What we learned in 2022

WE LEARNED A LOT THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. LET US SHARE OUR KNOWLEDGE WITH YOU!

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it helped our team learn a lot of new things in 2022.

At The Virtual Forge we value learning.

This isn’t just something we say, it’s something we practice in our meetings, slack channels, and our day-to-day. There’s a passionate perseverance when it comes to problem solving. It ignites like a fire throughout our team. You find people deep in focus mode, working to find a solution for a problem that others would have given up on long ago. Our Co-CEO, Matt Wicks, described it best with this line “it’s the sheer joy of learning how to solve a new problem”.

So this year, although we worked on several engrossing projects, hosted events, earned additional certifications, and returned to in-person team building, we want to spend the rest of this blog highlighting some things our team learned.

Outside of learning, our other collective passion is data. We carefully examine how it flows throughout our clients’ organizations, how it speaks to other data, how it tells us and our clients things we may have overlooked. Because we enjoy sharing, we have spent the year perfecting ways to show our clients what their data can do for them.

Our team spent a lot of time in Power BI and AWS QuickSight throughout the year. Some learned it from the ground up, while others explored new features. Anthony Allen, a Data Engineer, spent a lot of time dealing with the challenges of data formatting. And from that a beautiful friendship was born “Power Automate is my new best friend! It has allowed us to add a pre-load screening.”

Just as we blend the art of UX/UI and the science of data in our software development (Yes, that’s a shameless plug. I learned it’s important to share the awesome things you’re proud of your team for.), we also blend our technical and people skills.

Our Head of People and Culture, Tiago Vintém took some time away from his already exceptional talent of people management, to learn Power BI. From there he harnessed the power of HR Analytics and bestowed it upon The Virtual Forge. While on the flip side of that, André Cavalheiro, Head of Backend, learned “how to manage real people instead of code.” Code doesn’t have its own opinions - and sometimes that’s a good thing.

Collectively we at The Virtual Forge re-learned how thankful we are for the wonderful people that are a part of our client base. We’re incredibly lucky to work with some of the finest.

Just like the rest of the world, the year had ups and downs. It was challenging, it was joyful, it had some goodbyes, a lot of hellos, and many new paths to forge. We’re excited to see what the new year brings and hope you join us for the journey.

“Creativity and imagination can change dead-ends to open roads.” - Bernardo Borges

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