The largest international technology company in the educational field, Moodle, has chosen Barcelona to locate its first European headquarters. It is an open-source learning platform founded in Perth (Australia) that has more than 100,000 registered sites and over 130 million users worldwide.
The Moodle Spain headquarters, located in Barcelona's Eixample district, in the Rambla Catalunya area, and with 40 employees, will be the gateway for new opportunities in Europe for the company. Moodle's software is used as a key part of the operations of major universities and thousands of schools, as well as by organizations such as the United Nations, Google, and World Vision.
In the interview granted to The New Barcelona Post on the occasion of the inauguration of its Barcelona offices and the celebration in the Catalan capital of the MoodleMoot Spain event, which brought together more than 300 professionals from the educational and technological fields this summer, Dougiamas highlighted Moodle's commitment to Barcelona, as well as the future challenges of the company and its sector:
Why have you chosen Barcelona to locate Moodle's first European headquarters?
First, it should be noted that our model is very different from that of companies that produce the same product from Silicon Valley for the whole world. We are an open source company that produces highly adaptable software tools for each local reality. This cannot be done without educators. For the first European headquarters, we have chosen Barcelona because it is an incredible city, with good weather, that attracts developers. It is a very active city in the technological field. I like its attitude and its culture. It is active, responsible, motivated, and committed to talent and constant learning. Furthermore, Spain is the second country in the world with the most registered Moodle sites, with over 8,000.
You have opened this headquarters before the one in the United States, are Barcelona, Spain, and Europe really that strategic for Moodle?
Yes. In terms of population, as I mentioned, Spain is among the top countries in the ranking for registered sites. One of the reasons we are already here is because of the proximity to Europe, and it allows us to be connected with South America. Also, as I mentioned, because of the talent, at Moodle we want to be a place where talent wants to work.
Does it also respond to the entry of its European investor Education for the many, from the owners of the French multinational Decathlon?
Yes, of course; thanks to the entry of this new partner we have been able to face the investment involved in opening the Barcelona offices. Education for the many, which belongs to the owners of Decathlon, has a mission and structure very compatible with ours.
Speaking of mission, its motto is "empowering educators to improve the world" and it recently announced the creation of a large social network for educators. With what objective?
We believe that citizens should have a greater impact on their governments. In this sense, the United Nations has identified 17 goals to make the planet sustainable. Among them, the main one is inequality, as well as climate change, food security and access to water, the issue of refugees, data protection, automation and the transformation of work, healthcare... The only way to solve all this is from the grassroots. Citizens must be aware of these problems and care about participating and helping to solve them. We need many people like that. Quality education is the only thing that ensures there are more and more citizens with these characteristics, who are more connected to the environment and committed to improving society. Education is the most important thing and that is why we empower educators so that they can do their job well through a learning platform. In the Moodle community there are 5 values: education, transparency, integrity, respect and innovation.
What other challenges does education have?
One of the challenges is measuring the quality of education. Another is to have more and more languages (we already have 155 translated packages and we continue to expand). Also, to create an educational community, that is why we are working for Moodle net to be a social network for educators. It will be an open and transparent network tailored for educators, integrated into the Moodle site so that they can contact educators who want to collect content, work together, share good practices...
What are the company's business challenges?
We are at a turning point. We see how many companies, including Google and Microsoft, have entered our field and we must think about how to compete, not only in philosophy but also in gross value and features. We have the trust of the sector with more than 104,000 registered sites (and many more unregistered), which have more than 130 million users. We innovate, for example, in mobility, with Moodle Mobile, and developers are increasingly developing tools for students and teachers. We also want to be a stronger brand and better explain what open source is and how it can be used. And the overall goal is to be sustainable. Many of the problems with the Silicon Valley approach is that it is something that is thought about after the fact. It is a machine focused on goals and money. We are not. We have to generate resources and be sustainable in the long term. There is much to do.