The time has come for the last install of our “Meet The First Voyagers Crew” series. We’ve so far met nine of the program members in parts 1, 2, and 3.
Vonage Voyagers is a one-year program for developers who want to get their hands on new communication technologies first and be part of a community of like-minded peers who support and learn from each other.
It’s an opportunity for us to reward and recognise the valuable contributors to our community. You can become a Voyager by applying directly or nominating a colleague, friend, or another community member.
This week, we’re staying in the Americas region to highlight two Voyagers and learn more about them and their interests. Please meet Gabriel Cruz and Matthew Stein.
Gabriel Cruz's Voyagers Card
Gabriel: Londrina, Brazil
Matthew: San Francisco, CA
Gabriel: Parkour is a big part of my life, and I spend a lot of time practicing, mostly with my parkour group. To balance with the incredible and creative stuff we do with our bodies during the parkour sessions we also say a lot of pointless, kinda-funny stuff.
In one of our training sessions, me and a friend were talking about how we count time nowadays and we agreed that it was super weird. I mean, our whole counting system is base 10. Most exams have a total score of 10 points and other measurement units (like liters and centiliters or grams and kilograms) are also based on 10s. But, for some weird reason, a minute has 60 seconds and an hour has 60 minutes! That is just outrageous.
Introducing cclock. Cclock is just a time converting CLI (for now) that converts our weird time system to a system that actually makes sense: one centhute has 100 centhconds and one centhour has 100 centhute. That's it. Super dumb hack, hacked it in 3h tops (because I wanted to practice Go and I'm not very proficient at it), and it's not much. Still, love it (and my friend from Parkour also does!).
Matthew: I recently co-designed a 6-week-long online puzzle hunt to celebrate the 15th anniversary of a Michelin 3-star restaurant. Over 10,000 people worked on solving the puzzles!
Gabriel: By far, meeting other Voyagers. I feel like I learn the most from people, and meeting new people gives me the opportunity to find other ways to approach problems, view the world, and just have fun with new interesting people!
Matthew: I'm looking forward to developing helpful resources for creative applications of Vonage APIs, in particular for games, puzzles, and music.
Matthew Stein's Voyagers Card
Gabriel: I really like to build automated bots that get triggered by my phone (be it by a phone call, WhatsApp, or any other type of communication). Working with communication APIs allows me to abstract that part of the job so I can actually make applications I (and other people) will actually use.
Matthew: As a designer of puzzle-heavy alternate reality games, it's exciting for me to be able to use AI-driven communication APIs to create increasingly more immersive, scalable communications with my players.
Gabriel: I almost never drink less than 5L of water a day. Gotta stay hydrated folks!
Matthew: Violin has been my greatest passion for most of my life, and I currently play with a klezmer trio, Baymele, as well as with a number of other Eastern European folk and classical music ensembles. I released my first album last year, and I'm currently composing tunes for my next one!
Join Gabriel and Matthew by applying directly or nominating a colleague, friend, or another community member to become a Voyager.
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