills in a single paragraph, because you may find this information when you read my detailed resume. Moreover, by browsing my web site, you will find here there and everywhere what I am able of: this web site was designed on that purpose. Be curious and browse on the other pages!

Professional expectations

It is not simple and it is quite ambitious to decide what one could expect in the future. I reasonably do not exclude all the opportunities not mentioned in that section. However, so as to give more hint about my concerns, I draw my professional expectations, and my plans for the future.

I could not say very precisely what I intend to do in the future. This is not a easy task to say I would like to work in that precise field, even more when it handles with ever evolving computer sciences!

Looking for a new job

Independant consulting and development

I am autonomous, I have a four-year professional background behind me, a large computing technical experience due to my professional experience but also due to my personal experience (from the age of 12!). I have been working on three major projects longer than six month, among which two longer than one year. I have been involved in the archicture of IT projects; I have been a pillar sometimes. I have a strong motivation, I think that I have a professional attitude, and I like challenges involving my responsability.

One solution for me is to become an independant consultant and developer. Consultant because I think that I have an upper view and appraisal of the IT I am dedicated to; developer because I dare thinking that I am good and efficient at that game. I think that both approaches are complementary and necessary.

Working in a vendor company

My staying at Cosytec was for me a success. I learned a lot there because a vendor company is a place where you learn so many things, even more when it is a small company. From the shipment of new CD release to the debugging of the libraries core, there is an amazing range of activities lead in such a structure.

Compared to a consulting activity, the plus that a vendor company brings is the fact that you belong to a group of people motivated by a common purpose: the product that the company sells. A vendor product is more like a child that you see growing and that you breed. You feel even more involved in the process of the company.

There, strategy is not a vane word, because you constantly have to undestand and anticipate customer demand. The marketing and commercial teams are really crucial elements. Quality must be there, otherwise the company will not last. Support has to be steadily thought if you want to meet customers satisfaction.

To me, a vendor company is just a microcosmos where I feel fine. My latest experiences in the field on new IT may be valuable for a vendor company that needs to catch up with the state of the art.

I know what I do not wish

My approach may also be negative. What I may say is that I am not currently interested in any job dealing with network administration. Moreover, and even if this is the trend today, I am not really attracted by the Internet technology itself, but more by the spreading and popular tool it represents.

Indeed, I am not interested in working on projects which do not require strategic code development. I actually need to perform for some years software development, at a low or high level of abstraction.

The service I may offer

Change managment, knowledge managment and training

Because I am curious and because I dedicate much on my personal time to learning new technologies, I am aware of what is going on in the development world. I know what the trends are and I have a point of view about what will remain, what is just fashion.

Because, in the latest projects I have working on, I performed presentations on technologies like CORBA, XML, and because I have introduced the use of those new technologies inside the corporate, I know what leverage it brings. I experienced what knowledge managment is about, in order for a company not to depend on its external consultants.

Because I think that the approach of standardized IT is a very good approach, and I strive to evaluate as many as possible open-source implementations of those standards, I know side solutions that are not expensive for the corporate, and that do not tie the corporate to a specific vendor.

For all those reasons, and because I love teaching to others, I am very attracted on change managment, knowledge managment and training issues.

Intranet enhancement

With my latest experiences (this web site and my work by BNP Paribas), I acquired some steady experience on how to enhance the information within a corporate department. I now consider this as a very motivating concern.

My experience is that, most of the time, developers do not dedicate enough time and concentration on documenting what they have coded. And when they do, this documentation is not properly yielded: on the one hand, it is scattered here there and everywhere; on the other hand, the limit between internal and end-user documentation is not drawn enough. Moreover, I think that most of the time, developers do not communicate enough and properly with other developers, but also with the end-users.

This is a reason why I would be interested in taking part to the development of architecture enabling people in corporate projects to better share information. IT services should be as well documented internally for other developers as for the end-user. When a developer performs coding without documentation, there is a risk for the company, because it becomes dependant on that developer.

I think that the client-provider approach is a good approach for a corporate department that delivers services for the company. I also have solutions in order to prevent developers to wrtie several times in several places documentation. To sum up, my philosophy is: document once, share everywhere.

Consulting and development

At last, simply because this is what I am already doing and that I like it, I may keep on offering such a global service.

The technologies I am interested in

Beyond the description of the services and technologies I am involved in, I would like to present the technologies that I find attractive, for they match my personal feelings.

Artificial Intelligence and meta tools

I have nothing against continuing working in the kind of high-technology I used to work in when I was in Cosytec; at the opposite, I am attracted globally by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Since I have been evolving in that field, I feel more and more interested in meta tools, meta-programming. I find very exciting the idea of using already developed tools to develop new tools.

With the PC power ever increasing and most of the time under used, I believe that AI is going to take more and more place in the PC world. The 80's have been a decade of birth and death of AI while that activity was not mature enough: this is why investors are reluctant to AI. I think that valuable and concrete examples may change the public opinion in the near future. I do believe in intelligent agents, which would for instance analyze the end-user behavior and propose to her/him simplified actions.

Graphical User Interface and ergonomics development

I am actually very excited about the idea of working in a company developing Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools. I find interesting to be forced to optimize code so that the global mechanism of a GUI is fluent. I find interesting the model object it uses, because the GUI accessibility depends much on this model. What I appreciate in GUI is much the ergonomics aspect: how to present the information to the end-user, so that he saves a lot of time not repeating actions, so that he finds it intuitive.

I do strongly believe that ergonomics is bound to become a major leading core subject in the next years. Now that we have an impressive computing speediness even on Personal Computers which makes software development less and less restrictive, now that the graphical interface is advanced enough to fulfill the end-user, the extra amount of computing power is not really used, except maybe for games.

The next step is to really tackle ergonomics of software, at two levels: for the programmer who needs higher and higher level developing tools and more abstract and more abstract programming paradigms; but also, and this should lead to a revolution, for the end-user that should take benefit of new graphical interfaces with more rapidly accessible actions, and that should be automatically proposed actions depending on its dynamically recorded profile and behavior, thus enhancing the use of computers. I do think that ergonomics helped by Artificial Intelligence should become a strategic key point.