Humans of the Open Web Sandbox: Abdelillah

A series on humans currently and previously involved with OWS.

Abdelillah has been into blockchain since university — working on projects developing distributed data structures for medical data. Now, he sees no other career path but the one he has found himself in: the NEAR ecosystem.

Retrospectively, it makes sense.

Abdelilla grew up and studied in Algeria, which means he is fluent in Arabic, French, and English. His forte is in distributed networks, receiving a bachelor in computer science and a masters in distributed systems. As a kid, Abdelillah hoped to become a professional football player, but as many of us have most likely experienced, as we begin to conceptualise competition and probability, we start to aim for more contextual solutions. As a teenager he loved watching Real Madrid and Roger Federer, and also began to grow an interest in maths. Of course, as any romantic, he is also into sitting on the beach and watching sunsets. But back to his professional life, Abdelillah decided to pursue his interest and natural ability in maths, but applying it to something rather pragmatic, keeping in spirit with his initial career plans. After university, he began working as a freelance front-end developer, on Angular and Solidity projects.

This isn’t surprising, given his technical background, and focus on distributed systems. However, that only lasted 6 months, after a good friend of his, Mustafa, contacted him with an unexpected opportunity.

Building communities from scratch

Mustafa is (and was) the leader of the NEAR Arabic community. After briefing him about the early stage opportunities within the NEAR ecosystem, Abdelillah found the Open Web Sandbox, and began collaborating in the OWS Rolling Opportunities provided by the guild. Joining as early as March 2021, he was one of the first people to get involved in OWS. Part of those opportunities allowed Abdelillah to establish the NEAR France community, by creating a myriad of social media channels, creating NEAR related content and translating existing ecosystem information for his new community.

He is now the go to for any French related translations or community events. A prime example of a proactive community builder.

Success post Rolling Opportunities

Now OWS has removed the Rolling Opportunities, which were the initial phase of the role of OWS: financially enabling community members to set up community infrastructures to support and aid all future incoming demographics, both in terms of language, culture, and interests. So, what happens now for people like Abdelillah? Well, his enthusiasm to keep the community rolling, and its self-sustaining property that has followed from its now large amount of members, has made the NEAR France community a great example of the launchpad role that OWS took for individuals and their communities throughout 2021: provide the appropriate support to get the ball rolling. Now that NEAR France, and other established communities, are continuing to grow independently, OWS focuses on providing educational content, mentoring initiatives, and project opportunities, to grow the collaborative output of the growing amount of community members, which ultimately aims to grow the general NEAR ecosystem.

France, NEAR and Abdelillah

The next immediate goal for Abdelillah is to create a 3 to 4 person team to help him with the ever growing internal operations and content creation of NEAR France. With developing ambassador ties with the Octopus Network and DeBio, and a maintained friendship with NEAR Arabic, Abdelillah has plenty on his hands, and hopes to collaborate with these projects, both from a technical, and community building perspective. As a young individual beginning his career, Abdelilla has an unstoppable drive. For now, he keeps busy with developing new connections and finding new opportunities.

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Written by Jacopo Nuti, a writer for OWS.