Working with high-quality, motivated professionals and being able to share her ideas. Those are just a few of the things that senior software engineer Volha Pivavarchyk likes most about being a part of the Mautic Community. 

The Lithuania-based contributor to the Product team joined Mautic after she started working at Aivie, and shares in this article how she became more and more involved with the community.

Full-cycle, team work and Mautic

Pivavarchyk has over 15 years of experience in full-cycle software development, and has worked in different positions during this time. “I have created many small service-oriented applications that have been deployed and run successfully. I have also designed architecture, produced and deployed large automation solutions for the entire company.” Additionally, she has taught at the university. 

“I had been working as a leader of a development team managing several projects in the Education domain for some years before joining the Aivie team about a year ago”, she recalls. It was in her new job that she got to know about Mautic. “I was aware of this project, but I had never worked on it before”, details the software engineer. 

All the different opportunities Pivavarchyk has had through her life come together in her role at her work, and her profile at the company’s website also summarizes her contributions to the Mautic Community: “My goal is to have good ideas into great technological solutions”.

Always a learning opportunity

Despite her extensive experience, the Lithuania-based software engineer enjoys to keep on learning. And that is one of the reasons why she likes being a part of the Mautic Community. “Contributing to Mautic allows me to communicate with professionals who are part of the community and give me an amazing learning experience.”

Pivavarchyk joined the community in the early winter of 2021, “thanks to Adrian Schimpf”. Her first contribution was a pull request. “I was very excited about the result. When it was approved, I was so happy. Then I read more and more articles and kept exploring the project. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to be part of it.”

The Product Team contributor highlights that she is lucky her company allocates working hours for employers to contribute to the Mautic Community. More than that, she says it is “a great pleasure” to participate: “Now I make pull requests, participate in the testing days and I can say I love this time”.

Enhancing the email builder

Beyond giving her “fun and personal satisfaction”, Pivavarchyk rejoices in the fact that being a contributor means making Mautic better for its users. “Contributing enables me to improve the software that is used by a lot of companies, and that we rely on daily.”

Her primary focus is on features that enhance the user experience with the application. Along with other contributors, the software engineer has been working hard on enhancing Mautic’s email builder. 

“The email builder makes it easier to create well-designed email templates. We are improving the builder, trying to make it better and expanding its capabilities”, she sums up. One of the feature’s highlights, in her opinion, is “the possibility to easily make responsive emails with personalized content”.

Pivavarchyk, who also helps a lot with testing code – she was key in the Mautic 4.3.0 release –, says that the builder ranks second in the Mautic features she likes best. What is the first, you might ask?

“Without any doubt, Campaign Builder is at the top of my list of favorite things. It allows the creation of effective, multichannel marketing campaigns or workflows based on several decisions, conditions, and actions. It can be used as a whiteboard to map out and visualize a marketing automation plan.”

Present and future of Mautic

Speaking of multichannel, that is yet another key aspect of Mautic’s present and future success, in Pivavarchyk’s opinion. “Mautic enables managing campaigns to deliver personalized messages through various digital channels, such as web, email, messaging, push notifications, and social networks.”

And giving its central role, the software engineer envisions a future for Mauitc in which “it would be good to add up any other channels, including emerging new ones, by enhancing the integration capabilities.” Her view goes beyond the technology development to encompass the different, global use of Mautic: by having more options, Mautic “makes it possible to use the most popular channels in a particular country.”

When it comes to connecting technical and cultural aspects into software, the Mautic contributor is consistent. She says she doesn’t have a big, audacious goal in life: “I just want to make the world around me better”. 

Contributing and sharing ideas

Being a part of the Mautic community, Volha Pivavarchyk highlights how contributors “help with working on the project and extending our Mautic platform”. More than the result of their hard work, she rejoices in the shared experience.

“I’m really glad to be part of the team. I like the high-quality people who work on the project. I like the way they are motivated”, continues the software engineer. As the name suggests, the community is a place where everyone gets to participate. “I am pleased to share my ideas and my personality”, she sums up.

For those considering becoming a contributor to Mautic or other open source projects, Pivavarchyk says, go for it! “First, you can get a deeper knowledge of the software you use. Second, it allows you to learn new technologies, improve your skills, and keep up with other cool community members!”

If you want to know more about what Volha Pivavarchyk is working on, you can check out her GitHub repos at @volha-pivavarchyk.

Want to join the Mautic community? Check out our Community and Get Involved sections.