2011 was another terrific year for akosma software, a year of growth, surprise, learning, teaching, and travel. We met fantastic new people on the road and we would like to thank all of our friends, our customers, the readers of this blog, our followers on Twitter, Facebook, Github, LinkedIn and countless other networks for their support and feedback throughout the year! May all of you have a healthy and happy 2012.
And now let us share with you some highlights of 2012!
Training
akosma software has established in 2011 a solid and successful training business, in the domains of iOS and mobile web applications:
- We started the year with a successful iOS Advanced Training in February.
- Then we continued with a long training, from February to June, to teach iOS to school teachers in the Canton of Vaud, in Switzerland.
- Later this year we went to teach iOS development in South Africa during October, in a series of trainings co-organized with immedia.
- We organized with Simplificator GmbH the first Swiss training on jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch and PhoneGap of the country, which was also a huge success in November, in Zürich.
- Last but not least, we coached our friend Mathieu Tendon to get his degree thesis, implementing an Android version of Senbei!
The result of these efforts were an incredible suite of apps created by some of our students, and now available on the App Store:
- Sudokulus by Pieter Muller, an incredible application that allows us to quickly solve sudoku puzzles!
- TroisXRien by Vincent Zeller, a very nice app to teach maths to children!
Conferences
2011 was, without any doubt, the year of the conference; not only have we participated in lots of them as speakers, we could also be the host of an incredible mobile track and even co-organized one in Zürich!
- It all started in January, when we participated at the international OOP conference in Münich.
- In March Adrian was the host of the mobile track in the prestigious QCon Conference London! It was an incredible day, and you can check the videos of the sessions in the mobile track directly on the InfoQ site: Mike Lee’s, Graham Lee’s and his own presentation are there.
- In April we went to Göteborg, Sweden to talk in the Scandinavian Developer Conference 2011!
- In June we were invited by the CAINCO in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to talk about mobile applications!
- In October, together with Jens-Christian Fischer from Simplificator we brought the biggest expert of the world of the mobile web, Maximiliano Firtman, to talk in Zürich!
- Later that same month we attended SenchaCon in Austin, Texas, to learn more about the incredible Sencha Touch framework.
- Finally, in November we went to the Mobile Developer Summit in Bangalore, to give several different talks about iOS and the mobile web.
Consulting and Development
This year we strengthtened our collaboration with clients, providing development and consulting services to industry leaders in Switzerland and abroad:
- We started a long and fruitful collaboration with immedia, a leading provider of mobile application development services in South Africa, by providing them with strategy and development consulting services.
- We extended the swissinfo iPad application into a universal iOS application, featuring an iPhone application too!
- The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies asked us for help in the definition of the mobile technologies for a humanitarian project, which consisted in an extensive report.
- We helped the local protestant church, the Eglise évangélique réformée du Canton de Vaud, to create their brand new mobile application, built using Sencha Touch and PhoneGap.
- We worked with many other customers who have explicitly asked us to remain anonymous, but we thank them for their trust and their business! We are proud and happy to have worked with them.
Products
Our apps also received some update love in 2011! We provided new versions of all of our iOS applications on the App Store, in many cases introducing the long-awaited iPad versions:
- bluewoki has jumped to version 2.0 and introduced support for wifi networks!
- Notitas has finally become a universal application! The new iPad version was a welcome addition and has had a very nice effect on sales so far.
- RooiFonts has also got an iPad version!
- Senbei was updated with many bug fixes.
- Finally, our flagship open source project, nib2objc, has been updated to support new features of iOS 4.
On the Press
This year we have increased our presence in the media, showcasing our ideas and our opinion on the world of technology:
- Early this year, our famous nib2objc project was featured in the popular open source blog “The ChangeLog”
- The day before our talk at CAINCO, we were interviewed live on the Bolivian TV
- We were featured in an article about the local mobile application market on the SonntagsZeitung, the most important newspaper of Switzerland!
- Our talk on QCon London 2011 was featured on InfoQ.
- We’ve been interviewed on the Swiss TV as well, during a special emission about smartphone applications.
- And last but not least, we now have a regular column about mobile applications in the Cominmag magazine!
Other news
But that’s not all! 2011 brought lots of surprises and announcements:
- Early this year we moved to new offices in Oron-la-Ville.
- The incredible team of moser design created for us an incredible new corporate image, including a very cool set of logos and stationery!
- We opened up a new Twitter account and a new Facebook page for the company!
- We detected a huge change in the market, where the demand of mobile web apps is growing and opens up very exciting new opportunities!
- During the year we dropped support for iOS 3.x in all of our products and also for the projects we create for our clients.
- Finally, we also stated our policy of refusing to offshore projects.
And What About Next Year?
2012 is already filled up with new exciting projects coming up!
- In January we will be part of the Jury of the Swiss App Awards.
- In February we will be working with immedia providing new mobile development training sessions in South Africa.
- We will be hosting the Cross-Platform Mobile track of QCon London 2012.
- We will participate in GOTOcon Copenhagen 2012 in May.
But that’s not all!
- Great new projects already in preparation, to be announced soon!
- More trainings in Switzerland, both for iOS and the mobile web.
- …and much, much more!
Stay tuned as usual, and be very happy in 2012!
