Tomas Hensrud Gulla honored as contributor of the year by Optimizely

Optimizely justifies the choice of this year's contributor with

"There are many ways to inspire, spread messages, and facilitate knowledge. There are many passionate individuals out there who work hard so that their industry colleagues can stay updated in an ever-changing technological environment. We want to honor the everyday heroes, those who contribute to keeping the focus on our technology, those who work to broaden the competence around our technology and products and stand on the barricades, both within their own company and, not least, outwardly. This year's contributor does exactly this and receives the award for a fantastic job of building competence around and broadly in Optimizely's developer network. He is actually an Optimizely oracle, and it is a great honor to present the award for this year's contributor to Tomas Hensrud Gulla at Novacare."

A big surprise

When Tomas Hensrud Gulla was announced as the winner, the surprise was great. "I hadn't received any hints beforehand, so I was very positively surprised," he says. "I received many congratulations on the day and afterward. It is a great inspiration to win such an award, and it motivates me to continue writing blog posts and sharing knowledge in other ways."

Long experience and great commitment

Tomas has an impressive experience in further development and management of larger Optimizely (formerly Episerver)-based solutions for both public and private customers. His commitment and knowledge have earned him the title of Optimizely MVP (Most Valued Professional) since January 2020, as one of only three in Norway. Since the fall of 2021, Tomas has held the role of CTO at Novacare, where he leads specialist environments within Optimizely, Sanity, other CMSs, and pure .NET expertise.

Projects in Novacare

Tomas has worked with Optimizely solutions since 2010, and at Novacare, he has worked extensively with Elkem. Despite the company starting as Christiania Spigerverk in 1853, Elkem today has a global presence, giving him great flexibility to work from almost anywhere in the world. "When the daily dialogue is more often with people in France and China than in Oslo, it is no disadvantage to work large parts of the time from a home office in Western Norway," explains Tomas.

Tomas has worked with several extensions of Optimizely CMS that include AI technology for tasks such as translations, reports, image captions, and protection against unwanted content. AI is an important focus area in Novacare, led by AI specialist Sigve Fast. Among AI projects recently, they have conducted demos showing how AI can solve specific challenges for companies like Matprat, Norges Bank, Datatilsynet, and Oljefondet.

We congratulate Tomas Hensrud Gulla on this well-deserved award and look forward to following his future contributions to the Optimizely community.