In the early 2000s, I was a developer on the Gaim (now Pidgin) project. Gaim is/was a multi-protocol IM client, back when services like AIM, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger were commonplace. I was very active on the project, and generally responsible for the creation of: * The website * The MSN messenger support (MSNP8 was a fun undertaking) * The core/UI split (a new way of organizing our code) * The creation of libgaim (now libpurple) * qpe-gaim, the first third-party Gaim client * A big rewrite of the conversation UI * The status UI * Much of the GTK+ 2.0 port work * Much of the plugin interface * Several plugins (tab dragging, Perl interface, gestures) My work on Gaim led to my first job in the industry, working for VMware.