Thunder Backstage - Karlo Lucic

Karlo Lucic has been Thunder’s Product Manager since September 2018 and was very eagerly awaited by the team.  Everything has been running seamlessly since Karlo joined and the developers have become noticeably less stressed in their daily work. 

G: Karlo, tell me, how did you come to join Thunder? What were your expectations?

K: I first became aware of Thunder at the Thunder Day 2017. And when I saw the job advertisement at Burda half a year later, I became excited at the prospect of taking on product responsibility in an Open Source project. 

G: What has been your impression of the team and work atmosphere so far?

K: Super! I had a six-hour journey together with the developers in my first week on board. You get to know each other very intensively in such circumstances, and I really enjoyed it. The cooperation in the team is very uncomplicated, the communication always constructive and when Rhineish cheerfulness meets Bavarian grumpiness, you can be sure the humour doesn’t fall by the wayside. You really notice that experienced developers have formed a great team and make it very easy to have fun at work.

G: What are your tasks? What do you wish to bring to Thunder?

K: I see myself first and foremost as the representative of the Thunder Users and wish to provide the team with new input in this capacity. Until now it was primarily the developers around Daniel and our community manager Julia who took on user requirements, adding them to their already considerable workloads. I, on the other hand, have the opportunity to focus on the process. The requirement process shall become more transparent enabling us to exhaust the community’s potential and allow everyone to make better use of the lessons learned from over 200 Thunder sites. In concrete terms, this means: gather feedback, make the challenges faced by editors more visible and develop solutions together with the team and community. We must also, of course, incorporate persons with business and product responsibilities as well as the Thunder integrators into the process to design a product meeting the demands of professional content publishing. 

G: Can you provide us with a preview of the plans for 2019?

K: We want to improve the user experience for editorial teams and ensure that the necessary tools are available to all users working with Thunder.  It also goes without saying that we want to maintain the quality with which we develop features. Thunder should remain scalable, easy to maintain and therefore form a stable basis for professional content management. We will communicate a detailed roadmap at the beginning of next year.   

G: What is your feedback on Thunder Day 2018?

K: It was great to get so much input. Many new ideas and exciting and stimulating conversations sharpened my vision for how Thunder should look like in the future.

G: What’s the best way to meet/reach you?

K: You can meet me in person at DrupalCon Seatle and all kinds of Publishing or CMS Events. You can Subscribe to our Newsletter, and we will announce here on the blog where and when you can meet the Thunder Team. You can also follow me on Twitter @koalo089.

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