As part of our Development Team recruitment drive, we thought we would bring you some insights as to what it is our existing Dev Team members do and how they got involved. We are please to present the third in our '10 Question Interviews' series. This interview is with Morten Poulsen, aka Silmarillion, longstanding member of the Dev team.

1. What do you do in the Dev Team?

Currently less than I had hoped I could find time for. But, historically, I have maintained the TinyMCE/MicroTiny module, I also started off the printing module and FileManager although the later developments has been taken over by someone else. The 1.11 system maintenance page was also partly done by me.

2. What is it that made you want to get involved with the Dev team for CMS Made Simple?

"The same old story", guy wants nice CMS, tries to do one himself, realized that either you spend way too much time on it or you start looking for an existing one which speaks to you. Finds CMSMS, never looks back. But, wanting to help and improve it in ways I think important I volunteered as developer.

3. How long have you been involved?

Uhm, hard to say, but 6-7 years I guess. I hosted the first Geekmoot in Copenhagen, so at least that long :)

4. What do you find to be the most fulfilling part of your role as a CMSMS Dev Team Member?

When time allows to work on the core system and/or important modules, it is great to have a feeling that you actually get to participate in steering this ship in some direction... (continued in 5.)

5. What has been the biggest challenge you have faced as a Dev Team member?

... but as the amount of time you can put into this grows thinner, you also feel your influence thinning. That is how it should be, I am perfectly aware! The people who does the work also decides the direction. But when decisions are made which I do not agree upon it is sometimes hard. But I'm not talking things that would steer me away from CMSMS, here, mind you ;-)

6. What keeps you motivated as a Dev Team member?

That progress is being made, that being part of the Dev Team keeps me sharp and up to date with regards to developing custom modules for customers, which I do quite a lot. And that the other team member are generally quite nice guys :)

7. If you could be ‘dictator for a day’ for CMS Made Simple and implement one ‘fantasy function’ immediately into the Core, what would it be?

A full features, core integrated, image resizing, pretty and customizable wysiwyg-system. I believe that the single most important feature of any CMS is a well-integrated, advanced wysiwyg. I do what I can by maintaining the "full" TinyMCE-module but only have time for so much.

8. Have there been any commercial or personal successes that have been because of being in the Dev Team?

As I said in 6, I earn a bit of money developing custom modules for other companies, some are opened up in Forge others not, but I believe I would not be as good a developer if I did not also have hands-on experience in the inner workings of the core.

9. What do you do when you are not wearing your ‘Dev Team hat’?

Don't get me started... I teach music in gymnasium (high school), I'm a full time organist in the church of Denmark, I compose, I have a music publishing firm... oh, and I own a bar :P

10. What is your favourite thing about CMS Made Simple as it works right now?

The ability to quickly convert existing static designs and easily maintaining them from a browser, together with the API-framwork (with my Neo-extensions, of course (; ) must be the absolute highlight that makes my day!