As every year since 2013, we’d like to share with you what has been going on in our last 12 months, and encourage you to do your list. As we grow, the list grows, so here’s some of what we did during 2017.

Projects

• We got to build several new health-related products, all helping people make healthier choices in their own ways, with Työterveyslaitos, ViaEsca, Apetit and W-factor.
• Continued working with Mightifier, a product that helps kids master their social and emotional skills.
• Helped Nappi Naapuri to rebuild their social service where neighbors can help each other, borrow and exchange goods.
• Worked with Finn Lectura, a publisher of educational materials and books.
• Finance-related projects with Kansalaisrahoitus and Maksuturva.
• Celebrated two wins with OP Metsä: first Grand One award of the best web service for consumers, and more recently an honorary mention in the category of graphic design and datavisualization of Fast Company Innovation by Design awards.
• Our own product WODconnect continued its steady growth (approximately 20K new users), got more features for individual athletes as well as improved PRO features, and now uses machine learning in its workout builder.
• Continued sharing tips for software projects in our Softapaljastuksia video series .
• Kisko bookclub read:
  • Seven Concurrency Models in Seven Weeks: When Threads Unravel by Paul Butcher
  • Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
  • Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink

The team

We happily welcomed as many as six new, amazing Kiskonians to join the team this year! Marianne, Tuukka, Felix, Allan and more recently Joonas and Henri P.

Allan got to know Kisko when he volunteered to be a coach in Rails Girls events in 2015. He’s been working in the industry since 2010, he’s a startup veteran and also an ex client of ours. Before joining us in August 2017, he worked in tech recruitment. “I’m a big believer in Kisko’s mission and company culture. On the tech side, my contribution has been mostly on JavaScript apps and on Rails apps as well.” In the community, Allan helped organize HelsinkiJS meetup and produce a podcast about the startup scene in Helsinki.

Felix started in June 2017. His first project, with Marianne, introduced him to Ruby on Rails. During these six months he’s mostly been doing some web and mobile designs, prototypes and front end development. His favorite work was doing web and mobile designs/prototypes in Adobe Xd and doing front-end work for React Native app.

“l learned a lot of new things in six months, can’t wait to see what I will have learned in another six!”

Marianne got to know Kisko in 2015 when she was organizing a Rails Girls event at our office, and started working here at the beginning of this year. She started with building an internal booking system for our bi-weekly massaged, and then slowly moved to client projects. Most of the time she’s worked with Ruby on Rails. As example of her personal projects, she has hosted a Hackeress meetup and continued organizing Rails Girls events. On top of that, she’s studying Business Information Technology at Haaga-Helia.

Tuukka is a student from Lappeenranta University of Technology and his path lead to Kisko in the beginning of the year. He joined as a Ruby on Rails developer but has found himself in multiple environments during the year such as Node, React and native Android and iOS. He has worked in projects with W-Factor, Kansalaisrahoitus and TTL.

”The year has been enormous upswing for me in tech knowledge and I’m looking forward for the next year, good stuff ahead!”

Akseli spent his first whole year at Kisko Labs working mostly on WODconnect’s marketing and growing his knowledge in Facebook marketing and video producing.

“I’m looking forward to the next year, finishing university and improving Kisko Labs’ and WODconnect’s marketing operations.”

Antti S.participated in a Volkswagen Hackathon at Prague with the Kisko team. Worked with interesting new projects including Kansalaisrahoitus.fi investment platform, Maksuturva part-time payments and helped Hatch to improve their online presence.

Antti A. did a lot of strategy work and spent some time building WODconnect. He started another podcast called Akonniemen avara luonto, and also started doing stand up comedy – a total of 16 gigs (watch one of them here). Antti continued running crossfit gyms – CrossFit Herttoniemi became this year the largest in Finland.

Henri N went to a hackathon in Prague, visiting central Europe for the first time. He also finished his digital media studies and got his bachelor’s degree. Henri continued delving into React and tried React Native in a project.

Jasmina spent a big part of her year reading, writing and sharing her mind, learning new things and improving writing and editing skills inside and outside the company. She worked on our site (learned a bit of coding!), expanded our communication to include Finnish, and put her mind on branding. She spent a significant part of her free time on the new Ruskeat Tytöt media platform, including writing several articles and producing a pop-up shop with events. She also made her debut as a speaker in an event of University of Helsinki, and ended up as a radio guest three times.

Joni H. switched to working mostly remotely, worked from Budapest (Hungary), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vamdrup (Denmark) and Leipzip (Germany). He bootsrapped an internal commandline tool with TTY, wrote more python than ruby for clients. Joni went to Euruko for the second and Disobey for the first time. He dove into react-native world by starting to develop an app based on 6months/30years idea.

Leo worked on ViaEsca app which was launched in the beginning of the year and developed throughout 2017. He also developed Finn Lectura’s digital study material store, which launched in the spring. Finn Lectura was bought by Otava this December. Leo has also been working on a project for Apetit since spring.

“I continued to improve Ruby and Rails knowledge, and I now feel like I have a grasp on the fundamentals.”

Matias was a speaker at a conference (Rubyfuza 2017) for the first time, was a guest on the Ruby Rogues podcast, and gave a talk for a remote conference (Ruby Dev Summit: https://rubydevsummit.com/). He got a design 3D printed for the first time too.

Simo finished his thesis revolving around the effects of digital fasting to daily life. He spread the Kisko message in Prague and around Uusimaa.

Vesa visited Amsterdam for workshops and Prague for a hackathon. He shot new videos for our Softapaljastuksia series which will be released during spring of 2018. On the tech side he learned Vue.js and wrote lots of React, React Native and Ruby on Rails. In the end of the year got also introduced to Grape.

For Virgil, the most exciting ventures of the year were the Volkswagen Hackathon at Prague and the dive into the React Native world. During the year he expanded his React knowledge while maintaining, improving and adding to existing production applications like Muuvit, Domo and WODconnect. Virgil also ventured into the world of OOXML and Draft.js as part of a new service he’s focused on in the beginning and end of the year.

Our whole team sends a huge thanks to everyone involved, and wishes all a Happy New Year! But first, what did you ship in 2017?