A true digital lover, Noam made the natural choice to study computer engineering. After working for several tech startups, he turned to Nocode, and more specifically, Airtable and Zapier, and made it his specialty. 

Noam, you are a consultant Airtable and Zapier consultant, can you explain us what is your activity?

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Since 2018, I am independent, and I have a double hat. I work with companies, advising them and creating solutions to manage, automate and develop their business with Airtable. 

Another part of my time is devoted to training various audiences: I have developed an e-learning platform, an Airtable guide in French and I also run physical and/or virtual classes.

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In one sentence, I have made it my mission tohelp professionals gain freedom by becoming independent through Nocode. 🚀

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Before becoming an independent consultant, you worked for several tech companies. Was digital a vocation? 

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To be honest, I've always been attracted to technology. In fact, I had a PC at home even before the advent of the internet and I remember having one of the first modems connected to the phone line when the internet arrived.  

Naturally, in the 2000s, I wanted to be part of the tech and startup ecosystem. I wasn't really bright at school, I had to work hard to get into a good university and pursue my dreams. 

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What course did you follow?

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I first obtained a scientific baccalaureate in Paris. Then I moved to Israel where I was able to join theIsrael Institute of Technology(Technion). There I obtained a degree in information systems engineering in 2006. 

When I returned to France in 2018, I joined the Wagon bootcamp in Paris where I learned to code. 

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You could have become a developer... Why did you choose Nocode rather than code?

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It may sound strange, but I love coding! However, I was missing the business aspect. I was spending too much time getting lost in the syntax when I wanted to be able to solve business problems very quickly. I therefore preferred to turn to Airtable, knowing that the code would be useful in all cases. Indeed, in some very specific processes, Nocode is not enough so I sometimes code inside Zapier or Airtable. 🤯

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And how did you discover Nocode?

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Actually, I never discovered Nocode, I discovered Airtable and Zapier 😉

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In 2017, I was in the Customer Success team of a company that had created an online service platform for connecting freelancers and companies. I was looking for a tool to build a mini CRM for our small team. It was while searching on Google that I came across Airtable and the rest is history 😌 

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You talked to us earlier about your mission "to help professionals gain freedom by becoming independent through Nocode". Was being independent one of your goals?

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On the one hand, I really wanted to work in tech companies and startups. Challenge taken up ✅ I worked in several companies in different positions: Project Manager, Customer Success Manager, Key account manager. Nevertheless, I didn't feel totally fulfilled there, no role really appealed to me because none of themquenched my thirst for freedom. 

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On the other hand, when I discovered Airtable in its infancy - when there was no demand for it yet - I felt its potential and thought that this tool could become my specialty as a freelancer. I wanted to be pragmatic by becoming a Salesforce consultant first, knowing thatAirtable was going to become the new Salesforce! 🔥

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To come back to your question... it's by becoming independent that I have fulfilled myself in what I did. But making a living as a freelance Airtable specialist didn't happen overnight either!

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What are your main use cases forAirtable ?

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I use Airtable to create true automated information systems to drive my business and my clients' businesses. I have three main use cases:

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• Building end-to-end SaaS products in Nocode with Stacker on the front-end and Airtable on the back-end. 
• As far as my training is concerned, I have created an in-house LMS (Learning Management System) with Airtable and Stacker. 
• For my service business, I created a project/customer/order management tool.

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Do you use other tools in your daily life?

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Of course, the strength of Nocode is in combining tools. 

I use Stacker for the front-end, to create customer portals with nice interfaces and connected to Airtable. 

Still on the front end and connected to Airtable, I use Softr to create simple, effective, and beautiful sites. 

I use Spark and Trello for email and to-do list management respectively. The latter is more efficient for task management because it is more ergonomic on mobile than Airtable.

I also downloaded Bear for my note taking and 1Password to store my logins and those of my clients securely.

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And there are at least twenty more, shall I go on? 😅

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You work with the students of the Alegria.academy as a trainer and Airtable expert. What is your pedagogical vision and what do you expect from the students?

I am passionate about education but I am a strong advocate of less conventional, so-called "anti-school" methods. In my opinion, the best way to learn and progress is by doing. 

In the context of my Airtable training, this translates into small challenges to be solved. I was very much inspired by the Wagon's pedagogical approach, which I believe was the first to "hack" education. 

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Of course, these challenges are accompanied by my explanations, and then, little by little, the student becomes autonomous and able to juggle the different functionalities offered by Airtable.

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Thefinal objective is that after 3 months of training, students will be able to design, develop, connect and automate their own solution without coding with Airtable and the right methodology.

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What do you do when you are not 'Nocodes'? What are your passions?

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I like to spend time with my family, with my wife Helena and my two daughters. By the way, I come from a big family: we are 4 children and I have 19 nephews and nieces. That alone❗

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Otherwise, my hobby is to create digital products. Yes, my passion has become my job, and vice versa. 

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To conclude this interview, can you complete the following sentence: "In my opinion, the Nocode is..."

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Synonymous with freedom! 🙌

If you are an entrepreneur, Nocode frees you to create your own product quickly. 

If you are a freelancer (or aspiring freelancer), you can develop your expertise and make it your business.

If you are an employee, the Nocode frees you from other departments, especially IT.

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