Yohann Dandeville

It all started long before any formal training or certifications. In the late 2000s, I built a website for a clothing brand project, a professional Myspace with custom code integration — at a time when only major music groups were doing that. Then a site of over a hundred pages for an association dedicated to sharing knowledge: press articles, videos, collaborative files. Self-taught, curious, convinced that the web could serve projects that needed it.

In 2011, I took over the presidency of a failing sports club — martial arts, dance, weightlifting, 400m² that no longer worked. I didn't arrive as a manager. I arrived with a vision.

From the start, I structured it legally: an association for the activity, a limited company in parallel to handle purchases, communications, infrastructure. Two entities, two logics, one direction. Two and a half years running this dual architecture, then I simplified — the company disappeared, the association remained, but deeply transformed.

It was no longer a sports club. It was a cultural centre. Concerts, café-theatre, exhibitions, workshops. In the sixth year, I created the performance hall and expanded the space to 700m². What I had found failing became a living place, rooted in its neighbourhood — and still exists today.

Throughout all those years, in parallel and in silence, I kept coding. The Union des Arts website, digital communications, online tools. In 2021, a two-year web developer qualification. Not a new start — the validation of a journey that had begun long before. What leadership taught me added to the rest: understanding an organisation's challenges before opening an editor, knowing what a tool must solve to be actually used, not just delivered.