The end of the year always brings with it important reflections on the work done so far. This is even more true for eventful and intense years, such as 2016 at IBV. It is just natural to look back to move forward, always one step closer to our vision, but also to take a moment and be proud of all that we accomplished in the past 12 months.
We had a fantastic year, full of innovations, news and great events. In February, we presented a prototype version of our app CollaBoard at the Microsoft TechDays in Baden, Switzerland, on a Surface Hub, months before the device was delivered to customers worldwide.
At the beginning of spring, on March 21st, we moved into our lovely new office. It is a beautiful location just outside Zurich, surrounded by breathtaking landscapes (one of them is the backdrop of our HoloLens picture below – yes, we love it too).
As we continued working on CollaBoard as well as many other projects and customized solutions, we received first our two HoloLens in April and then our three Surface Hubs in June, which we immediately put on heavy rotation. Really, do not even think about joining IBV if your air-tap and bloom are rusty.
Now HoloLens-powered, our Lead Developer Gian Paolo Santopaolo held three HoloLens Hands-On meetups for our Zurich-based community NUI World at our office between May and July, open to all developers interested in getting started with holographic applications (click here to subscribe to our events).
In June, we were joined by Chief Digital Officer Alessandro Teglia and Senior Software Developer Engineer Corrado Cavalli, and over the summer we were in full swing, presenting CollaBoard at a Swiss Life event and getting ready for our big moment in September.
The month opened with an innovative Holographic Hackfest at our offices and ended with our #IBVDay16 – CollaBoard Launch Event at the Swissôtel Zurich, which featured a keynote from our CEO Andreas Görög and presentations from Microsoft’s Giorgio Cifani, IBV COO Michael Görög, CDO Alessandro Teglia and Lead Developer Gian Paolo Santopaolo. It has been wonderful to showcase CollaBoard and explain our vision to a room full of attendees, and a lot of fun to talk over an apéro after the sessions, while bringing everybody up to speed with air-tapping.
The fall saw us present at four more (public) events: the Innobit Technology Apéro in Basel, the Microsoft Germany Partner Conference in Bremen (#dpk2016), the Strategy Days at the Dolder Hotel in Zurich and the Microsoft Technical Summit in Darmstadt. In these occasions, we had the chance to speak with countless business owners and professionals interested in Surface Hub and HoloLens solutions, and we can confirm that these technologies are here to stay, and change the way we work on a daily basis. We knew it: after all, it is exactly for this reason that we developed CollaBoard, and we are so excited to see our predictions become reality, day after day.
Which is why we literally can’t wait for 2017, a year that announces itself to be even more full of events and innovations in IT. We will talk about this at length over the next weeks: stay tuned.
For now, we would like to wish all readers, customers, partners and event attendees a fantastic holiday season and a very Happy New Year. Semper ad majora!