George Katsanos - Who am I

Where and When

My name is George Katsanos, was born in Athens, Greece and I'm currently living in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Background

During my studies in the Technological and Educational Institute of Athens, department of Computer Science, I became strongly interested in Web Design, and began creating my own personal projects. One of them, the greek www.se-eida.com social ads portal, for it's innovative idea, has been frequently mentioned in the Greek electronic media & press. In the summer of 2008, I decided to move to France, in order to attend the Management & Information Technology Masters Degree, in the IAE Graduate School of Management Aix-en-Provence. After graduating in May 2009, I decided to continue working with the web, this time not alone, but as a part of a team or organisation. I am fully mobile, within the limits of the EU, although I do have some personal preferences.

The Person

I try to blog as frequently as possible, strongly support the Sustainable Development pattern of resource use, Green IT solutions and I have been a longterm passionate Recycler. I spend my free time discovering recipes, listening to repetitive music no one else likes, good old jazz or studying other cultures and mentalities.

Development Skills

I am trying to master the essential Front-end Engineer's skills, hand-coded HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JavaScript frameworks. I have been a FreeBSD user for quite some time, and can perform UNIX administrative and maintenance functions.
The commercial success of http://www.se-eida.com, pushed me into using Google's Analytics, Adsense & Adwords tools, and develop skills in SEO and Information Architecture.

Design skills

Even if I have a solid Computer Science background, I am extremely interested in Design (huge fan of the "Less Is More" approach, and Swiss Style Design) and have used Photoshop and Illustrator tools extensively.

Practices

I have reviewed web design and development practices since 2001, and I fully understand and support Web Standards and the separation of style and content philosophy.

Concept/Idea: The website was based on the "I Saw You" concept. This is actually what the greek phrase "Se Eida" means. The idea is simple: Visitors put ads, saying where and when they saw someone they liked. Ads are categorized, so visitors can easily filter them to display only the ones they're interested in. Se-Eida.com has been online since 2006 and it has attracted the attention of several greek media (Mega Channel,Espresso newspaper) and newsblogs, although there was minimal if any promotion. Implementation/Design: The website started with a Joomla CMS, and a default template. Soon, I created a custom xHTML/CSS template. In December 2007, I migrated in Drupal CMS. This procedure included migrating a database with thousands of ads and members, and then adapting the template. Pink was since the beginning the trademark color of Se-Eida, as it remains until today.
Concept/Idea: Minimalism was an attempt to gather exclusive mixsets from greek minimal/techhouse dj's and present them to a wider audience.The thought came after observing the rise of minimal in the greek clubland with a variety of artists with lots of talent. Implementation/Design: Music is delivered through downloadable mp3 files , or a with live-preview flash player. A Content Management System was also used (Joomla),because there was need to present news, keep a user database and manage a newsletter.The design was minimal, a style which i personally favour. The goal was to combine information and presentation in a level that one would not interfere with the other.
Concept/Idea: I created Gplus.gr as a personal identity, presenting my background, portfolio, contact information and social linking. Implementation/Design: Hand-written HTML and CSS, and a Javascript framework to handle the effects. Initially I used Mootools, but alongside with the last upgrade I switched to jQuery.