2022: year in review
Writing the new chapter
This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Reading this, you immediately hear one of the best Bond theme songs of all time in your ear. We’re talking about Adele’s Skyfall, of course. In the film, James Bond experiences a debacle on his first mission and is accidentally wounded by his own agent. As a result, he is presumed dead by MI6. But James Bond wouldn’t be James Bond if he didn’t get back on his feet — against all odds. And this is basically how the year 2022 started for Diesdas. As you know, three partners left the company and started new companies and projects. Max and I remained with the task to write the next chapter for Diesdas — against all odds — and together with an exceptional team we did.
2022 was an extremely challenging year: a harsh political climate, another war causing widespread suffering close to German borders, and a pandemic that still casts a shadow across our lives.
At Diesdas, we’ve been doing everything we can, like every small business, to keep our team safe and well.
We’re lucky to have our share of good news, too: Diesdas team members worked from all around the globe (Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe of course, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia and the USA)! 2022 was also the year with the most children at Diesdas, with five babies born. We met again in real life, had fun lunches and dinners and even went to events outside Berlin! We celebrated 5-year anniversaries and of course — launched a lot of projects. We also turned our focus to our own brand and website towards the end of 2022 (you will get a sneak peak further down) and we cannot wait to show it to you.
Rolling in the deep
Our team have completed an impressive array of projects this year. We have worked with a number of project partners with which we have been collaborating for years and of course, some new partners we’re delighted to have started to work with.
When our friends at NLX asked us to deep-dive into the UX & functionality of their AI-powered chatbot conversation builder, “Dialog Studio”, we were very excited as we use the tool on a daily basis.
With Zeit Online, we developed an ‘off-demand’ playlist delivery system with the goal of offering listeners a continuous, engaging flow of podcast content made up of distinct Zeit audio modules.
We returned to Wefox this year to create user-friendly app pages, and give a recommendation for the message centre implementation, in-keeping with our expertise in this area.
We worked on the brand strategy and designed and launched the website for TUJU — an award-winning range of skincare for families. We can highly recommend both the offer itself and the videos on the website.
And our partnership with Red Bull continued to give wiiings to projects spanning a wide range of user needs. We’re really proud of our work contributing to the creative, dynamic Red Bull digital universe.
This year we designed and built the Holmes Place Germany website and produced a range of digital, brand, and marketing assets in collaboration with the team.
We developed two projects this year with a focus on digital education. In collaboration with Reason Y and PRATYeK, we’ve created ‘Three minutes tutor’- a phone-based, on demand, learning delivery tool for children in India. Released in September, nearly 750 lessons have been already delivered.
Last but not least we are very proud to have worked with Arolsen Archives to relaunch their indexing tool. This tool offers volunteers from all over the world the chance to contribute to recording all of the names of victims of Nazi persecution digitally. We look forward to sharing more about this in the New Year, and we’ll be using the tool ourselves as we participate in the #everynamecounts campaign initiative — this time as users, rather than developers.
Hello, it’s me
We said hello to five new colleagues at Diesdas this year. There is Marc, our Head of Project Management, then there’s Natalia, Technical Project Manager, then we have Isa, Developer, Ida, Designer and our latest addition Katrin, Office Manager. We couldn’t be happier to have you all on board and look forward to spending more time with you next year 💫.
Someone like you
It’s always amazing and inspiring to see colleagues evolve. No fewer than three colleagues have used this year to move into new areas, in keeping with our interdisciplinary approach. Connie has left office management once and for all and can now call herself assistant to the management and authorised signatory. Without Connie, many things would not have been possible this year and we could not have wished for better support.
Then we hired Ella, originally an Engineering Manager, who moved to the PM team and has since been a PM and Product Owner on some of the biggest projects with us. She always has the wellbeing of her team at heart and you can feel that in everything she does.
Our wonderful PM Christina has always had a flair for strategic topics, and we’re so excited to welcome her to Jonathan’s strategy team. Switching from one discipline to another is possible with us and we are convinced that it is precisely through a switch that respect for the other disciplines increases, we understand one another better, and ultimately do better work.
Set fire to the rain
One of the biggest tasks this year was changing the leadership team. As some of you might remember we tried to experiment with fixed team setups. While the experiment was worthwhile we found that it diluted clarity somewhat on responsibilities, and we struggled to fit it to the demands of agency life. Now we have very clear responsibilities thanks to our Head of’s for every discipline.
In her role as Head of Design, Tal provides a clear compass for the design team and has worked with her team to develop a plan for the coming weeks and months with topics and tasks we want to address and solve. A big topic this year was Quality Assurance.
Mitch, our Head of Development, has used this year to streamline our tech stack. In the past, we used many different tech stacks, which made it difficult to implement or formulate overarching goals in the dev team. Furthermore, it is hardly possible to do excellent work in all tech stacks, our team is simply not big enough for that. For now, the future for us is Next.js and React Stacks.
As head of PM, Marc has consolidated our recent tool and process changes, cementing multiple updates and upgrades to our processes. Credit to Marc and the team for creating positive and productive environments for team members this year, and investing in building ‘the Diesdas way’. You’ll hear more about this in our blog next year.
Jonathan, our Head of Strategy, not only became a father this year, but he also made the strategy team feel like it was born again. Revising existing strategy approaches, developing clear proposal modules and better dovetailing with the other disciplines have been just some of his many tasks this year.
Last but not least, I have to say a few words about Tinka. Our Head of People and Culture has held the team together this year. Her support and motivation for the team have been hugely appreciated. Tinka has also made leaps forward in multiple processes, and her years of experience and insight make her the ideal collaborator and advisor in the leadership group.
Strangers by nature
2022 was the year of workations. Our people worked from all over the world: Brazil, New Zealand, South Africa, Europe, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia and the USA. Below you find two impressions from our Developer Isa.
I drink wine
This year’s Christmas party was held at Kochende Welten in Berlin and we had a blast. It was nothing like our online gaming hangout last year, and for this, we are eternally grateful.
Apart from our Christmas party, we had regular team lunches in the office, a nice (if stormy) summer event, and a design team trip to Vienna for the ‘Forwards’ Conference, and our PM’s descended on ProductCamp in Berlin.
Don’t you remember
Three of our colleagues celebrated five years at Diesdas this year! Nicolas, who is still doing a sabbatical, was the second full-time employee and what a journey it has been. We can’t wait for him to be back!
Our dear Sophie started in Office Management and is not only a great mother but also an exceptional Project Manager for many years. Diesdas is Sophie and the other way around.
Last but not least, five years ago we chatted to a very polite British chap to freelance for us a bit. That bit of freelancing turned into five years at Diesdas and Sev is not only a wonderful human being but a dear friend.
To all of you, thank you again for your time with us. I certainly enjoyed every second of it.
Rumour has it
We’re excited to launch our new brand and website, which tell the story of our origin and development, while looking to the future of Diesdas to leverage the collective skills we’ve built. We have our clients and our team to thank for our evolution. In the face of the challenges of 2022, we’re grateful that we’ve been able to continue to use cutting-edge technology to develop and maintain user-centric digital products.
We all wish you happy and relaxing holidays with your loved ones, and all the best for 2023.
See you on the other side!
A special thanks to Ella for helping me write this post. 🙌
Diesdas.digital is a company for design, strategy and code in Berlin, featuring a multidisciplinary team of designers, developers and strategists. We create tailor-made digital solutions with an agile mindset and a smile on our faces. Let’s work together!
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