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ConsultantNewsTHE MAGAZINE FOR HEAVYWEIGHT IT CONSULTANTS. NO. 41/2016

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ConsultantNews 41, 2016A Magazine for IT Consultants

Legally responsible editor:Søren Rode

Editors: Jeanett W. Skou redaktion@prodata.dk

Linnea Brix lbx@prodata.dk

Graphics and design:Linnea Brix

Journalists: Linnea Brix

Tina Lee tl@goodworks.dk

Photo:Andreas Bro Hans Peder Sølvbjærg

Publisher:ProData Consult A/S

ProData Consult CopenhagenStamholmen 157 DK-2650 Hvidovre

ProData Consult AarhusHasselager Centervej 9 DK-8260 Viby J

ProData Consult AalborgPromenaden Vestre Havnepromenade 5 DK-9000 Aalborg

Tel. +45 43 43 11 71

info@prodata.dk

www.prodataconsult.com

www.it-consultants.dk

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2016 AND THE FUTURE...Welcome to 2016 and to the first 100% electronic edition of ConsultantNews. We’ve decided to put our money where our mouth is and say goodbye to paper.

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DEVELOPER HERO WITH A TASTE FOR CLOJUREJaob Tjørnholm, partner and CTO at GoMore, has been named 2015 Danish Developer Hero of the Year.

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WEB VS. NATIVEApp developer Ole Gammelgaard and web developer Peter Nielsen chat about their views on advantages, disadvantages and prejudices regarding app technology

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AI, CROSSROADS AND A BRIGHT FUTUREWhat IT trends will grab the spotlight in 2016? ConsultantNews sat down for a chat with Innovation Lab’s CEO.

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CONSULTANTS IN DEMANDProData Consult is on the lookout for heavyweight IT consultants in the following roles and areas.

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3 BRAINS – 6 QUESTIONSHow do you stay up-to-date on the latest ideas, what media to follow, and where to find inspiration to achieve even more?

TWEET TWEET!it-consultant.com is on Twitter! Check out the newest requests from ProData Consult at: twitter.com/prodataconsult Tweet projects to your followers.

ProData Consult is looking for Front end developers!We currently have a high demand on Front end developers from our clients.

Remember to keep your CV updated with new Front end technologies and competencies.

If you are not registered on our CV site, then do it today!

To CV site

Psst!..Remember that you can also read ConsultantNews online.

At www.it-consultant.com/advantages/consultant-news you can read articles online and download the magazine as a PDF file.

You are always welcome to send your input and ideas to the editors at ConsultantNews: redaktion@prodata.dk

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2016 AND THE FUTURE...Welcome to 2016 and to the first 100% electronic edition of ConsultantNews. We’ve decided to put our money where our mouth is and say goodbye to paper. But we’re not dropping paper and postage to save money. We’re doing it because when we asked you, the majority of you told us that you prefer reading ConsultantNews online. We’re doing it to conserve resources and to cut down less of the rainforest. And we’re doing it so that we can spend even more of our budget on editorial content.

So this edition marks the end of an epoch: The first hard copy edition of ConsultantNews was published back in 2003, and we hope that our magazine will be read just as much online as it has been in hard copy.

2015 was another good year for the IT consulting industry. It was also the best year ever for ProData Consult. In 2015, over 1000 ProData consultants

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worked on projects for over 250 ProData clients in six different countries, and we had a turnover of over EUR 60 million.

2016 looks set to be at least as exciting as 2015. There is every indication that the economic upswing is here to stay and the pipeline from our customers looks very promising indeed. We’ve also won a lot of public tenders. So we’re confident that the new year will bring us plenty of exciting projects in all technologies and areas of expertise.

In this electronic New Year’s edition of ConsultantNews, we’ve also shaken a stimulating cocktail of visions of what the future holds for our industry. This time from opinion-makers and experts with a more creative and offbeat approach. We hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed mixing it. And we hope it will inspire you.

IN 2016, we’re going to keep doing our utmost to be to the best IT consultancy to work for.

Allo of us administrative staff would like to say thank you for all your hard work and loyalty in 2015. We wish you a prosperous and happy new consulting year.

Søren Rode CEO

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INTERVIEW WITH JACOB TJØRNHOLM

DEVELOPER HERO WITH A TASTE FOR CLOJURE

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J acob Tjørnholm, partner and CTO at GoMore, has been named 2015 Danish Developer Hero of the

Year. In this interview, he shares his perspective on GoMore’s development team, a new hobby called Clojure, and how a book helps him hire the right people.

Jacob Tjørnholm is a developer to his fingertips. At the Nordic Startup Awards 2015, he was named 2015 Danish developer hero of the year in recognition of how his technical expertise has taken GoMore to the front of the pack in the user-to-user car rental business.

For years, Tjørnholm wrote all of the company’s code himself and was the in-house expert on the software. But as CTO, he passes the fun jobs on to his development team – and only codes in his free time.

”I miss the creative process, so coding has become a hobby for me. It’s kind of funny, but now I can look at stuff like Cojure when I’m off work, whereas before it was all Ruby, which is what we use for GoMore’s software,” explains Tjørnholm.

AN ASYNCHRONOUS DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT TEAMGoMore’s 11 developers are spread out across the country and work asynchronously. Those who can meet for lunch once a week in Aarhus, usually between three

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and eight developers. And twice a year, the entire team meets for Team Day, which combines professional and social activities. The developers share hobby projects and topics they’re interested in, while Jacob Tjørnholm also contributes professional challenges:

”Last time we talked about task management tools: We discussed how we should use Github Issues, and made a clear agreement on how we were going to work together in the coming period. This made it possible for us to go our separate ways and still work together effectively online.”

The entire strategy of having a distributed, asynchronous team hinges on the ability of the developers to work independently. And they can only do so if their tasks are clearly described and if they’re familiar with all aspects of the system. One of Tjørnholm’s backend developers worked from Thailand for a couple of weeks. No one else was online when he showed up for work, so it was important for him to be

”Many times in the course of my career,

I’ve seen how a small team of really skilled developers

performs much, much better than a big team of mediocre

or unmotivated developers.”

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be able to navigate in the code on his own.

PREFERS OPEN SOURCETjørnholm chose most of GoMore’s technologies back when he was still the only developer on the project. Today, all of the developers have been involved in considering the pros and cons when the team decides to introduce something new.

”We don’t have formalised requirements for our technology, but we do have a clear preference for open source, because it allows us to see what’s going on and find any errors. Our entire server stack is run exclusively on open source,” says Tjørnholm.

HACKERS AND PAINTERS The role of CTO has been a challenging one for Tjørnholm, who brought very limited managerial experience to the position. But

GoMore, a social ride-sharing service that matches individual dri-vers with pas-sengers, was established in 2015. GoMore also offers peer-to-peer car rental.

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he has found inspiration in sources including Poul Graham’s 2004 book, Hackers and Painters. The book made him realise what a great difference there can be between less skilled and skilled developers. An insight he applies in the hiring situation.

”It’s necessary to check whether new people can produce good code, because a hire is a huge decision – especially in such a small team as ours,” explains Tjørnholm, who has no requirements for his developers’ educational background and only minimal requirements for previous experience – but he does require that the people he hires are able to grasp new technologies quickly.

Like when GoMore’s iPhone an Android app development was lagging a little because there were too many Rails and backend developers on the team. But then one Rails developer agreed to take on Android while another handled iOS.

”That just goes to show that I’ve found the right people. They can switch gears and do mobile development for awhile because they have the curiosity and the ability to master new things quickly. That makes me proud of my team,” says Tjørnholm.

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SLOW SCALE-UP – SO FAR WITHOUT CONSULTANTSScaling up the development team at GoMore is progressing as slowly as possible, and Tjørnholm invests a lot of time and energy in finding the most talented developers. Because as he puts it:

”Many times in the course of my career, I’ve seen how a small team of really skilled developers performs much, much better than a big team of mediocre or unmotivated developers.”

So far, the company has either hired developers on permanent contracts or worked with developers on a freelance basis if they so wish. For Tjørnholm, the most important thing is that the developers are committed and work for GoMore, instead of having a client called GoMore. He hasn’t made use of IT consultants as yet, but believes that this model could definitely work.

ROOM TO THINK FOR THEMSELVESGoMore’s CTO is very focussed on challenging his team. When he defines a task, he makes sure that the description always leaves room for creativity:

”There has to be room for people to think for themselves. If I have a really specific idea about how a feature can be implemented, I’ll keep it to myself and let the developers put their ideas on the table. On the other hand, tasks

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shouldn’t be so vaguely defined that there can be doubts about what the objective is. That balance can be difficult to strike.”

Another factor is that the team has opportunities to learn about technologies that they aren’t already familiar with, such as AWS, Elasticsearch or Prometheus. As Tjørnholm says:

” As I see it, it’s incredibly motivating to be able to work as independently and flexibly as we do, while at the same time understanding every aspect of our system.”

CLOJURE AS A HOBBYWhen Tjørnholm isn’t busy delegating and administering, he’s exploring Clojure, a functional programming language he’s very interested in. Right

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now, Clojure is a hobby, but he’s counting on being able to use it at GoMore in future. He explains:

”Today, GoMore is a big server app that isn’t divided into services, but if we switch to an architecture where more things are split up into separate services one day, some of them could very easily be written in Clojure – if it’s a better match for the separate service.”

According to Tjørnholm, Clojure is the most promising modern functional programming language. What’s brilliant about the language is that it focusses on data, not objects:

”I’m fascinated because the language is so different from anything else I’ve worked with up til now. The big killer app for Clojure is that modern processors aren’t getting faster, there are just more and more of them. This is where Clojure is fantastic, because it makes it simple to parallelize data processing. That’s just one of the reasons why I predict that it will be huge in coming years.”

His fascination with the language also has to do with the mastermind behind it, Rich Hickey, who’s held a lot of exciting talks – on more philosophical topics as well.

”I often think that things move a little too fast, and things can never be new or fancy enough for a lot of people. Rich Hickey is totally at the opposite end of the spectrum. He

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takes his time and considers the pros and cons, which appeals to me” says Tjørnholm.

FINDING INSPIRATION IN HIS OWN WORLDMusic is a major interest, and Tjørnholm picks out music that puts him in a particular mood depending on what he’s going to do – from the choral works of Brahams to Pantera. But aside from this, the developer hero seldom leaves the world of programming to search for inspiration:

”To inspire the creative process when I’m coding, I look to other branches of the technology, for example other programming languages or radically different ways of doing things.”

When facing a thorny problem, Tjørnholm fills his head with input, ideas and other people’s approach to solving similar conundrums – after which he gives his brain time to process the material.

”It’s valuable to set aside time, just an hour at a time, where you only think about a particular problem. This means sitting on a couch staring into the air or going for a walk. This is really where you can take advantage of working from home. You know that you won’t be disturbed and can really concentrate when you turn off your computer.”

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DEVELOPER HERO OF THE YEAR 2015But when he’s at a café, on the other hand, Tjørnholm likes being disturbed.

Before the developers show up for their weekly lunch, this time at LYNfabrikken in Aarhus (also the location of this interview), an IT entrepreneur comes by to say hello. They agree to meet for coffee the week after. The title 2015 developer hero piques people’s curiosity, and there has been a lot of interest in Tjørnholm’s work. He explains: “I found out that I was nominated when I saw the list of people you could vote for,” he says with a laugh and continues: ”I’m proud of what I’ve done at GoMore, but I didn’t expect that any one else would notice it. It was fun to participate, and it’s a nice feeling to be recognized for what you do.”

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Age: 40

Background: Education: Computer scientist, Aarhus Business College, 1999

Title: CTO, GoMore

2015 Developer Hero of the Year, Nordic Startup Awards 2015

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WEB VS. NATIVE

IS THERE BAD BLOOD BETWEEN THE TECHNOLOGIES?

At ColdFront 2015, the issue of ‘Web vs. Native’ came up several times. ConsultantNews decided

to find out what all the fuss is about. Several blogs address issues like: ‘Do I need a native application, or can I get by with a web application?’ And because these are blogs written by either native app developers or web developers, naturally enough, their answers are colored by prejudices against the ‘competing’ technology. So we set up a meeting between native app developer Ole Gammelgaard from Shape and web app developer Peter Nielsen from Nordlys to chat about their views on advantages, disadvantages and prejudices - and to find out whether one of these technologies has the potential to outcompete the other.

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THE NATIVE GUY

Name:Ole Gammelgaard,

Title:CTO and Co-founder of Shape (www.shape.dk),

advocate of native applications

Age:30

Education:MSc in electrical engineering from the

Technical University of Denmark (2010).

Background:In 2009, towards the end of his degree

programme, Ole Gammelgard and some friends started Shape. Their ambition: to

develop the best mobile applications on the market. Shape employees new graduates of the engineering and computer science

programmes at the leading technical and IT universities in Denmark. Today, Shape creates mobile apps and associated backend systems

for major companies like Fitness World, Red Bull and Bang & Olufsen.

Right now:Doing programming himself on top of his

responsibilities as CTO

Even though Shape is a major advocate of native apps and technologies, the company does occasionally use web technologies to

solve challenges for its clients.

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THE WEB GUY

Name:Peter Nielsen

Title:Co-founder of

Nordlys (www.nordlys.io), advocate of web applications

Age:31

Education:Self-taught web and app developer

Background:Has been programming web technologies for fifteen

years, backend as well as frontend. In 2007, he started out as Art Director trainee at an ad agency and web

developer; but his passion for code quickly surpassed his interest in design. Three year later, Peter Nielsen set up shop as a freelance web developer, and he’s been an

independent contractor ever since. With the exception of the period 2012-15, when a working relationship with a digital bureau developed into a full-time employment

contract. But the desire for the independence of the freelance life soon called, and he set off on his own

again.

After six months of freelance work and developing his client portfolio in spring of 2015, he founded Nordlys

Studio ApS in partnership with his friend Rasmus Hjulskov.

Right now:Working on a desktop app. A dashboard for visualizing

customer and employee metrics.

Nordlys focusses exclusively on modern web app technologies like ReactJS, Meteor.js and React Native.

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AN APPLICATION IS MANY THINGSA native application is an application that is primarily developed for smartphones and tablets (iPhone, Android, etc.) The code and design of the app are unique to the specific platform. A native app can utilize the functionalities of the platform to the maximum (camera, GPS, etc.)

A web application or web app is a website that functions in a platform’s browser. Web apps are designed to emulate native apps as precisely as possible, especially when they’re designed for smartphones and tablets. However, the possibility of using smartphone-specific functions varies from platform to platform. Web apps can also function in a browser on a PC or Mac, where users have a mouse and keyboard at their disposal.

Hybrid or shell apps are created when development takes place in a common language (such as HTML or JavaScript as for web applications), but are wrapped in a native ‘shell’ and installed in the same way as native apps. These apps then gain access to native functions on each platform through a shared library. But if the shell and the language are based on running on a built-in browser, shell apps can have some of the same performance as web apps, for example limits on speed.

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USER-FRIENDLINESS DEPENDS ON THE SPECIFIC USER CASE.It’s often said that native apps have sleeker user interfaces (UI) than web apps. So when we met one morning, one of the first topics on the table along with our coffee was the issue of the advantages of native app UIs. For Shape, this advantage is a selling point. CTO Ole Gammelgaard explains:

”A native application gives you a classy, well-designed feel that engages users much more than a web app. What’s more, native applications run more smoothly than web applications, where loading can take time, for example. On a native app, you’ve already installed the files you need to use, which speeds up loading times. It’s particularly important for an application to run smoothly, regardless of whether it’s a native app or a web app, because it’s a tool you use several times a week.”

A native app has the same ‘feel’ and is based on the same UI concepts as the programs that are pre-installed when you buy a smartphone, which means that native apps feel more natural and are easier to use. Native apps are often faster than mobile websites and shell applications, and the more quickly a user can complete a job with an app, the more likely it becomes that he’ll use it again and even save it to his home screen. Push messages are one of the best ways to engage and retain users.

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Entrepreneur and web application developer Peter Nielsen weighs in to defend web app UIs:

”In the web application world, we put a lot of effort into making our applications as similar to native applications as possible,” says Peter Nielsen, and continues: ”What can make a web app feel clumsy is stuff like animations. But we optimize animations, loading times and so on, so the application runs smoothly and cleanly – including on a smartphone.”

When asked whether he believes that web technology can challenge native technology when it comes to creating great UI, Peter Nielsen responds:

”Absolutely. But it’s very much a question of the individual user case: if a client needs a heavy application with a lot of drag and drop, or a lot of gestures or rendering of heavy 3D elements, for example, it might be more fun to go native, because you’d get a bad user experience in a web application on a smartphone or tablet otherwise. But web apps function just fine on smartphones for things like showing users lists of data, for example Facebook’s web application.”

CSS3 OPENS UP NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR WEB APPSAnimations in web application can be clumsy partly because of the limitations of the chosen JavaScript framework and partly because of limits on how quickly

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and smoothly JavaScript can update pages. CSS3 makes it possible to design animations and effects that are closer to native graphics, depending on how well the browser exploits the unit’s hardware.

A lot has happened with CSS animation since CSS2. CSS3 transitions brings simple, elegant animations to CSS classes, both in the form of smooth transitions between values and key frames that describe a sequence of effects or movements. The advantage of using CSS3 animation rather than animating with JavaScript is that this allows the browser to use native hardware rendering to produce more fluent animations, while JavaScript libraries can often place limits on how often JavaScript is allowed to run, especially on mobile devices, which can limit how often they can switch colors and locations. With CSS3, it’s now easy to create fluent animations and live in web applications.

OFFLINE IS NOT A PROBLEMAnother preconception about the advantages of native applications over web applications is that only native apps work even when users are offline. How can you get a web application to work in a browser with no internet connection? Peter Nielsen explains:

”There are already lots of good solutions for doing offline synchronization which involve working with what’s known as a cache manifest. You save all of your assets in the

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cache manifest. I’ve used a cache manifest in some web applications, and this means that they work offline. Where cache manifests can get difficult is when the developer needs to update his web app, because cache manifests are really heavy-duty cache storage: if you change the web application, the browser doesn’t pick up on it.”

Ole Gammelgaard asks whether making cache manifests is standard practice in web applications. According to Peter Nielsen, it’s not. He only uses this solution if a client asks for it. Ole Gammelgaard follows up:

”But doesn’t this solution add to the problem of making web applications slow to start up? Given that it has to retrieve this entire cache manifest – and that it has to retrieve all the files again if any changes are made?”

“There are new technologies that solve this problem. For example, at Nordlys, we make Meteor apps. Meteor is a full-stack JavaScript framework that really focusses on speed and which gives the app a really fast feel. Part of how Meteor does this is by packing all of your code into two files, which means that load times are almost non-existent. Another technology we work with is webpack, which can split up your code so that it doesn’t all load at the start, but instead waits until the application needs it. This approach reduces start-up times for web applications even more,” explains Peter Nielsen.

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In addition to saving the web application itself offline, there are also open source projects like Hoodie that provide an API solution that hides the complexity of online/offline data by always saving and reading data locally and then automatically synchronizing it with online data when that becomes possible.

A QUESTION OF USER EXPECTATIONSOle Gammelgaard explains that offline synchronization has two aspects: On the one hand, there’s the purely technical issue of implementing code for offline sync. And on the other hand, we have user expectations:

”We do lot of work with user expectations when offline synchronization is on the agenda. To take just one example, it might be a to-do list that needs to work on multiple devices: On one device, an item is ticked off, while on another device, it gets deleted. What does the user expect in this situation? We typically review really specific situations with our client to find a solution.”

NATIVE FEATURESNative features are also used as an argument in favor of native apps over web apps. When a user installs an application on her smartphone or tablet, the app lets her use native features like the camera, GPS, camera roll, and so on – something you only have to do once, which gives a sense of an effortless application that is able to engage users. Peter Nielsen explains:

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”The biggest problem with implementing native features in a browser is that the web developers still need to optimize for old browsers for pc and Android users. Internet Explorer in particular has lagged behind in the last few years: it’s like nothing works in the older versions of the browser.

When it comes to hybrid applications for smartphones made in JavaScript, there are technologies that can give the developer plug-ins that enable access to the device’s native functions.”

It’s becoming increasingly common today for browsers to use a plug-in that enables access to the native features of different platforms. For example, you can make video and audio calls with the web application GoToMeetingFree, which uses an API solution called WebRTC, which is short for ‘web real-time-communication’. However, the web application doesn’t work in a smartphone browser. Why can’t smartphones support WebRTC?

”WebRTC is a relatively new web technology, so not many mobile browsers support it yet. But I believe this is on the way,” answers Ole Gammelgaard.

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WEB TECHNOLOGY GIVES YOU EDITORIAL FREEDOM AND EARLY PROTOTYPESOne of the areas in which web applications have clear advantages over native apps is in relation to updating code: Users can see updates immediately, which provides graphic and editorial freedom, as well as the freedom to add new functions. With a native application, each update of the app has to be approved by Apple’s App Review team before it’s released in App Store. Android apps, however, don’t have to be approved by Google before becoming available in Play Store. Peter Nielsen explains about setting up prototypes:

”One of my prejudices in relation to native app development is that it takes longer to set up a prototype with native technology than with web technology. My thinking is that the latter is faster, because you have a lot of JavaScript libraries and open sources projects that can be used for setting up prototypes. While I’ve seen examples of native prototypes being shown to the client with a series of static screendumps, this doesn’t give the client a sense of what happens when the user clicks on a button or changes a view.”

Ole Gammelgaard agrees with Peter Nielsen’s point about developing prototypes, but he adds:

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”It’s true that you can set up a prototype quickly using web technology, but in relation to UI, I still think that you’re missing the last ten percent in relation to achieving an application that works well. It’s hard to get that last ten percent using web technology alone. At Shape, we think that if you know that the goal is a native application, you might as well start with native technology and workflow.”

NATIVE APPS GET NEW PLATFORMSOle Gammelgaard describes some of the kinds of projects Shape is involved in and predicts one trend in particular for 2016:

”At Shape, we didn’t just develop mobile applications in 2015. We also developed apps for other devices, for example Apple Watch and Google’s Wearables. What’s totally new is that you can also make applications for Apple TV, and that’s something we’ve also gotten into. So I believe that applications for other devices than smartphones and computers are at trend we’ll be seeing more of.” Ole Gammelgaard adds:

”When Apple launched the first iPhone, they explained that it was a mobile phone with a browser and email that you could have in your pocket. But today, we use our smartphones for so many other things than Apple had ever imagined. I believe that the same thing will happen with the new smart platforms (TVs and watches): some time will pass before the applications that will really change things will get invented.”

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NO CHANGES IN THE NEAR FUTURERight now, web applications are supported by an app for smartphones, and Peter Nielsen has trouble imaging that there will be any changes in this approach in the near future:

”But if the problems around UI get solved, and you can really get users to feel that they’re working in a native app browser on a phone, we’ll have come a long way. However, I don’t think that web applications will outcompete native apps completely, because the feel of native will always be a little nicer. But from a client’s perspective, it’s still a huge advantage not to have to develop for four different platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone and web), because that will always be a costly affair.”

NATIVE OR WEB APPS FOR CLIENTSSo when do clients need a native application, and when do they need a web application?

”It’s still hard to say, but I believe that a client needs a native application if the application has the characteristics of being the kind of tool you use often,” says Ole Gammelgaard:

”Facebook is a good example, because social media run more trouble-free on a native application, where you get push messages coming in over the course of the day. Another advantage with native apps is that you can open the application, do what you want to do in fifteen seconds and then get out again. So native apps work really well on the go.”

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“But it depends on what kind of tool it is,” comments Peter Nielsen. He goes on to explain:

”If it’s a tool with a lot of input fields, for example an accounting program, or a tool where you need to write a lot of text, I personally prefer to use a browser web app on a desktop. If you don’t need an app that’s super performance-heavy, I would always recommend a web app to my client. When all is said and done, I agree with Ole. It’s hard to say, because it always depends on the case, the client and the budget.”

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When our resource department searches for available profiles, it is mainly those with specific core competencies that match our customers’ demands, who are contacted first.

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INTERVIEW WITH MADS THIMMER

AI, CROSSROADS AND A BRIGHT FUTURE

W hat IT trends will grab the spotlight in 2016? ConsultantNews sat down for a chat with

Innovation Lab’s CEO about everything from gigantic virtual conferences and the internet in India to IT consultants’ futures.

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At Innovation Lab, which numbers Samsung, Vestas and LEGO among its clients, they’re experts in predicting and communicating the technologies of the future. They know what technologies are on the way, how they can be used, and who’s farthest along with what. They turn this insight into advice for their clients, who range from small startups to international companies and government. The CEO and co-founder of Innovation Lab shares his thoughts on the trends to keep an extra eye on in 2016.

VIRTUAL SEMINAR WITH TWO MILLION PARTICIPANTSJust a few minutes into the conversation, virtual reality comes up. Although this isn’t the first time Mads Thimmer has brought VR to center stage as one of the top stars of the year, he sees some overwhelming perspectives in the technology – based in part on the convincing learning and gaming environments being established by Facebook as well as his own participation in VR conferences:

”You’re present in a space where you can see who’s standing next to you, see the speaker and people’s gestures. It’s a completely different way of conducting meetings than staring into a screen, which doesn’t add much in relation to an ordinary phone conversation. Teaching is already transitioning to a virtual reality structure: you can invite two million participants to the same presentation – all they have to do is put on their goggles.”

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MACHINES THAT TRAIN THEMSELVESAnother trend Thimmer spotlights is machine learning, where he predicts major progress in relation to the ability of technologies to learn from us. Instead of being dependent on humans constantly delivering input, machines will be able to train themselves to improve. We will also see progress in the field of artificial intelligence, which is similar to machine learning, but which is about creating systems that are capable of intelligent – that is to say, human – behavior. Businesses like Apple and Google have designed digital butlers that are based on the technology and which can execute a limited range of tasks. And in 2015, Facebook launched M, a virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence that is also supported by a team of employees who make sure that all requests get processed. And more companies will attempt to design digital helpers.

“You design how your sur-

roundings are going to respond yourself. This

democratization will become more pronounced as even more possibilities emerge

over the course of the next year.”

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”And to an extent that leads me to believe that there will be a breakthrough this year: We will find ourselves receiving services from AI systems without knowing it. It might seem scary that we can have an intelligent conversation with a piece of software, but it’s just a logical system that’s set up to be able to decipher our emotional system and respond to it. It’s a way to make our surroundings simpler and more accessible,” explains Thimmer.

EVERYONE CAN CODEIf you’ve specialized in creating apps, you might want to start learning new skills before long. Some of Thimmer’s friends from Google are starting a new mobile-based business in New York, and they seem to have succeeded in creating a new way of coding that lets people create apps for smartphones without the slightest knowledge of coding.

”The software organizes itself in the background, and an intuitive user interface lets you build whatever you want. What were once the tools of the technician become yours. You design how your surroundings are going to respond. The democratization of technology will become more pronounced as more and more options materialize in the coming year,” says Thimmer.

NO CORNER OF THE WORLD LEFT BEHINDDevelopments in non-European countries are another major focus for Innovation Lab’s CEO. Innovation Lab is

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starting an office in India, where internet penetration rates have received a boost thanks to Google Loon, a balloon-based project aimed at bringing internet access to the poorest regions of the world.

”This means that there are corners of the world we normally turn a blind eye to that are starting to catch up, and which may be able to get into the game on their own premises,” says Thimmer, who has just returned from a trip to India.

In 2050, the population of Europe will account for just five percent of the world’s population, a drastic drop from the fourteen percent of today. At the same time, the countries around us will experience an increase in their standard of living. And according to Thimmer, this will help kickstart exciting new developments. A country such as India, where the landline network has never really functioned, is ahead of Europe in relation to mobile infrastructure and much better at things like mobile payment solutions and mobile banking.

DOWN IN THE ENGINE ROOM OR UP ON THE BRIDGEWhat does the future hold for IT consultants? According to Thimmer, there’s a crossroads up ahead where it will be necessary to decide if you want to be in the engine room or up on the bridge. The focus on strategy contra technology will become an even stronger competition and efficiency parameter as companies realize that

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digitization isn’t just about outsourcing a few servers.

”One example is the resources that are wasted in the public sector – not because of poor technology, but because of badly thought-out organization. If you want to be successful, you have to focus much more on the circumstances and the human factors surrounding the technologies,” explains Thimmer.

This is the case for the web agency next to Innovation Lab. They have new competitors in the form of pure software: AI-based forms where you give an algorithm permission to sniff around on your computer, show it some of the things you want on your website – after which it generates a website in just a few minutes. So to survive, the web agency’s staff will have to become experts at handling people instead of software.

Innovation Lab is an international knowledge center for digital trends and new technology that has built a large international network of expertise in research, product development and entrepreneurship over the past decade. Innovation Lab draws on this network to predict what technologies are on the way, what they can be used for, and who is farthest along with what – and to gain insight of the emerging trends of the future. Clients in-clude Samsung, Vestas, LEGO, B&O, Oticon and AP Møller Mærsk.

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THE FREELANCE ECONOMY IS STORMING AHEADBut in spite of these challenges, the future is bright for IT consultants. Because the freelance economy is storming ahead: Today, 25 percent of Europeans work freelance, while the figure is 30 percent in the United States. And according to Thimmer, that figure will rise:

”Being small or being your own boss will be a strength. A lot of employers are sick of tackling the administration and fixed costs involved in having a lot of employees – it creates inertia, bureaucracy, HR departments and a lot of other overhead that makes a business less competitive. So they’d rather have freelancers who know how to orchestrate themselves.” A variety of digital platforms already support this approach, such as UpWork and HourlyNerd, where you can either do a single project or work on projects together. These platforms are a good way of making yourself more attractive to prospective clients through the kind of mutual rating systems we’re familiar with from Uber and Airbnb. Thimmer says:

”These platforms make your skills visible without you having to be a world champion marketer – you just have to be good at what you do.”

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Mads Thimmer

Age 41

Education: MA in comparative literature, study at the University

of Cambridge.

CEO and co-founder of

Innovation Lab

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3  BRAINS – 6 QUESTIONSHow do you stay up-to-date on the latest ideas, what media to follow, and where to find inspiration to achieve even more? We asked three exciting people with very different backgrounds questions about their careers to explore the sources of their professional success.

Camilla Hessellund LasteinCEO and Founder of

Lix Technologies

Lau Bech LauritzenCEO and Co-founder of IOLA

Chono HegelundPrincipal Consultant,

Enterprise Web

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WHAT ARE YOU INTERESTED IN RIGHT NOW?Product development, which I’m responsible for at Lix Technologies. I work with developers and designers every day to evaluate design and test for bugs.

I’m also always at least partly focussed on investment, whether or not we’re fundraising.

WHO INSPIRES YOU RIGHT NOW?The founder of Telsa, Elon Musk, who is focussed on higher aims than just finances. For example, Tesla has opened up all of their patents – an action that says more than many words.

Peter Theil, who was one of the founders of PayPal, among other things. He also does things in his own way and is motivated by visions.

WHAT ARE YOU READING?waitbutwhy.com – a really cool blog that deals with a lot of issues from a humorous angle.

Camilla Hessellund LasteinCEO and Founder of Lix Technologies

Name: Camilla Hessellund LasteinAge: 22Background: Dropped out of a business administration programme to devote herself to Lix Technologies.Title: CEO and fou-nder of Lix Technologies (formerly Uni-Pegma).

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The book Zero to One by Peter Theil, which is about startups and business in general, and I’m currently reading Power of Habits, which is about cognitive behaviour – how your brain works and how it processes marketing, for example.

HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE YOURSELF?By learning new things. All kinds of tech, from wearables to the Internet of Things and drones. According to the book The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, if f you want to be creative, you have to make connections between different things. That’s how he created a magnetic adapter for the Mac. It might be a course in painting together with a talk on machine learning, because the more input, the more neural connections. That approach contributes to my creative moments.

WHAT MEDIA DO YOU FOLLOW?Medium, Tech Crunch, Twitter. I follow the stuff that’s exciting. I’ve

Lix Technologies a company that offers a sub-scription service for textbooks.

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set up Facebook so that I primarily see posts from podcasts and magazines from the startup world instead of my friends’ posts.

WHAT CONFERENCES DO YOU PARTICIPATE IN?Web Summit, the biggest tech conference in the world, because the content is exciting, but just as much because of networking with the right people. I get my biggest breakthroughs that way: offbeat perspectives and unexpected opportunities, and I’ve found everyone who’s on my team through my network.

WHAT DO YOU DO TO RELAX?I’m learning how to meditate. When I’m constantly behind on my work, there’s no room to be creative. After I’ve meditated – just ten minutes in the morning – I have a totally different perspective and can approach my work in the right mindset.

HOW DO YOU CHALLENGE YOURSELF?I throw myself into things where I don’t

Camilla received the People’s Choice Award at the Nordic Startup Awards and a grant from WeLove-Startups. Addi-tional investors, including Søren Skovbølling, CEO of EG Neo-Process and the entrepre-neur Joachim Majholm, have so far invested DKK three mil-lion in Lix Tech-nologies

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feel safe. I’m regularly asked to give talks, and just thinking about it makes me so nervous I get butterflies in my stomach, but I do it to get outside my comfort zone.

HOW DO YOU GET INTO FLOW?When I get to sit somewhere by myself, for example on a terrace with a good view and music – preferably in pajamas – and really concentrate on something, so that I forget about time and place. It also happens at the office when I can sense that things are working and that people are taking responsibility: when the team is performing, they also expect me to. That gives me more motivation to kick down some doors to keep moving forward.

WHAT WILL 2016 LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?It’ll probably be yet another hectic year. We just made a deal with a major international publisher, in mid-December we’re going to go all in on marketing, and we’ll be launching big time when the

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Back to the beginning

semester starts in January. They say that it typically takes six months of full-time work to close a venture capital investment deal, so I also expect I’ll be in San Francisco a fair amount next year to meet with investors.

WHAT TRENDS IN YOUR FIELD DO YOU PREDICT WILL DOMINATE THIS YEAR?My industry is weird: the publishers think that development ends with the digitization of books, so we have to drive the trends ourselves. But customer care is one major focus. Generation Y, one of our main target groups, is disloyal to brands compared to previous generations. They have to have a good reason to buy our product and stay on as customers, because they have so many alternative ways to find books – not digitally, but in lots of other ways.

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WHO INSPIRES YOU?My friends and co-workers, who are all entrepreneurs and software/web developers – or both. That means that I spend a lot of my time at the intersection of knowledge exchange and the latest trends, where new products, services and technologies meet, are developed, challenged and contextualized.

WHAT ARE YOU INTERESTED IN RIGHT NOW?The development of distributed products and services, including UX and operational semantics in the interplay between data, application logic and business logic in the context of commercialization, target groups and tendencies.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU? Building products and services that combine innovation and business orientation – and preferably in contexts with short deadlines and many facets in relation to challenges in my specific field and real-world challenges.

Chono HegelundPrincipal Consultant, Enterprise Web

Age: 40

Background: Web and product development since 1995Works with: IoT, ECM, ERP, CRM, B2B, B2C and BI

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WHAT MEDIA DO YOU FOLLOW?My daily sources for news about trends and technology are typically Facebook, Twitter and different Slack channels and communities, for example Product Manager HQ. I also usually spend ten minutes every morning skimming a couple of more general media like politiken.dk, borsen.dk, kopenhagen.dk and nytimes.com.

WHAT CONFERENCES DO YOU ATTEND?I rarely attend conferences, but I find keynote speeches on video afterwards. For networking, product-specific and topic-specific workshops and talks, I use meetup.com, the world’s largest network of local groups/networks.

HOW DO YOU CHALLENGE YOURSELF?One way in which I challenge myself is to build prototypes of business models, logics and technologies that I haven’t used before and challenge them by applying scalable principles and variable factors.

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WHAT WILL 2016 LOOK LIKE FOR YOU?It depends on what technologies and tendencies get introduced. My field of interest is commercial apps, interfaces, platforms and services for mass markets, including IoT, ECM, ERP, CRM, B2B, B2C and BI.

WHAT TRENDS IN YOUR AREAS OF INTEREST DO YOU THINK WILL DOMINATE NEXT YEAR?I think that service-oriented architecture and big data will become more general standards. This has been underway for a number of years, but particularly over the past year, as infrastructures and platforms like AWS, MS Azure, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean and Heroku have become much more mature and accessible – both in relation to usability and financing. The tendency to think in terms of scalability and to use external services to handle tasks in distributed systems has really accelerated.

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Back to the beginning

Big data and what it can be used for are particularly interesting: knowledge in a relevant context. As enterprise infrastructures and databases become more widely accessible, products and services will gain a supplementary dimension/value centered on ‘knowledge about’ in addition to their own intrinsic value.

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WHAT ARE YOU INTERESTED IN RIGHT NOW?JavaScript. Most of the code we produce today is JavaScript – regardless of whether it’s for mobile development, backend code or big one-page apps. And so the big deal right now is JavaScript frameworks, which help structure the big frontend applications. The challenge is to find the framework that’s the best fit for your needs and that best suits your tastes. I’m playing around with Vue.js, which is a simple but strong tool that doesn’t lock the user into a particular paradigm because it solves a specific aspect of frontend development. The focus with Vue.js is on pure web development, so it doesn’t have the ambition to revolutionize other platforms, for example like React does.Another major interest is my Tesla, my computer on wheels, and what kinds of cool applications I can build for it with Vue.js. For example, I have a web application in the browser in my car that can control different parts of the car through the server. The main

Lau Bech LauritzenCEO and Co-founder, IOLA

Age: 33

Background: Degree in computer science from Aalborg University, 2006Works with: IoT, ECM, ERP, CRM, B2B, B2C and BI

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component is a big map that shows me speed traps, good restaurants on the way through Germany, Tesla charging stations, or I can use Wikipedia to find out what attractions are close to my route. Information about local weather conditions is also important for an electric car: using a little calculator app, I can see what the optimal driving speed is between supercharger stations. Event sourcing. Normally, you only store the current state of the application. But sometimes you’re interested in being able to go back in the history to see what’s happened or to calculate new information based on historical data. Event sourcing solves this challenge by collecting all events in the database, and the current state of the application can be calculated on the basis of these events – which makes the history accessible. We haven’t used it in projects in its purest form at IOLA, but we’re talking about rewriting a piece of software for the offshore industry which requires a total history.

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WHO INSPIRES YOU?Paul Irish, Chrome Developer Advocate, because he’s a big evangelist for new tools and new ways of doing things in web development.

John Cleese and his approach to creativity, where you start by accumulating knowledge about a topic and then plan a place and time to be creative. John Cleese also thinks that coffee is antithetical to creativity, because it increases your ability to concentrate – which kills creativity.

Aaron Levie, co-founder of Box, who tweets about entrepreneurship and has a lot of reflections about the industry.

My office mates at LYNfabrikken, where I have my desk in Aarhus: when I talk about my work to people who aren’t technically minded, I find out what they find exciting. That gives me an idea about what to emphasize when I’m dealing with clients.

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WHAT READING MATERIAL DO YOU FIND INTERESTING?The Seven Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco Partners. According to him, the concepts ‘work’ and ‘time off’ no longer have meaning, because people are always online. For example, you should be able to work on a Sunday when the weather’s bad and go to the beach on Monday morning, when the sun is shining. The employees organize their workdays themselves, and at Semco, it’s often people on the shop

floor who come up with ideas for new products, because they’re in contact with customers. Inspired by Semler’s ideas, IOLA is starting a tech consortium in Aalborg.Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister, a collection of essays about creating a healthy

Among other projects, IOLA built the system for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF®) and

created systems for mo-nitoring and visualizing

data for Swedish Netnod, which measures all in-

ternet traffic in Sweden. IOLA delivered an ana-lysis/platform making it possible to view images

down to 1/64th of a second, cockpit visuals, landing graphs and all

phases of a flight.

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work environment when managing software development projects.

HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE YOURSELF?The experiences and needs of users are my greatest motivation. After I’ve thought long enough, I build a simple solution that meets their needs, looks good and works super well. I like spending a lot of time figuring out what it should look like, feel like, and how it should be used. I envision a solution, and that motivates me to use new tools to bring the vision to life for the specific project.

WHAT MEDIA DO YOU FOLLOW?Version2, Computerworld and TechCrunch to stay up-to-date on the most general level.

Twitter, because this is where you gain knowledge today by following the right people. I find people whose approach is compatible with mine and get a condensed version of what they’re following – which is cool when I’m busy.

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WHAT CONFERENCES DO YOU PARTICIPATE IN?I haven’t been to South by Southwest in the States, but I watch videos from it, because there are fantastic people sharing their take on the World Tech Open Air in Berlin. Relaxed, industrial setting, where all of the most dominant IT companies participate.

Nordic.js, a JavaScript conference – everyone in the company attends this, because we all use JavaScript.

WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?My passion is building something that helps the client. Being good at code isn’t enough for me – I also want to be good at communicating, understanding and applying ideas, so that I can challenge the clients who don’t have all the answers. And this means that the relationship becomes a feedback loop: When we present ideas that are very different than what the client expected, they also get new ideas and can challenge us to deliver an even

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Back to the beginning

better solution. In a very short time, we arrive at a design or specification for a product that neither of us could have invented alone.

WHAT TRENDS IN YOUR FIELD DO YOU PREDICT WILL DOMINATE IN 2016?JavaScript, because everything’s moving in a web direction, where JS is central. The democratization of technology will play a larger role, because now designers can program using JS, which is an easy language to learn. AI is getting closer, because computer intelligence can help us find our way around big data, and there will be more and more specialized apps that are easy to use and better at solving problems.

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WA N T E D

ProData Consult is on the lookout for heavyweight IT consultants in the following roles and areas. If you have the skills we need, or know someone who does, please get in touch at: uf@prodata.dk

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R O L E SDeveloperFront-end developerArchitectWeb developerMobile developerWebmasterTechnical projectmanagerScrum masterProject managerBusiness managerBusiness developerProcess consultantSolution architectTesterTest coordinatorTest managerTechnical testerDatabase developerDatabaseadministratorOperationsconsultantInfrastructureconsultantNetwork consultantNetwork architectSupport consultantSecurity consultantSEM/SEOUX consultantVisual designer

C O M P E T E N C I E S /A R E A SMicrosoft/.NETJava/J2EEResponsive WebJavaScript, CSS,HTML5OracleOpen SourceMainframeWebMobileERPSAPSharePointData Warehouse/BIPRINCE2SOAITILQuality CenterISTQBCloudCiscoMicrosoft DynamicsUNIX/LinuxEmbeddedAdobe Creative Suite

I N D U S T R I E SPublic sectorFinancial sectorCapital marketsTelecomEnergy sectorIndustryTransport/logistics