08 November 2009, 23:32

Regrettably, Nigel McNie will be leaving Catalyst within 4 weeks.  He leaves to work full-time on a new start-up software venture in the sports club world. We wish him well.

Of course Nigel has been a spectacular success in leading the Mahara Development Team here at Catalyst, leading the product's direction, developing features, liaising with clients and spending endless hours on the forums.  He will be missed.

Richard Mansfield continues to work on Mahara, and will now be fully supported by several other notable developers at Catalyst:

Francois Marier - Francois has worked on Mahara part-time for two years looking after its Debian and Ubuntu packing and advising on security aspects.  Francois will assume a greater development role within the project:

Piers Harding - Piers developed the Mahara auth/saml module, and has developed Moodle/Mahara integration features.  Piers is an experienced Moodle developer, and an open source architecture consultant with a world-wide reputation;

Dan Marsden - Dan's been a Moodle developer and code contributor for 5 years, and has worked as a big-fixer on Mahara for the last year.  He is an active Moodle forum helper, a Turnitin specialist, a co-maintainer of the Moodle SCORM module, and an open source project specialist.

Francois, Piers and Dan now step-up and commit more time to helping Richard continue Mahara's ongoing development and momentum.  Penny Leach remains a valuable development and forums contributor.

Regards

Mike O'Connor
eLearning Director
Catalyst IT Limited

09 November 2009, 0:42

(I just moved this post to the News forum).

Yes, I'm leaving Catalyst and Mahara, to go and attempt to forge a living combining two things I really love.. sports and technology. If I could throw motorbikes in, it would be a real winner 

Sadly however, this means that I am stepping down from Mahara's lead developer role. It was a hard decision - watching the community grow, and chatting with all of you guys has been a tremendous source of pride and joy for me. Everything about it has been fun - from hacking on new features, helping people on the forums or arguing about design decisions with Richard Mansfield ().

I now wish to move onwards, and have a go at founding my own company. They say it requires all of your attention else it won't work, so that's why I'm stepping down. But I sincerely hope there will be time for me to contribute - whether through the forums or hackfests or other means.

For now, let me finish with a round of thanks to everyone out there who has made this job so enjoyable. You have my apologies if I miss people from this list who deserve to be here - Mike and Richard at Catalyst, Richard from Flexible, Heinz, David, Inaki, Kristina, Howard, Mits, Derrin, Dan, Aaricia and other loyal members of the community, and Penny from Liip.

My last day is Friday the 27th of November. We'll have 1.2 out before then, I promise . After that.. I'm sure I'll see most of you around - and who knows, maybe we'll cross paths in real life some day.

Nigel 

09 November 2009, 1:06

09 November 2009, 1:09

Hey Nigel,

Thanks for your contributions to Mahara and best of luck with the new venture - hope its as much of a success as Mahara has been :)

Mark.

09 November 2009, 4:01

09 November 2009, 4:06

Hello Nigel,

All the best for your future ventures. May you get your company off the ground well. It was great to get your insight and knowledge for the development of our feature requestsand also see you so active in the community supporting everything Mahara and also doing the coding.

Hello Richard, Francois, Piers and Dan,

I'm very much looking forward to the further development of Mahara and the continued /new exchanges with you.

Kristina

09 November 2009, 5:47

Just echoing everyone elses thoughts.

Its been a pleasure working with you :-) 

Dan 

09 November 2009, 5:32

Nigel,

 My very best wishes to you in your new venture, I'm sure you will do very well.

You've been helpful to us above and beyond the call of duty on many occasions. You have always answered my (often) stupid questions with patience. I want you to know it was appreciated :-)

Have fun !! 

09 November 2009, 6:26

Nigel

Mahara is a brilliant product which will be a great source of pride, whatever you do in the future. Thanks so much for all your creativity, energy and rigour in making Mahara such a success for the community. Best of luck in your new life, I am sure we'll be seeing your name on some insanely great applications. You'l be a tough act to follow!

 JW

09 November 2009, 6:28

The news is traveling West :-).

Good luck on your new projects Nigel! Sad to see you go, but some trains you have to catch while they are passing.