More Space for Innovation
A company that is constantly growing must also expand its physical space. Our Munich location has set particularly ambitious goals for 2020: in the heart of the up-and-coming Werksviertel district, not far from the Ostbahnhof, a plaza for digital innovation projects is being created across four floors. Two floors will be rented out to partner companies: those who move in will become part of a shared field of tension and be ready to broaden their own perspective and drive the topic of digitalization together with like-minded people. There is still time to become part of Munich's new hotspot for innovation topics. Find out how here.
Thomas Scherm and Stephan Georg Kahl, Managing Directors of R&S, seal the contract signing with a handshake.
Already this year, the locations Münster, Berlin (see pictures) and Doboj (Bosnia, see tweet) have moved into new premises. The move into the new offices was of course celebrated appropriately everywhere. In Karlsruhe and Hamburg, colleagues have rented additional office space in the existing buildings, renovated it, and moved in. And codecentric is now also represented in Erfurt – more information will follow soon.
codecentric conference
To nurture the sense of community within an ever-growing and more diverse team, regular gatherings in the form of events are essential. The codecentric conference has already become a tradition – the internal, four-day unconference for codecentric employees in Soltau in northern Germany. In March 2018, it took place for the second time. The verdict: the more, the merrier, as the number of participants had doubled compared to the previous year. Once again, sessions on various topics were spontaneously planned and held. Not only was a great deal learned, but there was also plenty of laughter and celebration. The next codecentric conference will take place in June 2019. Using the hashtag #cconf, even outsiders can follow the employee event.
Participants of the codecentric conference 2018 in Soltau
2nd Place Among the Most Family-Friendly Companies
Despite the challenges that come with strong company growth, codecentric consistently manages to secure a top spot in company rankings. In the ranking "The 100 Most Family-Friendly Companies in Germany 2018", codecentric took 2nd place (after finishing third the previous year). The women's magazine Freundin and the employer review platform kununu conducted the ranking. Trust, self-organization, and flexibility are core values that have proven their worth since the founding of codecentric AG in 2005, that our employees appreciate, and that we will continue to uphold.
Softwerker: GDPR and More
For many companies, the first half of 2018 was defined by one acronym: GDPR. In the course of the European General Data Protection Regulation, which came into force on 25 May 2018, we also thoroughly reviewed the registration process of our free magazine Der Softwerker for GDPR compliance, and drew attention to the changes through a reader campaign that was also sent as a brochure (see image) by post to our existing readers.
In 2018, three new Softwerker issues were published: Vol. 11, a Cloud-Native Special, and Vol. 12. A further special issue on the topic of Industrial IoT will be published in January. There is already plenty to look forward to in the form of exciting and informative articles covering the full range of Industry 4.0 technologies. We will announce the publication in our newsletter and on our social media channels in due course.
Softwerker editor and codecentric CTO Uwe Friedrichsen has, incidentally, also been the editor of the renowned IT specialist journal OBJEKTSpektrum since summer 2018, which is published by Sigs Datacom GmbH on a bi-monthly basis – a fine recognition of both his technical and editorial expertise.
Rising Stars
Berg-Pitch numbers 4 and 5 in April and November 2018 respectively generated great excitement in the Bergisches Land startup scene and a packed auditorium at our Solingen headquarters. Both times, the event was completely sold out. The largest startup competition in the Bergisches Land is organized by the coworking space coworkit in cooperation with codecentric AG. The YouTuber Azubikom was so enthusiastic about the event in his hometown that he spontaneously filmed a video about it.
Berg-Pitch in April 2018
Speaking of startups: Instana, the German-American company that emerged from codecentric AG, continues on its path to success: the startup founded by Mirko Novakovic received a further investment of 30 million US dollars in its third funding round in autumn, led by Meritech Capital, a well-known late-stage investor from Silicon Valley.
Innovation Projects
Since codecentric introduced an innovation budget that any employee with a good project idea can apply for, a number of interesting and successful projects have emerged in the areas of blockchain, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and Industry 4.0.
Logo of the open-source project Apache PLC4X
IoT and Industry 4.0
The Industrial IoT/Industry 4.0 area received a tremendous boost through the open-source project Apache PLC4X (incubating), started by Christofer Dutz. The goal of the project is to provide libraries for communication with programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for plants or machines.
Anna Backs and Christina Zenzes initiated an in-house project with their SmartBuildingBoard, which paves the way to a "Smart Office" at the codecentric headquarters.
At this year's Hannover Messe, the codecentric Digitization Labs team also won the Siemens MindSphere Open Space Challenge "Joint Platforms". The goal of the challenge was to connect machines to the cloud platform developed and operated by Siemens and to visualize production data. The company KAMPF Schneid- und Wickeltechnik had issued the competition.
Articles about PLC4X, the SmartBuildingBoard, and Siemens MindSphere will be featured in the new Softwerker special edition on Industrial IoT (publishing in January).
codecentric AG's growing positioning as a partner for companies on their journey to Industry 4.0 is also demonstrated by a cooperation with the Center Enterprise Resource Planning in the Smart Logistics Cluster on the RWTH Aachen Campus. Where devices and services are networked on a large scale, cooperations and a strong network are indispensable.
Artificial Intelligence
The project team of codecentric.AI, the artificial intelligence initiative, has launched not only its own website but also a German-language YouTube channel featuring demos and explainer videos, which already gained well over 500 subscribers in its first year of existence.
codecentric.AI Landing Page
Chaos Engineering
The initiative in the area of Chaos Engineering – traditionally strongly shaped by Netflix engineers – led by our colleague Benjamin Wilms, met with an unexpectedly large response. The announcement of his open-source software "Chaos Monkey for Spring Boot" spread virally on Twitter within the first 24 hours. Less than two months later, Russ Miles, a Chaos Engineering luminary, announced his intention to integrate the Chaos Monkey into the Chaos Toolkit. A "Meet the Experts" series featuring international Chaos Engineering experts at several codecentric AG locations is already being planned for 2019.
Meet the Experts Reloaded
The "Meet the Experts" event series, which had almost fallen into obscurity, was revived by codecentric AG at the start of 2018. Thanks to Spring luminary Josh Long (Pivotal), who had traveled all the way to Solingen in January for a "Cloud-Native Java Day", as well as further excellent technical presentations by codecentric employees, the relaunch was a great success.
In April, the "Data-driven Day" with Tim Berglund (Confluent) followed, which was also a complete success (see video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
After that, codecentric CTO Uwe Friedrichsen secured microservices expert Michael Nygard for a week-long Meet the Experts Masterclass, a microservices training course. This took place once in Solingen and once in Munich, and was fully booked.
As already mentioned, further events in the Meet the Experts series on the topic of Chaos Engineering are planned for 2019.
Atlassian & codecentric
The Atlassian team at codecentric AG also put together a successful roadshow in autumn 2018. Under the motto "Cloud – innovative, reliable, and scalable", events took place in October in Solingen, Hamburg, and Berlin.
Also in autumn, codecentric was proud to receive the distinction of "Atlassian Top Vendor". The Top Vendor seal stands for high app quality and exceptional customer service, helping customers feel confident when choosing a product.
Sports
codecentric AG's support for sportsmanship and teamwork, as well as its commitment to the health and fitness of its employees, is demonstrated by the sports sponsorships and in-house sports initiatives continued in 2018. Once again this year, the company supported the Bergischer Handballclub, the volleyball team United Volleys (Rhine-Main area), the baseball team Solingen Alligators, and the two triathletes Melanie Lüdorf and Stavro Petri (Wuppertal), who gave us an exclusive interview ahead of their successful season.
The latter are currently also training a running group of more than 30 codecentric employees, including many beginners, for the 2019 running season. A performance diagnostic for participants (see image bottom left) was carried out at the end of the year on the brand-new treadmill in Solingen. After all, why wait for New Year's resolutions for 2019? Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today – you know the saying. In that spirit, we aim to maintain our can-do mentality and drive in 2019 as well, so that we have just as much to report in a year's time.
Stay with us until then!