About Me

Officially, I am Lylian Siffre, a PhD Student at IMT Atlantique, Nantes (see Resume for more information). Unofficially, I am a human being whose default facial expression is ‘skeptical’ (it’s not anger, I swear) with strong opinions on: coffee conversations; the delicate relationship between humor and laughter; and why the last item of this list will surprise you.

This bio is intentionally weird. If you’re still reading, we’ll probably get along.

Contact

If you’re here to contact me, feel free to send me an email at either my institutional address or my personal one.

If we’re currently in the same place, feel free to come say hi! I’ll certainly be pleased to hear about you and your work. But be warned: if you work in computer science, chances are I’ll rant about Local-First (LoFi) Software at some point. If you think I’m wrong about LoFi (or anything else), come argue with me!

Also, since I am human, I can sometimes seem distant or disconnected (no offense intended!). That usually means I’ve run out of coffee, sleep, or both.

Research Interests

Finally reaching this section, hey? Well, if you skipped the previous ones, be warned: since this is my website, I tend to write unfinishable sentences about things barely related to the section title.

Local-First Software

Local-First Software (abbreviated LoFi) is obviously my primary research interest—it’s the core of my PhD thesis. In a nutshell, LoFi is the lovechild of past and present software paradigms. This child asks rude but valid questions like:

• “Why do you need a cloud?”
• “Why do you need to know the color of my toes?”
• “Can you use my device’s resources instead of asking Big Brother Cloud to process everything?” (A very inquisitive child!)

Back to research. LoFi forces us to rethink software design. At school (or so it seems today—email me if your experience differs), we teach cloud-centric approaches. The classic Client-Server architecture dominates projects, examples, and tutorials, while the potential of local devices and networks gets overlooked.

“You need a database, and it must be in the cloud!”
But maybe your data doesn’t need global, anytime access. Maybe some (or all) of it could just live locally?

Some References

Here are some links and references for LoFi that might interest you:

• lofi.so - A very good starting point to discover the LoFi community
• LoFi Essay - The article from Kleppmann et al. describing LoFi
• LoFi For Green IT - My article about the opportunities and challenges of LoFi for Green IT
• LoFi Girl - Because you can jam