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10
Ten long years has passed from the day we funded iMind, back in the times when we were university students.
Ten years is incredible long time, it's even hard to imagine that we moved to our first small and grungy office so long time ago. It was 2001 when we brought our computers to that flat some kilometres from here to start coding and ordering food day and night. It was a pleasant place for us with all the pizza boxes and the sounds of the quake battles, but we usually met our clients in the nearest café.
It's hard to count the people with whom we worked as clients or colleagues. We've been constantly learning with them along the path from thick clients through web projects to the mobile world nowadays. We learned about technologies, project-management and business, but mainly about the common work. We found it hard to summarize what happened to us in this time, so we concentrated on the celebration.
The program of the annual team-building day became paintball again after the usually long and complicated voting process. Still it was ok, because we could try a new place at Tököl. I found it a bit bizarre that most of the “team-building” programs are more about team-destroying, it seems people prefer extreme sports and killing each-other rather than participating in group therapy or embroidery.
We invited ex-colleagues and friends to make the usual killing a bit more ceremonious. Unfortunately the day long combat of the greens and blacks ended with the rule of the dark side. The team of the organizer paintbaill.hu was friendly and professional, we recommend them to everybody. The fields at the ex-Russian military airport near Tököl were varied and exciting as well, we'd go back for a second round anytime.
One week later the second, real-life part of the team-building came when we moved to a new office really close to the previous one in the friendly second district of Budapest. We chose it because of the bigger rooms, the cosy and calm street and the nice atmosphere of the place. 
The timing of the moving wasn't perfect as we had the yearly clearance in the whole district on the same day. We fought for space for the van with the people picking up old treasures from the street, but fortunately we haven't lost anything on the way. The day of the moving was just a small step of a two months long process, at the end of which we will hopefully have a calmer and more inspirational environment. 
At the end of the long day we ordered some food and realized that many things can change, including places and sometime people around us, but we eat the same pizza ;)
Thanks for all of you for these years if you took part as colleague or client, we hope you enjoyed it as we did. And now, let's get back to work and packing out from the boxes....
Green workshop in Kibu
Barna Málnay invited me to a workshop which was organised by by Kitchen Budapest and Ecowizer. The event was hosted in Biblia street at Kibu's headquarters, having 20 people with different background. We worked together in small groups in English to develop project concepts.
In the first morning we had short presentations. I talked about our Airpoll project, and got smart comments and questions afterwards. Ben Streenstra from Ecowizer showed us how we can turn hard situations into possibilities using the creative side of our mind.
The goal of the two days was to work out concepts which can be sustainable in an economical and ecological manner as well. Ben guided us using his own methodology to reach this goal fast and in a funny way. We used uncommon tools - like word association games - to reach ideas and solutions beyond the border of our imagination.
At the end of the second day we had two concepts in our hands, polished by two-two groups. The first is greenstein, an intelligent mobile application, helping its user to get greener in the everyday life. The second is named Farmsquare, a web and mobile-based solution supporting the urban gardening movement. It's not clear yet if somebody from the group has the time and will to build a product based on these concepts. Even if the speed of the workshop convinced me, my sceptical part says that a good idea or concept is nothing without full execution.
Anyway, we learned how to open a simple idea, tailor it to target groups and present it to a mixed audience.
It was interesting for me to go back to Kibu, where I had had a chance to meet the founders some years ago before the opening ceremony (Szabi and HP from prezi.com worked there back than). I still have that impression that they haven't reached their biggest goal: to introduce to the market the new products, started in this creative environment, . Beside this, they are really good in their field, having a strong international network and experience in fast small projects. I just miss the longer, more finished projects closer to the market needs. The space for this is not surprising, knowing how addictive the fast prototyping process in small groups is.
There are strong signs of the effect of their work in the city. You can find young talents who started their career there and co-founded exciting places like hackerspace- or FabLab Budapest. Teaching this generation of innovators is a big act in itself, but I'd work more on product development to exceed the Media-Lab role. Go Kibu Go :)
Green, greener
Nowadays all the companies try to look more and more environment-friendly, a lot of times they don't change anything. I participated in a kick-off meeting of a green project where everybody came by car, drank mineral water from separate plastic bottles and used air-condition in 20 degrees :)
At iMind, we try to solve small practical issues to be environment-conscious. Our friends at eu-edge are far better in bicycle usage, but at least we collect trash selectively, have boxes for used batteries and computer parts and bring them to specialized garbage-yards from time to time. Instead of throwing out old computers and laptops we prefer giving them to poor people or non-profit organizations.
We were happy when a green club, named Messzelátó Egyesület , asked us if we can give them computer components. We collected all the smaller and bigger treasures in the office and put them into their „company car” which was a huge shopping cart in fact. We hope they can build something from all those accessories.
Anyway, we've done our share of good deeds, we're good scouts today :)
Year-end
At the end of the year we summarize, go to play bowling and donate. Let’s recall it in this order.
So many things happened in 2010. Smartphones, tablets and other gadgets changed the way we live. Being a programmer, it’s I find this even more interesting because we can use our own applications on the new devices. Almost all of our partners started mobile projects with us this year. We’ve continued to develop on iOs for iPhones, iPods and iPad, have started projects on Androids and got acquainted with Bada at the end of the year. We ported BpMenetrend, our widely used iPhone project to Android and Bada, getting really positive feedbacks. Beside the mobile worksphones, we started new projects on the web, on thick client and facebook also. It was really was a long and eventful year.
It’s hard to imagine, but the change of the IT world will be even faster next year with new tablets, android TVs and ebook readers. Knowing that we have to learn so many things and continue running projects also ensures us that also 2011 will be exciting as well.
Having so many new things, we needed something constant, so we organized the Christmas party at the bowling alley again. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t give you good chances to blame the circumstances if you lose. We simply had to admit that Robi was better than us. Next year we have to try something new to beat him. Maybe we’ll go to try sumo.
We celebrated Christmas with donations, giving presents to the ones who really need them. We chose a kindergarten and a small East Hungarian village’s community this year. Kids got tools to play and learn, while we brought food and some money for the families in the village.
We personally delivered the packages to Selyeb, a small place in the north-east. Seeing personally the differences in the country is more touching than reading in newspapers. Most of the working places have been closed in the last twenty years in that area. Working for the local government or growing something in their small parcels are the only possibilities for the residents. After a long conversation with the people there, we weren’t sure that we would be able to break out from a situation like that.
From this point of view we feel even luckier having to have a good job, which gives us the possibility to learn and develop new things all the time. We hope 2011 will give this chance to more people.
We all wish you a happy new year!
iDay 2010
Like every summer, the time came to have a cool free day named team-building day. I don't really know how other companies do it, but choosing the activity is a part of the show for us. Normally, we use some overcomplicated voting system with many rounds, having campaign speeches in between. The majority of the speeches are held about the voting system itself, not about the activities :)
After this process, which is a bit more complicated than choosing a pope, sometimes we have to recommence everything because we don't like the outcome.
This year we've chosen the village Zamárdi near lake Balaton, to try out an adventure park and a gokart track. At the adventure park we had to go on stretched cables between trees in various poses. First it's a bit scary and tricky, then it becomes really exhausting.
With gokarting we have a good choreography. We cover some rounds, then we sit and talk about the secret formula which can calculate the real results based on the participant's weight and time. We haven't succeeded yet, but we don't give up the fight :)