There is a good tradition to review the expiring year at the end of December. Some people do it on Facebook, some individually reflect on the passing year, some discuss it with colleagues or family members. This tradition is beneficial for companies as well as it gives a company an understanding of what has been achieved throughout the year and what would be the goals for the next year.
The year 2016 has been a leap year dedicated to the fire monkey. Astrologists say this combination implies the year has to be difficult, have many life crucial events and lots of negative outcomes. We agree there have been many challenges in 2016, nevertheless, we have many positive moments to remember.
The year 2016 started very actively. Our representatives successfully performed at several events locally and overseas. For instance, we travelled to Stockholm to speak at the summit conference. It was an event featuring a new human-centred digital future and discussing challenges it would bring to us. During this conference our CEO, Denis Gorshkov gave an exciting speech on what he learned after three times of almost going bankrupt. This topic aroused great interest among the audience since rarely do we dare to talk about failures. Our CEO is a great example of how one can pass through all difficulties and is ready to share the experience with others.
Darja giving a speech on communication skills at LatCraft Conference
Darja Krizska- Popova, our Business Development Director, also managed to perform as a speaker several times. She gave a series of impressive speeches on communication skills: at LatCraft conference – Latvian Software Craftsmanship Community; organized a seminar together with the local Business club “BlackTies” – an organization aimed to connect business people; as well as an organized and internal seminar for Diatom team on networking.
We love to evolve and learn new things, so our people attended several IT events, such as RigaComm – this year it has been dedicated to the Internet of Things, a Software Excellence Conference Devternity and for the first time visited Apps World exhibition in London that was dedicated to mobile development.
Our CEO Denis and CTO Slava at the Apps World conference in London
Diatom has always supported the willingness to raise professionally and develop new skills. That is why from time to time we organize educational courses. This year there were two of them: public speaking training and an educational game aimed for Project Managers at Diatom.
Moreover, one of our senior developers Pavel Petrov managed to visit Space App Camp 2016 in Italy, organized by European Space Agency. The main aim of the trip was to develop an application which would use data from space. Pavel participated in Space App Camp together with a team that developed an app called “SafeAdviser”.
Space App Camp 2016 participants
SafeAdviser analyses risks for the health of a traveller’s chosen destination. The application analyses a trip by more than 10 parameters, including air and water quality, ultraviolet radiation, volcanic activity, earthquakes, virus diseases. Thus, the traveller is able to compare the situation in different places and select the safest travel destination.
Participants of the Space App Camp (Pavel is 2nd from left)
This year Diatom Enterprises has also successfully passed quality system audit and as a result, earned ISO 9001:2008 certification. We passed the audit with 100% compliance and it has been proved that the working processes implemented at our company are stable and provide the best quality service to our customers.
Passing the ISO audit ensures the custom software development services we provide are safe, reliable and of good quality
Diatom – is a great place, where the IT professionals meet and form their own IT hub. We are happy to share various life events together with our team. For instance, we are glad to take young blood on board and this year some of our team members graduated from the Universities.
Our Project Manager Gleb has also graduated from the University this year
Another happiness we have shared this year was the happiness of becoming a parent – we celebrated the birth of a new life together with several members of our team.
We stay tuned and follow the latest tendencies in the world, so we did not miss a buzz about “PockemonGo” application and even had a chance to participate in a discussion featuring “PokemonGo” phenomenon at the local radio Baltcom.
Our CEO Denis at the radio Baltcom
It may look we are serious all the time but we can have fun and celebrate life altogether! For instance, with almost no practical experience in beach football, we have formed a team and successfully participated in the tournament organized by LikeIT – the biggest IT platform for job seekers and employers in Latvia.
The best beach football team ever!
Finally, we are going to enrol into the year 2017 with a new team member on board – a humanoid robot Pepper. We think that Pepper is much more than a robot, it’s a companion created to communicate in the most natural and intuitive way, through his body movements and his voice. Follow us and learn how we are going to develop Pepper into a real Diatom team member!
Conclusion
Time flies. We may forget about it but it is a truth to remember. At Diatom we believe that our people is our greatest asset, the ones who build our future bit by bit as such. Again, throughout this year we have understood that together we can achieve more and we believe there are no difficulties we couldn’t cope with if we have such a Team! So thank you Diatom Team and continue to be the way you are!
