Time for another Year in Review! Here’s what has been going on at Kisko for the last 12 months. We also encourage you to make your own list! It’s a great way to reflect on the previous year! 😊

In 2023 we got a lot of new awesome Kiskonians in the team and ended the year with 31 people in the company. We also boosted up our marketing and sales efforts and hope to see the results in the near future.

The year contained quite a lot of artificial intelligence research and discussions within the company. Vesa and Antti A released four new ATK-hetki podcast episodes in which they also talked about AI.

We got awesome new company shirts, enhanced our internal knowledge sharing and strategy communication and spent a lot of time together at different kinds of events and parties. There were a lot of Kisko events during the year e.g., Kisko Alumni Party, Winter Day Party in January, Summer Day Party in June, multiple board game evenings, and other afterwork activities. We also went to see Kaurismäki’s Kuolleet lehdet movie with English subtitles with our multilingual team. In September we traveled to the Euruko conference in Vilnus, Lithuania.

Team

Siiri Jurmu has been working a full year as Kisko’s Happiness Officer, woop woop! We got a lot of new people in the team in 2022 and early 2023. She has been greatly involved in recruitment and also iterated our onboarding process along the way.

Siiri has learned a lot of AI in general and how to utilise it in different kinds of HR tasks.

On a lighter note, Siiri got introduced to a robot vacuum cleaner named Pertsa. 😀 Cleaning the house has never been so easy! Fun times!

Ida Mänty: We created a useful tool that helps us create offers faster. In sales, we started a new partnership to reach more potential customers and started doing bolder marketing together with another partner. We dived into past data to plan for the future. We also clarified our sales operations based on data. We reached our revenue goals with growth by more than 20% compared to last year. We've been helping entrepreneurs in the digital world and prepping pilots such as

Remontic: We made a phone app for tracking renovations for our client Arttu Virkkunen. It brings together the client, contractor, and supervisor to make sure projects finish on time. The app is being tested and will be out in early 2024.

On a lighter note, Ida got a robot vacuum named Ismo. 😀 Ismo loves to clean! Fun times!

Teemu Palokangas joined Kisko on the first day of this year and has been a member of Tougo and Puhti product teams.

At Kisko, he enjoys direct customer contact, which keeps things factual and in focus. He also likes teams where responsibilities are shared, because it provides the best opportunity to do all kinds of tasks and constantly learn. 👨🏻‍🎓

The unexpected benefit at Kisko has been the deep dive into heavily emoji-based Slack communication that helps in maintaining remote work sanity. 🥼

On a lighter note, Teemu has a semi-new manual vacuum cleaner affectionately named Dyson V8 Absolute that he uses to anti-dust and anti-cat-hair the family apartment every Saturday morning. It sucks. 🧹

Eetu Mattila has been focusing on mental wellbeing this year and feel like that has improved a lot. On work related matters Eetu’s focus has been on improving his skill on software architecture and feature planning and he has now have a much better top down view on how to build good software. He has also been interested in Rails 7 Hotwire features and even worked with Helsinki University to produce Hotwire materias for their Ruby on Rails course which taught him a lot!

Eetu graduated as a Bachelor of Science in Computer science, at least hopefully, still waiting for University of Helsinki to confirm his graduation 😅 

On Eetu’s summer vacation I cycled from Helsinki to Oulu, next year's goal is from Oulu to Inari! Also improved his disc golf drive by miles!

On a lighter note, Eetu got a robot vacuum named Nico. 😀 Nico loves to get stuck on my carpets! Fun times!

Antti Salonen: Year 2023 was a year of big team growth for us. Personally Antti has been getting acquainted with everyone and their thinking. Antti is happy that our diverse team is growing in different skills.

On the project front Antti has been involved with Graani.fi concept planning this year. Graani aims to make the life of small local producers easier.

Personally this was the first year as a father for Antti, 100% less sleep, 100% more amazement. Antti has also learned more about balancing family life and work life.

And of course a lot of testing and especially philosophising about Artificial Intelligence this year.

Tien Nguyen: 2023 was another great year at Kisko. In the first half of the year we shipped out Heta, an application that facilitates communication between Heka (Helsinki City housing company) and their residents. And for the second half of the year, Tien and her teammates have been busy developing a lot of new features for Domo (AYY housing application system). 

This year summer marked Tien's first ever trip to the USA with her parents, where she got to spend time with many of her relatives and also attended her best friend's wedding!

On a lighter note, Tien got a robot vacuum named Mai. 😀 Mai loves to wake us up in the morning for its scheduled job. Fun times!

Heikki Venhola: Looking back at 2023, it's been quite a ride. Heikki joined the crew in September, and it's been awesome. Made new friends and learned a ton of new stuff – always a good vibe.

Work's been a wild mix of challenges and victories. Heikki is hoping for the chance to keep this momentum going! Excited for what's next and ready to tackle whatever comes his way.

Oh, and with robot vacuums being a thing now, Heikki is thinking of getting one for himself. Here's to more adventures and good times in 2024!

Our whole team sends a huge thanks to our clients, partners and everyone else involved, and wishes you all a Happy New Year! 🥳