This (awesome) 2013 ended. It was a great year for my work, my hobby (conference organizing) and my family.
In January I went to Berlin to live (for a week) in the European startup valley, I met a lot of interesting people, getting advises and learned that no matter the skills your (Italian) company has if you don’t have a proper point of presence (office, salesman, desk at a coworking, continuous presence at events) no one will trust you. (Sad) Lesson learned.
In January I also started an intrapreneurship advising in one of the Unicredit companies. It was amazing; the energy we spent in the further three months was rewarded by the positive (and enthusiastic) customers feedback of the client. Sadly the project was abandoned to itself due to some managers’ lack of vision.
In the same period, I also moved to another apartment, more or less. I bought the adjacent apartment and merged with mine, packing stuff in a room and unpacking it in another one. It was a physically exhausting job but it worth any single drop of sweat. Now I have a real kitchen. :)
22th of February, Federica have birth. I lived the next month with severe sleep deprivation (that it’s not entirely resolved). In a way or another that helped me to focus on writing the Javascript best practices book released in mid-June. I was quite afraid to be a father… I was not sure to be ready, but after I saw her first smile, every doubt fade away from me. Now my main topic is how to teach her to love Transformers instead of Teletubbies…
Between March and May, I participated (and organized) phpToStart, the 1st edition of Kerning, JsDay, and phpDay. Kerning was awesome (and the 2014 edition will be great too), I need to thank the GrUSP which believed the project and gave me (and the other conference founders) the funds to start it. Both JsDay and phpDay sold-out. For the second time. Even if my time spent coding is a fading memory of the past, I love those two conferences and all the people involved.
I also find the time to work for Oltretata with the Ideato newcomer Amelia; we participated in different business and startups events such as the SMAU. During 2013, thanks to Amelia, Oltretata’s user-base grown by a 5% factor month to month and reached in December more than 10.000 users. We also worked and released a flash sales shop dedicated to families with children.
In June we organized the 1st ideato country with all the staff of the company. During the 2012’s winter, three of our developers left ideato, someone to try a new career as a startupper, as an entrepreneur or to live the experience of the big company. We worked hard to fill the left hole (in our hearth and our skills), but in the end, with four newcomers (Michele, Vittorio, Riccardo, and Francesco) we grew a new marvelous team delocalized in a coworking in Ancona founded by Francesco, an ideato founder, and co-sponsored by Ideato itself.
2013 was also a year of revolution in ideato, we (finally) get a proper accountant, Matteo, leaving Antonio free to concentrate on his sysadmin job and we worked hard, during the 2nd ideato country, to create a better company culture and to renew our vision. I will return on this in another post, and now I can only say that Remote seems wrote on us.
The company grew not only in the number of people, but we also had a +20% in our revenue and the 2014’s previsions are positive.
One of the ideas I had a couple of years ago during the LeWeb was to do travel abroad, with the excuse to take part to a big event, with some startuppers, entrepreneurs, and colleagues (or even competitors). I did it (again) in October in Dublin for the WebSummit with the pretext to go with Youcare’s founder (we invested in with a work-for-equity approach) to talk with possible investors. As for the Berlin trip, it was a great way to find new (business) ideas, share some knowledge, and study what is happening outside Italy.
From September to December I participated in the organization of 5 conferences: wpday, symfonyday, magentoday, nosqlday and BetterSoftware. The latest one was a great challenge, working to rebuild from scratch a five years old conference it’s not an easy task, but it seems we did it excellently.
I also find the time to had a couple of speeches in English (finally I found enough courage) and I take part in a lean startup machine workshop as a mentor.
For 2014? I am working on a new conference and to the others. I’m also collecting some ideas for another book (this time about lean methodologies), and I’ll work, hard, to help ideato to reach foreign markets.
Oh.. I’ll enjoy any single day with my precious family that supports (and bears) me. :)