https://media.opendigital.info/videos/watch/08f15d65-7c53-4347-883f-06f7fd7d8cd0 Virginie DeWolf, Executive Director of the Odoo Community Association, shares a personal story that traces a rare arc: from IT volunteer for a citizen-owned supermarket in Brussels, to Odoo integrator co-founder, to OCA board member, and now to leading the association. Recorded at Odoo Experience 2025, the conversation explores how community edition enabled a social economy project that couldn't have afforded proprietary software, what the OCA is beyond its modules, the evolving relationship with Odoo SA, and Virginie's vision of the OCA as guardian of Odoo's open source values. Topics covered: Starting 10 years ago as an IT volunteer for BEES Coop, a citizen-owned cooperative supermarket in Brussels, Why community edition was essential for a project serving thousands of users with no initial funding, Using the community edition leading naturally into the OCA ecosystem, Co-founding Co-PTZ, a Brussels-based Odoo integrator, to do professionally what had been weekend volunteering, First OCA Days in 2017 at Louvain-la-Neuve: meeting Stéphane Bidoul and building Belgium's VAT report in v9, Becoming a delegate, then a board member, then candidating to lead OpenUpgrade, Joël's suggestion to lead the OCA itself rather than just OpenUpgrade, Taking on the Executive Director role as a part-time position over the last 18 months, Defining the OCA: a community of consultants, developers, CEOs, and end users, not just an app catalogue, OCA apps as free, high-quality add-ons on the Odoo app store, The OCA as a mindset and knowledge-sharing community, Testing as a non-technical contribution path: reviewing PRs with runboat, filing screenshot feedback on GitHub, The welcoming culture at OCA Days - proactively greeting newcomers, The historical tension with Odoo SA around the open core model and enterprise alternatives, The healing relationship: Fabien attending Virginie's talk, lunch at Louvain-la-Neuve, offers to host OCA Days, Ongoing discussion about an OCA link on Odoo's community menu, The first OCA zone at Odoo Experience this year, Enterprise customers on self-hosted deployments installing OCA modules alongside enterprise, Odoo developer publicly recommending OCA modules in a security talk (and tweeting about it), Looking back: the OCA should have communicated better and earlier about what it is beyond free apps, Vision for the future: OCA recognised as the guardian of Odoo's open source values, on equal footing with Odoo SA, Call to action: become a member (€60/year), sponsor as a company, test, develop, spread the word Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:24:01 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://media.opendigital.info https://media.opendigital.info/lazy-static/avatars/1c76e474-a93d-4a23-aec7-b854de60eea7.png https://media.opendigital.info/videos/watch/08f15d65-7c53-4347-883f-06f7fd7d8cd0 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://media.opendigital.info/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.