Could you tell us a bit about your career background and your current job?
I’m a teacher. I’ve worked in special ed for about 10 or 12 years, mainly with secondary students.
How do you use computers at work? What led you to Dropbox?
I've a memory like a sieve. I'm very forgetful. So anything I can do that makes things a little bit easier is great. I've used Dropbox from its beta days, even before the product was launched. It was at a meeting at work when somebody asked me for something and I had forgotten my USB pen. It was that age-old [apology], “I can't do it. I'm really sorry. I’ll have to email you that later.” And somebody in the room piped up and said, “Have you heard of Dropbox?” And it kind of snowballed from there. Dropbox came out a bit too late for my educational use. I have just used it in a personal/professional capacity. But it’s great because I know if I dump something in the folder, it's going to be where I need it when I need it later on.
What brought you to the Dropbox Community?
The first version I used was something like point five or point six, before Dropbox had even launched officially. There was no documentation. You literally got an install folder and that was it. I couldn't get my head around what you had to do. “Did you move the stuff around? Did it link to places on a drive?” Back then, the help pages were sparse, shall we say? You were basically directed to [the Dropbox Community], and somebody else had answered the question.
I remember having that light-bulb moment of, “Oh, that's actually really simple.” I just popped back on [the Dropbox Community] a couple of times when people replied to my posts. That automatic email chain just started things off. I noticed that people were having problems and started to see, “Actually, it is literally a case of: There's a folder, put things in it, they will sync.” It snowballed from there.
There was a group of about five of us at the time. Arash, one of the founders, was quite active on [the Dropbox Community]. He basically said, “This is getting too big now for me to watch. I need people to help.” Next thing you know, we were moderators. It's gone on since then.
How much of your time did it take in the beginning?
Bearing in mind, this was probably 10 years ago. [The Dropbox Community wasn’t] busy because nobody knew this little product. I suppose nobody knew what this little product was going to become down the line. So it wasn't a case of having to be vigilant. I just remember, I popped on one evening when work was over, and it sounds daft, but it was a nice distraction. You're in between marking a pile of books, [and then get pulled into] thinking about, “Hang on what is wrong here?” It was quite nice to look on and just spend 5 or 10 minutes sitting on there, answering some questions, pottering about, then going back to what you were doing. It was almost a bit of a respite if you're sitting on hold. I'll just sit around surfing and answering questions.