Martin Magdinier is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for data. He has been engaged with start-ups and open data communities in France, Vietnam, and Canada since 2007.

Coming from a business background (with a Master’s degree in IT Management), Martin’s focus is on data management and transformation tools that empower the business user. In 2011 Martin started to blog tips and tutorials about OpenRefine in order to help other business users get the most out of this open source tool. In 2012, when Google released the software to the community, Martin helped to structure the new organization. In late 2014, he launched RefinePro, a cloud-based SaaS data cleaning platform based on OpenRefine.

Prior to founding RefinePro, Martin created Objectif Neige, a web portal that enabled people to compare ski conditions for ski resorts in France, a project that required integrating and harmonizing data from ten distinct sources. (The site was developed in 2009 and sold to a major French publishing house in 2011.)

As a consultant, Martin’s zest for data manipulation has led him to design and oversee the development of Provider Directory, from prototyping the project to scaling it to over one hundred data transformation jobs, as well as managing the development team.

In 2012, Martin co-created TTCPass, a project that mixed both open data and crowdsourcing concepts to create a service that allowed Torontonians to find where they could purchase various types of transit passes and tokens (winner of the Google Places API Developer Challenge Judge’s Choice Award).