In this new installment of Behind The Mark of Odín we bring you a new interview with one of the professionals who have made the online platform of Mark of Odín possible. This is Javier Padilla, responsible for web development at ‘Mark of Odin’ and CEO of 3dsignia, one of the leading web development companies in Spain with projects as important as Twissues or Moodyo.

1.- HELLO JAVIER, CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF, WHO IS JAVIER PADILLA AND WHAT DOES HE DO?

Well, this would be answered in a much more faithful way by the people who are around me. But I will answer using a mix between how I see myself and how I would like to be seen. I am an entrepreneur who has many dreams, almost all of them related to the world of technology and science. Journalist by training, programmer and designer – or the other way around… – and musician in his free time.

In general I am quite curious and I try to continually learn new things to be able to apply them to personal ideas. About my dedication, since I work at 3dsignia, a company that I founded and that is dedicated to providing technological services, and at Moodyo Enterprises, a small company that emerged from the first that is currently giving life to a social shopping network (moodyo.com) and a tool to manage Twitter history (Twissues.com).

2.- HOW DID YOU SEE YOURSELF INVOLVED IN THE MARK OF ODIN PROJECT? WHAT DRIVEN YOU TO LAUNCH OUT TO DEVELOP THE NEW WEB PLATFORM THAT SUPPORTS THIS ONLINE UNIVERSE?

I found myself “pleasantly” involved by fate. I taught a few years ago at the university and there I met Xavi Marcé, author of the work. Since then we have followed each other and, thanks to social media, we kept in touch. When he told me about the project I found it exciting and a challenge. My company is a specialist in many types of platforms. We have successfully developed informative websites that have tens of thousands of visits daily, …but none of them had anything to do with what Xavi asked of us. And that is a challenge. And we like challenges. So we started working on a solution that had an open source base and could be supported by proven quality technologies.

3.- COULD YOU TELL US HOW YOU WORK? WHAT PROCESSES DO YOU FOLLOW WHEN TAKING ON A PROJECT OF THESE CHARACTERISTICS?

I am a bit peculiar since I design and program at the same time. I do the first correctly, since I spent many years learning in the Design and Infographics section of ABC and subsequently I have worked for other corporate clients and I have continued in constant training and observation. In this sense, I have more than 15 years of experience. But when it comes to programming, now I like to have the prior opinion of people like my partner Álex Guerra, a Telecommunications engineer, who is a kind of “Lord of the Rings” of technology. Let’s say that I consult everything, and when I think I’m going to get stuck or I don’t see a process clearly, we sit down, clarify it and bring it to a successful conclusion.

With Mark of Odin, we tackle a project with many different but connected heads. Users who go through different areas of a website, who have to be “supervised” by an achievement system and must interact with each other. A store that not only sells a physical product, but is the gateway to a community where content is added that, in turn, has different levels.

But actually, in general, what is called the “programmatic mentality” helps me a lot. Basically it is about breaking down problems into smaller problems and addressing them. In the end, I like to unite the different solutions and make them fit together to create a global solution for design, programming, search engine optimization, etc.

4.- HAVE YOU ALREADY READ ‘MARK OF ODIN: THE AWAKENING? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE UNIVERSE THAT XAVIER MARCÉ HAS CREATED?

(Laughs). She should have read it all. It is not for lack of desire since it is a book that engages. But of time, since in these months we are with the global launch of Moodyo and Twissues. But perhaps because of “karma” and balance, there is a curious anecdote about it. While we were working on the production of the eBook with Xavi, I used a Kindle that belonged to my sister-in-law to do compatibility testing. I left a copy of the book there and didn’t delete it because I forgot. She saw it, opened it and entered Odin’s universe headlong. She “drank it”, literally, in a few days and when she finished it she called me to ask me about the book. To find out if there was a continuation, if I knew anything else…

Without realizing it, she had hooked a person. I think it is the best proof of the potential that this novel has. All the people who have read it agree on highlighting the book’s ability to capture the reader’s attention and captivate them until the end of its pages. And that’s saying a lot nowadays.

5.- COULD YOU TELL US WHERE YOU THINK THIS PROJECT WILL EVOLVE? DO YOU SEE YOURSELF PREPARED TO FACE, AS THE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEB PLATFORM, THE CHALLENGES THAT ITS EVOLUTION MAY BRING?

I think Mark of Odin has something that not many projects have: the ability to create a loyal user base that lasts over time. This is not a good novel that you read and remember for a while; The saga, in continuous development, with online content that is uploaded every so often, and with a community that contributes so much, represents an interesting breeding ground to make this universe grow. Virality will probably end up causing high growth that, at a certain point, will go from linear to exponential. There will be new technical challenges. Greater loads on the server, greater requirements and, all of this, without having new networks to which the platform will have to be connected.

For the moment I do see myself capable of growing this platform, although as until now I know that it will pose new challenges that we will welcome with open arms.