The VVDS project was born 15 years ago, with the purpose of sudying galaxy formation and evolution as well as Large Scale Structures up to z~2 and beyond. With this purpose in mind, we have built the VIMOS spectrograph at the VLT, and used the Guaranteed Time to carry out the VVDS survey. After six years from the first observations, an assessment can be made on the scientific return, but also on the "educational" return. In this talk, I'll trace the story of the project, and illustrate a couple of the main results on galaxy formation and LSS evolution. I'll also present some considerations on what big collaborations, as VVDS has been, can give to young astronomers.