Building stronger teams: Key takeaways from Sogody’s Winter Summit ‘22

The Winter Summit is an annual event that serves as a crucial opportunity for our team to come together and focus on our key goals and objectives. For the second year around, we utilize this summit to promote good code practices like reusability, readability, and maintainability in our work. This is essential for ensuring that our code is both efficient and effective and that it can be easily understood and maintained by others.

In addition to these technical goals, the Winter Summit also serves as an opportunity for us to strengthen inter-team knowledge sharing and build a stronger, more cohesive team.

By working together and sharing our collective knowledge and experience, we can continue to raise the bar for ourselves and our team, and continue to deliver outstanding results for our clients.

As we reflect on the success of Sogody’s Winter Summit, we are excited to share with you some of the most noteworthy moments!

Sogody’s milestones

The ‘22 Winter Summit began with a powerful presentation from our CEO, Lorik, who shared the exciting milestones and successes that Sogody has achieved this year.

Lorik highlighted our impressive growth in terms of both revenue and client base, as well as the many successful projects and initiatives that we have undertaken throughout the year. He also spoke about the hard work and dedication of our team members, who have played an integral role in our company’s success.

In addition to sharing our accomplishments, Lorik also provided insight into Sogody’s future goals and plans, further emphasizing the commitment that we have to delivering exceptional results for our clients.

He underlined the importance of using the Winter Summit as an opportunity to come together as a team and brainstorm new ideas, keep up with new technologies and industry trends and set new goals for the upcoming year.

Navigating the path to international certifications

In a similar tone-setting way, we presented our mission to offer every team member the opportunity for personal and professional development in the tech industry.

As Sogody, we are committed to providing our team with the resources and support they need to excel in their careers. To that end, we created an internal process that will enable our team to earn international certifications.

Era, our Head of Technical Brilliance Initiative (BriTech), held an engaging and informative session that highlighted the many benefits of obtaining international certifications, including improved career prospects and the ability to stay current with the latest developments and trends in the field and apply them to assess, solve and create. Furthermore, she provided a clear and actionable plan for how our team members can enter that process and start working towards their own certifications.

She explained that by delivering high-quality assignments on our Techathons, team members will show, and further build, the necessary skills and knowledge to apply for the international certification in their areas of expertise.

Web browsers decoded: unlocking the secrets of perceived performance

After this informative and motivating presentation, Tomor, our CTO, expertly delved into the intricacies of web browsers and their impact on website performance. He started by providing a comprehensive understanding of how a typical web browser works and how it processes and renders web pages, including various components and processes involved.

Together, we went on to discuss how the inner workings of a web browser can affect the perceived performance of a website, emphasizing the importance of understanding the user experience and how different factors can impact their perception of the website’s speed and responsiveness. Tomor provided compelling examples and real-world scenarios that effectively illustrated his points.

The CTO then navigated the question of what can be done to improve the perceived performance of a website, highlighting the significance of measuring first, optimizing as needed, and being mindful of trade-offs. He emphasized the importance of avoiding premature optimization and instead focusing on the areas that would have the greatest impact on the user experience. He also provided insights and tips on when it’s best to take action.

Tomor’s presentation was extremely well-received by the team, raising compelling questions, and providing valuable insights and practical advice on optimizing web browsers for better performance. It was a great reminder of the importance of understanding the user experience and the impact that web browsers have on perceived performance.

Leveraging workshops for innovative solutions

An insightful and engaging discussion on the importance of workshops was also part of the event. This year, the team had undertaken a challenging project that required the development of a web application that could extract articles and perform multilingual sentiment analysis.

In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the workshop process, we have detailed the specific assignments and actions taken by the teams to deliver the required web application in a separate article.

We encourage interested parties to read further and gain deeper insights by following the provided link.

Going to cloud and back

Our open forum with Prof. Dr. Blerim Rexha about cloud computing and cloud security was as insightful as it gets, as we delved into the many important aspects of this critical topic. Among other things, we discussed how cloud computing has become the default approach for most companies, and what this change in development approach implies for the future of software development.

We also explored the question of whether or not companies should ever consider on-premise solutions, and how cloud computing affects our development process and developer experience. Additionally, we discussed the importance of managing and securing third-party APIs and services as well as ensuring data privacy and compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA.

Throughout the discussion, Prof. Dr. Blerim Rexha shared many valuable insights and tips on how to better engineer secure and compliant cloud-based solutions. Among the key takeaways were the importance of always building for security first, and keeping in mind that the “weakest link” principle always applies, especially for security. He also emphasized that every line of code matters and that developers should not forget about best practices for secure data storage and transmission.

One of the most important points that came out of the discussion was the fact that protecting clients’ privacy protects developers’ privacy as well. At the end of the day, we are all clients in some way, and it’s essential that we all work together to ensure that data is secure and compliant with regulations.

The open forum was a great opportunity for us to learn from one of the leading experts in the field and to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and best practices involved in cloud computing and cloud security.

Peer review and fun learning

In conclusion, Sogody’s Winter Summit ‘22 was a triumph, with our team engaging in a plethora of highly productive and enjoyable activities that not only emphasized the importance of good code practices and inter-team knowledge sharing, but also provided ample opportunities for personal and professional development. The summit served as a premier platform for our team to come together, acquire new skills, and strengthen our collective bond through the quality time spent during the two days.

We wrapped up with a team code review and discussion, which enabled us to review the work of each group and provide constructive feedback on areas of improvement. This open and honest dialogue was instrumental in ensuring that we were all on the same page moving forward.

In addition, the fun quiz on development best practices was a valuable learning tool that not only provided an interactive and enjoyable way to learn, but also served as a reminder of the key principles that we should adhere to in our work.

We are steadfast in our commitment to delivering exceptional results for our clients and providing our team members with the resources and support they need to excel in their careers.

The summit was a powerful reminder of the importance of teamwork and collaboration in achieving our goals, and we look forward to working together in the months ahead.