Hi, I'm Gabo

I like taking things apart to understand how they work. Putting them back together usually takes longer than planned, and sometimes there are spare parts left. This applies to software, home servers, and quite a few things in our apartment.

I live in Ruse, Bulgaria, with my wife. We’ve renovated our apartment three times. There always seems to be something else to fix, but I enjoy doing the work myself. The materials-hauled counter above is there for a reason.

I also run a homelab, automate things that probably don’t need automating, and tinker with cars when I get the time. My setup and now page cover some of that.

What 12 years of working on products taught me

I’ve worked in support, built products, and run my own business. Support shaped how I think about all of it. A customer can describe a problem very clearly and still ask for a solution that won’t help them. It’s easy to write down the request and miss what they needed.

I'll never forget this one hardware company where customers asked for a connector with 'more bandwidth.' The product person thought they understood but didn't want to ask for clarification. So we manufactured 250-ish units with completely wrong connectors. When we placed them on the website, customers were absolutely flabbergasted – an expensive lesson in why assumptions kill products.

Bimbala and my research

I co-founded Bimbala, a tool for collecting and organising user feedback. We later sold it to another team. Building it gave me a practical way to work on a question I kept coming back to: how do you turn what people tell you into something you can use?

My PhD research follows that question into the data: methods for automatically analysing written user feedback and extracting useful information from it. You can read the publications here.

Smaller tools, writing, and sharing what I learn

A lot of my open-source work is fairly specific: editing WooCommerce orders in bulk, improving admin search, calculating server resources, or keeping track of time without an account. I like making tools that someone can use without needing a big budget.

I write about software, AI, security, and whatever I’ve spent too much time troubleshooting. I’m also working on books and reference guides, and occasionally speak at conferences and meetups about WordPress, performance, and product.

Working with me

I care about people first, then the product, then the process. I ask for context, say “I don’t know” when I don’t know, and sometimes over-explain because I want the reasoning to be clear. I can also get impatient when something I care about moves slowly. There’s a longer guide to working with me, including the less flattering bits.