2022 is coming to an end, and we’d like to take this opportunity to give ourselves a big pat on the back. And in the spirit of good PR, we want to tell you all what we’ve accomplished this year. That’s something that we simply don’t do often enough, despite our best intentions. We want to show that we’re still here, and and to show that, yes, in fact, self-organization works! Otherwise we wouldn’t still be here after 4.5 years.
So, here’s our wrap-up of the accomplishments of the last year that we’re most proud of.
Our projects
We’ve started, continued, and completed a few larger, and several smaller projects. With each of them we’ve had fun helping our partners in their digitalization endeavors, we’ve learned a great deal of technical and domain knowledge, and we’ve gotten to know some lovely people.
1. Rental system for the Filmarche
For the self-organized film school Filmarche we’ve made a new digital rental system. This was more complex than originally thought, as there were complex rights and roles management bundled up in the project.
2. Interactive incident map for Berliner Register Treptow-Köpenick
Here, we helped the register point Treptow-Köpenick to show a map overview of all the registered racist, anti-semitic, anti-LGBTIQ*, anti-Romani and Sinti, far right, chauvinist, ableist, or anti-feminist incidents.
3. The election campaign app for die LINKE
As well as the incidents map, we also completed another map-based app early in the year: the campaign app for the party die LINKE . This is intended to help people to get a grasp of which campaign events are taking place in their vicinity, or to help other, more active, supporters by helping them in the coordination of campaign events.
4. Kulturkalender
Recently, together with the team of the Berlin based NGO KulturLeben we worked together on a digital calender, especially intended for people with disabilities, to show an easy overview of cultural events in the city. The calender shows not only which events are accessible for which forms of disability, but is itself intended to be as accessible as possible. The calender will be released as part of the Special Olympics Worldgames 2023
5. Taz: the app of the Berlin Tageszeitung
And, of course, we’re still working together on the newspaper reader app for the taz . We’re thrilled that we could be part of the three year journey.
Our team
Unfortunately, this year we had to say goodbye to one of our members. We wish them all the best, and we’ll see them soon! On the plus side however, we were able to say hello to three colleagues. Not only have three new people, with new expertise, experience, and ideas become part of our collective, but we’ve also gotten closer to our goal: having a small team working on each project, and nobody working alone on a project. Because, despite some persistent clichés, programming is no lone-wolf job, done alone in some dark place. Only in a team can we learn from one another, and develop ourselves further, which at the end of the day will produce better quality in our work.
In June, in our long-overdue future weekend, which unfortunately was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, we talked through our working style and vision. Needs and desires, values and emphasis change with time, as well as changing when the team itself grows. In order for the group, and the people within it, to be able to negotiate with one another, we have to communicate with one another, and figure out together our fundamental values.
We’re still working towards the goal of having a good, self-determined working environment, which we can all help shape together, as well as make a decent living from. This, as well as why collectives are downright super, and also worth considering in the IT sector, we talked about with Daniel from Golem.de.
For the third time we re-voted our board. The rotation of responsible persons is something that we find important in getting rid of knowledge hierarchies. Now there is no founding member of the cooperative in the managing board, which shows that the collective works as a group, instead of relying on a few individual people having all of the main responsibilities.
Summary
We’re looking forward, full of hope, and with a lot of energy, to the new year, and new challenges. Most importantly we want to tackle the following things for the new year:
- More collective: We want to carry on, and find ways of taking on and organizing a bigger collective structure.
- More networking: We want to connect and work together more with other collectives (IT or otherwise).
- More accessibility: We especially want to promote more accessibility. The pertinence thereof has become even clearer during the work together with KulturLeben.
But, first of all, we’re taking a well earned winter break.