Curiosity Drive or Why I Moved from the US to Finland

In toDEI's episode, we discuss the past, the present, and the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech field. Starting with the basics, like what DEI actually means and what's its purpose, but also addressing more complex topics, like the importance of having diverse leadership, how to measure DEI, and how to build a proper DEI strategy. Come as you are and join the talk with our guests, Cassandra Shapiro & Jasmin Assulin. GuestsCassandra Shapiro is Reaktor's Global Head of DEI. Together with Jasmin Assulin from deidei she is working to embed DEI into Reaktor's global strategy and operational practises. She has a background in communications and marketing at social enterprises. Jasmin Assulin is the CEO and co-founder of the Helsinki-based DEI agency deidei and an award-winning DEI professional. Following a collaboration with Reaktor in 2021, the collaboration expanded and deidei was brought on to be the external partner for Reaktor’s global DEI efforts. HostsAnna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Oles Datsko is a tech impostor and Fork Pull Merge Push podcast producer who oftentimes cannot resist and chips in to the conversation. In his free time, Oles loves making silly art and taking his cat Miksi on adventures.  ReferencesDear Future Colleague, I learned to embrace my neurodiversity as a developer. And so can you. Dear Tech Industry: How to be a good ally to womenThe digital rights of LGBTQ+ communities: Five steps towards an inclusive design processDEI requires vision, persistence, and patienceAbout ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a global technology consultancy that designs, builds, and scales transformative digital products for today’s most forward-thinking companies. 

We continue discussing the future of work, and in today’s episode, we look at it from the AI angle. What can we expect from AI democratization, and what are the dangers of AI hype? Is today’s AI-assisted software development any better than just auto-fill? How to make sense of the emerging generative models and expand your creativity? Tune in as we address these and more questions with our guests Johan Himberg and Jimi Hyvärinen.GuestsJimi Hyvärinen is an Art Director with a strong background in visual storytelling through films and photography. He is also a big tech geek and loves approaching briefs through tech glasses. He’s always hungry to create unexpected concepts. For the past five-plus years, he has been working with big global brands locally in Finland, as well as at the Nordic level. He’s experienced in building brands that operate in all Nordic countries. Johan Himberg has been marinated in working with data and AI-related things in research, start-ups, and corporations for 25 years. His field is currently called data science or even artificial intelligence.HostsAnna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Oles Datsko is a tech impostor and Fork Pull Merge Push podcast producer who oftentimes cannot resist and chips in to the conversation. In his free time, Oles loves making silly art and taking his cat Miksi on adventures.  ReferencesElements of AI — free online courses developed by Reaktor in partnership with the University of Helsinki and designed to be empowered, not threatened, by artificial intelligence. Together, they built the Elements of AI to teach the basics of AI to people from a wide range of backgrounds.Do You Really Need Artificial Intelligence in Your Softwate? — Fork Pull Merge Push s2e2jambo - maailma — music video created with Stable DiffusionAbout ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a global technology consultancy that designs, builds, and scales transformative digital products for today’s most forward-thinking companies.

Is the future of work co-located, hybrid, or online? How can we efficiently integrate design & development teams around agile ways of working? Are there any shortcuts in that process? Our guests, Gabi & Panu, bring unique theoretical and practical perspectives to the table. Tune in and share this with your teammates. 😉GuestsPanu Korhonen is a designer and has been in this business since -86. That is NINETEEN-eighty-six - almost 40 years ago. So he has seen quite a lot of different ways of doing design and development of digital products.Most of the design processes have been quite bad. Therefore, he is constantly looking for ways to shake the thinking on this, especially his own.Gabriella Ingman is an agile coach, in her 6th year at Reaktor. She facilitates, trains and coaches individuals, teams, and organizations through change toward better Monday mornings for employees, customers, and the organization as a whole. We observe, analyze and then help the customer find the best ways forward.HostAnna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.ReferencesReaktor’s training, coaching, and transformation services; Marty Cagan Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group);Manifesto for Agile Software Development;Designer’s four roles in agile development;Malan, Pais, Skelton Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow;Niklas Modig, Pär Åhlström This is Lean;Marshall B. Rosenberg , Deepak Chopra Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life;Sociocracy 3.0 online tools;Daniel J. Siegel Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation;Richard J. Hackman Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor,  a creative technology partner for forward-thinking companies and societies, based in Helsinki, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Lisbon, and Tokyo.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. Check our open positions and apply now!

Is development becoming obsolete? We invited Miku and Pauliina to talk about software engineering — how the roles have been shaping, what the current trends and challenges are, and how we can shape the future of our profession. Tune in and join our semi-practical, semi-philosophical conversation.GuestsPauliina started her career as a communications consultant, but slowly life took her back to her childhood hobby - coding. She moved all the way to Australia to study at a coding bootcamp and has now been working as a software developer for over 5 years. She still thinks it was the best decision of her life. What she loves most about coding is how tangible it feels to build software one piece at a time and how rewarding it is to solve problems with technology. In her free time,, you will find her on a yoga mat or wandering in a forest.With nearly 20 years of experience, Mikael is a passionate, future-oriented technology leader with a cultivated interest in cutting-edge technologies and the methodologies of creating exceptional digital products. While he currently has limited time to actually code at work, he still does it as a hobby. Mikael is a fan of functional programming and loves exploring new tech, surfing, and cooking.Mikael’s core expertise and interests are the design of technology organizations, technology strategy, business, and digital strategy, innovation, software and enterprise architectures, modern process methodologies, modern leadership, self-organization, systems thinking, data, and AI.HostAnna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Guest HostRoss Langley is a human-centered designer from Reaktor Helsinki. He loves helping teams excel in challenging environments. Ross shines when he does concept modeling, validates ideas, or makes celebrity impressions. References:Malan, Pais, Skelton: Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast FlowCagan: Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group)Forsgren, Humble, Kim: Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology OrganizationsGoogle Cloud 2022: Announcing the 2022 Accelerate State of DevOps Report: A deep dive into securityAbout ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor,  a creative technology partner for forward-thinking companies and societies, based in Helsinki, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Lisbon, and Tokyo.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. Check our open positions and apply now!

In many organizations, analytics are still often put on the back burner. Why? We invited analytics expert Matias Muhonen to talk about that in this episode. We touch upon the basics of analytics, the whys and hows of data collection, management, and security.GuestMatias Muhonen is an analyst, make-it-happener and a full-stack developer. He has been gathering and analysing data, doing experimentation, building services and making work better at Reaktor for six years now. Matias's passion is creating online services that produce actual outcomes and both business and end-user value. In his free time he enjoys cycling both on paved and unpaved surfaces. Matias is also interested in philosophy and psychology — and trying to better understand the world and us humans. Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.ReferencesGoogle Analytics - good default analytics toolKlipfolio - simple but powerful tool for visualising data No analytics, no outcomes, feature factoryGood books:General thinking for everybodyExperimentation and Growth Hacking About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!

In today's episode, we dive into the admin world in the Reaktor context. For that, we invited Robin Laurén, a full-stack admin, who's been with Reaktor for over nine years. We talk about what qualities make a great sysadmin and why empathy and people skills are as necessary as tech skills. We touch upon the topics of data security and mobile device management (MDM). Finally, Robin shares some fascinating stories from his years of experience working in IT. GuestRobin Laurén is a full-stack admin who’s been delivering hugs to users, workstations, servers, and networks since 2001. Robin aspires to provide usable and honest security. His main objective is to enable people to do their best work. Outside of work, Robin is interested in singing, theatre, IoT and home automation, photography, radio, and video production.Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.ReferencesRobin’s ex-boss: José Ramos-Horta (then foreign minister, now president, of Timor-Leste)Robin’s theatre gigs: Fallåker (soon playing Panik på kliniken - it runs in the family)Finns (now playing Pinocchio 🤥)Robin’s blog, Learning in publicRobin’s dog Kelvin 🐶About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!

In this episode, we talk about continuous learning with Laura Beatris, full-stack developer from Reaktor Amsterdam. Laura opens up about why teaching others also helps her grow professionally. She also shares her learning techniques & processes. GuestLaura Beatris is a Software Developer at Reaktor, originally from Brasil but currently based in the Netherlands. In addition to writing code, Laura also loves learning by teaching others. She's currently studying more in-depth GraphQL and Elixir.When not coding, she's playing music and traveling around the world. Concerts and music festivals are the ultimate reasons to travel for Laura. She loves to take photos of singers and fans having their best time.Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.ReferencesNotability/Notion for digital note taking"How to Take Smart Notes" book - Get more in depth about the whole science behind writing good notes during study sessions"The Power of Habit" book - Understand how habit loops are important for a consistent study journeyLaura’s social media:InstagramLinkedinTwitterAbout ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!

In today’s episode, we talk about open source, developer communities, and side-projects. Jesse Luoto from Reaktor Helsinki shares his hard-earned lessons from planning, launching, and promoting dozens of side projects of all shapes and sizes. What’s the right balance between the speed and quality of your open source project? When you should launch, how to promote your work, and how to maintain it with the help of dev communities? Tune in to get answers to these and many more questions.GuestJesse Luoto is a full-stack developer and an open-source advocate at Reaktor. Jesse is driven by imperfection and irritation. He likes to solve practical problems and makes indie games in his free time.Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.ReferencesGoogle Analytics library (37M monthly downloads)VerbalExpressions (12k stars)Faker.jsOpen collective (they have Fiscal Host service now!)NoSXHacker NewsGithubTwitter About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works. We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!

In this Fork Pull Merge Push episode, we discuss geographic information system (GIS) - not a well-known domain to many. Henna Kalliokoski, a GIS professional and functional programming enthusiast will share her knowledge on GIS data, coordinate systems and e.g. accessibility. GIS data can be used in many different ways and she will shed light on e.g. how open source communities contribute to GIS data and service development.GuestHenna Kalliokoski a full-stack developer and a GIS professional at Reaktor. Henna gets inspired by people and wants to make the world a better place. She believes in the power of open source and open data. In her free time, Henna learns Chineese and enjoys painting.Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.Useful linksOpen Street MapSource code of Digitransit Microsoft AI buildings in Humanitarian OpenStreetMapOpen Source vector tilesOSGeo foundationOpen Geospatial Consortium About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!

In today's episode, we talk with product designer Ross Langley about the feeling of belonging. We talk about change — whether it's changing your career path or moving to another country. Ross walks us through the practicalities of relocation. About different working cultures, in Finland and the US. About dealing with the pandemic, impostor syndrome, and difficult clients. Ross opens up about his experience of burn-out and how he recovered from it. We know that it's common for people in the tech industry to move places for work, so we hope Ross' story will help you. p.s. Reaktor has open positions in offices around the globe. Make sure to check them out and join the team: https://www.reaktor.com/careersGuestRoss Langley is a human-centered designer from Reaktor Helsinki office. He loves helping teams excel in challenging environments. You can see Ross shine when he does concept modeling, validates ideas, or makes celebrity impressions. Hosts Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.About ReaktorFork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!