How was the year for us? What did we achieve during 2020?
An extremely challenging year for everyone; we were forced to leave our beautiful offices and stay at home for most of the year. Our team adapted quickly and we did not miss a beat in spite of all the drawbacks and challenges. We pushed forward and got great things done, and we are proud of all the things we accomplished during this year.
Xmartlabs 8th Anniversary
We celebrated our birthday on February 29th, a week before Uruguay's first COVID-19 case. Uruguay has been handling the situation successfully. We at Xmartlabs showed that we are up to the challenge, and this has allowed us to keep our team safe and to continue developing our products.
XL's 8th anniversary.
Freshly re-designed Website
After several months of hard work and planning, we were able to launch the 4th complete overhaul of our site which we believe better represents who we are and what we do.
Haven't seen it yet? Take a look at xmartlabs.com.
Talks & Meetings
In spite of the limitations due to COVID, we stayed active in the community, and, on May 10-11th, we spoke at the App Builders conference, one of the most popular Apple developer conferences. Peter Steinberger and Chris Eidhof were some of the big names of the iOS community that took the stage. Rodrigo Arsuaga delivered our vision on how small teams can build and scale open-source projects.
2020's Swift Montevideo Meetup was held as an online event. That did not stop us from sharing our knowledge about CoreML and Swift language improvements with the attendees. We hope to meet up with the community at the 2021 events. Not part of the Swift Montevideo community yet? Join us here.
In November, Agustin Hernandez, our CEO & Co-Founder of Xmartlabs, appeared on the DataLatam and Bigdateame podcasts and talked about Edge AI and Lanthorn.ai, an in-house product that aims to predict and mitigate "hot spots" for COVID-19 transmission by using existing camera systems in closed locations.
Workshops on Gender Inequality Issues
The woman-to-man ratio is quite uneven in the IT industry, and although we have consciously worked to narrow this difference, we are still no exception. At Xmartlabs, we are fully committed to providing equal opportunities for everyone and mitigating any gender differences and prejudices that may affect our team mates.
In September, and while still respecting all COVID-19 safety measures, we held a series of workshops regarding how we wanted to handle inequality and sexist situations within our team.
We talked about Feminism and its history, about everyday situations soaked in sexism, about the gender wage gap, and about how these things affect us, whatever our gender or sexuality.
Open Source
As always, we continue to update and improve our open-source projects, Eureka, Bender, XLPagerTabStrip, XLActionController, and many more!
We launched the React Native Line library to help developers integrate with Line SDK. Check out the announcement in this blog's article.
New open-source libraries are coming in 2021, stay tuned!
Wall Art
Distance brought us closer than ever and, after we got back to the office, we decided it was time to bring some color into House#2. Our team self-organized and in less than 2 days we painted this awesome wall art.
Check out the following hyper-lapse showing the process from the beginning to the end.
Voice Message to Text App
Early in December, we launched Voice Message to Text, an iOS utility app that uses AI to turn WhatsApp audios into text. In the first 3 days in the AppStore and with no publicity, it was downloaded 3k times. Numbers keep growing!
If you often receive audio texts at wrong time... the app is for you! Download it from AppStore here.
Lanthorn.ai
At Xmartlabs, we understand the power of teamwork, so we partnered with Galliot to create lanthorn.ai which helps companies re-open with as many safety measures as possible. Lanthorn.ai makes it possible for organizations to have a safe working environment by regulating the use of masks, ensuring minimal distance between individuals, and providing analytic data to optimize the workspace. Unlike traditional solutions, Lanthorn keeps data private and runs on affordable Nvidia Jetson Nano devices using your current IP camera infrastructure. Visit lanthorn.ai to know more.
Team Growth
We end the year with 80+ Xmartlabers. Our team of product developers, engineers, and designers keeps growing, not just in numbers but also onboarding new team members with new capabilities, strengthening our expertise and the services we offer.
Interested in working with us? Check out the open positions at xmartlabs.com/careers.
In spite of some of the obvious challenges we’ve all faced during this year, we’re proud of what our team has accomplished. We’re looking forward to keep on collaborating with the community, our partners, and clients, and to build strong relationships that make a positive impact. We hope that 2021 brings us back to our normal pre-covid life.
Happy Holidays and a happy new year to everyone! See you in 2021!
