• December 31, 2019

Valamis’ 2019 Highlights and Goals for 2020

Last year we shared our first-ever highlight blog; a window into the passing year and an opportunity to reflect on all the challenges, highlights, and hard work that has contributed to where we are today as a company.

16 years after our humble beginnings in Joensuu, Finland — Valamis continues to push the boundaries of technology and innovation in learning. Without further ado, here are a few of our favourite highlights from 2019 and goals for 2020.

2019 Highlights

Valamis won awards and received recognition from top analysts:

Acquired companies, new offices, new clients and new employees:

  • Valamis expands office in Boston and Lappeenranta

Released new features & new partnerships:

2019 Valamis Statistics

101 Custom Slack Emojis created, including:

Valbo, an Arctic fox, our chatbot avatar and company mascot

Salamis, referring to our April Fool’s name change prank

A Black hole, to commemorate the first photo ever taken of a black hole in April

Finnish Matti, referring to the “Finnish Nightmares” cartoon character

 Party parrots in many forms

Nationalities + spoken languages

15 nationalities + 18 spoken languages in the company

Valamisians come from:

🇫🇮Finland 🇷🇺Russia 🇳🇱Netherlands
🇬🇧United Kingdom 🇺🇸United States 🇩🇪Germany
🇸🇪Sweden 🇷🇸Serbia 🇭🇺Hungary
🇮🇳India 🇳🇵Nepal 🇮🇷Iran
🇹🇭Thailand 🇨🇴Colombia 🇭🇰Hong Kong/China

 

Sauna time
11,024 hours spent in the sauna

Instagram takeovers
11 #ValamisTakeovers

3 New offices

  • Amsterdam
  • Lappeenranta and Boston moved to a newer and bigger office space

Valbo Travels
Our company mascot has been to 9 countries

2019 brought many celebrations

  • Summer Party
  • Cooking Night
  • How about a marathon?
  • Annual Trip
  • Game Nights
  • Wine and Painting
  • Xmas Parties

This year the Valamis DevDay & Summer Party returned bigger than ever, bringing almost 200 Valamisians to exceptionally warm and sunny Joensuu. The first ever Valamis Games were held and winners (literally) crowned.

In January, we tried cooking Korean food together. It sure is tasty, and also surprisingly fun to cook – at least in this company.

Exercising is important for your physical and mental health – we get that. Valamisians took part in city runs, marathons, fatbiking events, ninja courses and many other sports events to stay sharp.

In 2019, Valamisians traveled to Riga to experience the beautiful old town, medieval castles, and Latvian cuisine.

Having some afterwork drinks, playing games, going to escape room, and enjoy stand-up. Who says no?

One of the new events in 2019 was Wine and Painting, which have proved surprisingly popular. The name says it all: you enjoy some good wine with friends while painting (or trying to paint) a picture. It’s fun, trust us.

Valamis organized Xmas parties and lunches in all offices. In the picture, Santa has come to the Joensuu HQ to share the gifts.

“When I joined the company almost 10 years ago, we had 20 employees. In June 2019, we hired our 200th employee. Growth and internationalization have been the most common factors in my function during the ongoing year. From my point of view, the best highlight of the year 2019 was our first international merger. Instead of growth, our HR goal for 2020 is to make the organization excel in its line of business by finding the best roles for every employee, caring for all employees and achieving operational efficiency.”

Maria Vihtkari, Chief Human Resources Officer

“I have been responsible for Valamis product management, design, and development since January 2019. Over the past year at Valamis, I have enjoyed getting to meet other Valamisians all around the world, and work with some of the biggest companies in the world to discuss their future needs regarding employee skill development. I am passionate about improving Valamis’ customer-focused service design and we will continue to re-organize our organization and processes to support our customers. Our vision for 2020 is to focus on developing Valamis to support the productivity and measurement of learning.”

Pauliina Kulla, Chief Product Officer

A Message from our CEO

“In 2019 we received many positive outcomes as a result of our data-oriented strategy. The new architecture in the major product release of Valamis 4 received interest from all around the globe. In 2020, we will continue to grow by establishing our first office in Asia.”

Jussi Hurskainen, CEO, Valamis