As one of our back-end heroes, Bobby will be responsible for the development of the analysis that powers our Social Targeting. Like his teammates Gavin and David, Bobby will be programming the D Language. (You can read some of our articles on D in our Code Talk channel of the blog.)

Though he was born in the Memphis area, Bobby grew up in southwest Germany, in Kaiserslautern. Because his parents were in the military, he moved around a lot, giving him a diverse cultural background is a great fit for our international team. He came to Berlin for similar reasons to most of us who’ve moved here from other places — he came here visiting friends, then simply fell in love with the city.

Bobby  comes to us from a job at the Yoc AG in Berlin, where he worked for two years as a Senior Mobile Application Developer. The past six years he’s been working in the mobile industry, “which six years ago was really cool,” says Bobby. “But over the last two years or so the technology has gotten to a point where there aren’t that many challenges in the sector,” he explains.

“Social networking is what it’s all about now, and that’s one of the two big reasons I’m here [at sociomantic]. The second is that I get to learn a totally new programming language (D). As a programmer you don’t get that chance very often. It’s totally challenging, and totally exciting.”

The Fun Facts

Though we’ve yet to see him show his skills, Bobby’s been skating for over twenty years now. (Those skills should come in handy if we manage to take that company snowboarding trip we’ve been mumbling about.) He’s also spent a lot of time playing guitar in bands over the years, and he’s even gotten to tour Europe a bit. Though he stopped playing shows last year, a couple of weeks ago he made it back into the studio to record some new material, and he looks forward to the possibility of playing again this winter sometime. He recently set up a new Myspace page where you can check out some of his latest tunes.

In Berlin, he likes to hang out at places like 8mm bar on Schoenhauser Allee, where rock DJs spin post-punk and no-wave jams from the likes of the Jesus & Mary Chain and Sonic Youth. In the summer evenings Bobby frequents the Weinbergs Park nearby his home, and he goes to a lot of rock shows around the city. Favorite bands include Nada Surf, The National, and Band of Horses. Keep your eyes peeled for his name on bills in Berlin this fall.

Welcome to the team, Bobby!

Okay, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten that far, but you can see why we wanted to try it out. Lars took the liberty of documenting our on-land training before we all hit the water. Needless to say, we had to don a bit of interesting attire:

These pictures are mostly from when we were first  trying our luck on the trainer kites, which are smaller kites that we practiced with on land before we graduated to the big kites and the water.  Obviously once we were in the sea there wasn’t much safety for the camera, and we had no one to document the “body dragging” from the shore.

Despite a bit of rain in the morning, it was all-in-all an awesome (and windy!) day at sea for the sociomantic team. In fact, we’ve already started daydreaming about what it would be like to take the snow-kiting lessons this winter…

Sarah Joy originally hails from Cowtown, USA (perhaps better known by it’s proper alias, Fort Worth, Texas), where you might have found her digging for old records and books, sampling greasy-food diners in tiny rural towns across the state, collecting stories from strange characters she encountered, or talking on her front porch swing with her awesome brothers and sisters. She graduated with a degree in communication from Boston College in Massachusetts, where she studied journalism, digital media, and cyberlaw. She also studied humanistic informatics for a spell at the University of Bergen in Norway, when she first had the chance to take a few weekend trips to Berlin. Her passion for the ever-changing world of Web 2.0 and her social media marketing experience are sure to bring new shades of color to sociomantic labs’ communications.

“I am excited to work in an intimate start-up environment in such a dynamic industry,” says Sarah Joy of her new position. “The face of digital marketing is changing not only day to day, but moment to moment, so I feel lucky to have the opportunity to represent a company who’s finger is so firmly on the pulse of these changes. I look forward to fielding questions and offering comments within the industry on behalf of sociomantic labs.” You’ll find her tweeting about the company and the beauty of social as @sociomantic.

The Fun Facts:

Outside of the labs, Sarah Joy’s interests lie in post punk and electronic dance music, cyberlaw, creative commons, and consumer technology. Back in Boston she was the host of a weekly radio show called Persuasion on FM station WZBC, where she spun deep house tunes into the night as Thursday turned Friday in New England. She was also a resident DJ for a monthly clubnight called Secrets at Boston’s most popular dance club, Good Life. Outside the office, you’ll find her lolling in the sunshine in one of Berlin’s many tree-strewn parks, bouncing her head to deep beats a local record store, or chuckling at New Yorker cartoons in one of the cities myriad cozy cafes. On the social web, you’ll find her tweeting lots of links about music, Apple, technology, writing, and her love affair with living in Berlin.

Welcome aboard, Sarah Joy!

Ants know a thing or two about team work | photo by Prashant Menon

When we started our company 1.5 years ago, we decided that we wanted to have an impact, not just survive. True, in the very first days, it was impossible not to be taken by the constant pressure of looking for our next income. But after some time, after we had the chance to find our first truly outstanding team member, David – who gave us the right push at the right time — our team began to grow quickly. In our short history, these are a few of the facts we have to be proud of:

• No venture capital or investment money since day one means we’ve run the company “Our Way”
• Positive cash flow from the very beginning
• Team approaching 15 members after 1.5 years of bootstrapping
• Expecting to hit 1million in revenues by the end of year two (according to U.S. GAAP)
• Getting employee stock options program in place by the end of year two

We’re proud of the foundation that we’ve built. We own our own distributed hashtable technology and our own tracking technology – all built from scratch and capable of dealing with billions of requests a day on a single machine. Our advertising technology is capable of handling any sort of targeting methodology on the market, be it contextual, retargeting, behavioral, or network pattern based – just to name a few. We’re also on the way to closing the gap between the classical tracking technologies and the CRM sector via Customer Network Analysis. I know that we will truly make a difference in the coming years, and things are getting even crazier (in a good way) as we’re growing.

While spending the last 1.5 years on building all the stuff from scratch, we’ve realized that there isn’t much difference anymore what all the big guys are up to in tech business. Now we’re on our way to getting the sales business in place, doubling the size of our team, and moving to a bigger office to accommodate our new talent. All of this without any Angel or VC investors, but always inspired by the zanox founders, who did an unbelievable job. (Guys, you truly deserve it!) I think all of this makes it clear that we’re on our way to challenge the market — we can provide unbelievable technology and an unbeatable price. We are prepared to take on all the players in our league, even the big guys like Google.

Yes, we’re trying to make things different. We’re not in it for the gold rush. We believe in our people, and in not burning money on what the zanox guys called “castles in the sky.” Of course we’re willing to “pay back” – but we want the payback to go to our team! Our team is what makes the difference in a market that is challenging and constantly changing.

Most things we do in life are about change and motivation. While the soccer world championships were taking place back in 2006, everyone in Germany came to see how important this fact is. Jurgen Klinsmann (the former German coach) introduced new ways of working with his players on a daily basis. He started to build a new foundation for a different sort of soccer play. You could see this even in the 2010 World Cup, watching the German team beat Argentina and England with soccer that might be the best seen for ages. We’ve seen a new German team: inspiring and multicultural, open minded and respectful. This is what I want  our team to look like, too.

I’ve learned that success in life is never easy, and I know what it means to live on less than €25 a week. You have to fight daily, and in the end you have to pay back what you owe to your team. I know the day will come when we will be pleased to see our people prospering and see the trust they invested in us, the founders, paying off. There is nothing more in life than friendship, especially bonds that are built through hard work together. The people who helped us build up the company are at the heart of it — they make the difference.

Looking at our numbers, I don’t know where we’re heading precisely, but I know that everybody is giving his best. And how can we help them to do it? As a founder, you have to be the guy showing commitment on a daily basis. You have to be the leader in every way – every move, every word, must be an example. But as we expect a lot from every team member, we’re also trying to give them maximum freedom back. For example, we don’t have fixed working hours at our office. Instead, we allow team members to work the hours in which they will do the best work — taking care of the team is taking care of the company. Trust is also an important thing – we try hard to empower our people by keeping all communication lines open and enabling decision making without a complex hierarchy. In the end, trust and motivation will make the team strong and ultimately successful.

Our working culture is still developing, but I hope that sooner than later we will have an outstanding office culture. I’m thinking of the Virgin Group or Google, who changed the world’s landscape so much — I’d like our company to be a part of this wave of change in corporate culture. I truly can say that the vision we’re following is to make the world a little better. There are special challenges associated with working with an international team, but I hope the benefits of this arrangement return as much to everyone in the team as it does to me.

You have to believe, to be trustful, to be thankful, and it will pay off!

"Karneval der Kulturen" by Alex Kuhlmann

Many new visitors to our office here in Berlin are a bit surprised when they first walk in and discover such a diverse group tapping away at multilingual keyboards. But Berlin is a city that celebrates it’s multiculturalism, and we follow the lead of the city.

Though we’re located in the German capital, we are an English-speaking office with team members from all over the globe. It was not by chance that the folks that stumbled into our interviews happened to be from far-reaching corners — it was our deliberate choice to be an international company from day one. We follow the lead o

So why did we decide to do things this way? Why, pray tell, would we subject ourselves to the myriad troubles that can arise from bureaucratic tangle of attaining work and residence visas for our non-EU employees? We thought it might be nice to take a minute to explain what’s so awesome about running a global startup, and why we are committed to keeping our team global.

Fertile ground for innovation

We are a high-tech company operating in a fast-paced market. You have to innovate to stay on top. No surprise there.

So what can founders like us do to build a team that is most likely to think big and innovate cutting edge  technologies? Every management textbook will tell you that high-quality heterogeneity is key to assembling an innovative team, and we took this anthem to heart. People who grow up in different cultures naturally have very different perspectives on life — our cultures help define our ideas about everything from the way beer should taste to the way a country should be run. We believe that by bringing many disparate perspectives together, we enable our company see further and wider than we would otherwise — our diversity helps to broaden our company vision and helps to push our thinking outside of the box.

The benefit of this multifaceted approach is evident in every product planning meeting, when each team member brings new and different ideas to the table. By working together to reconcile the best parts of those ideas, we can consolidate them into something awesome.

International customer base

Generally speaking, cutting edge technologies are currently being adopted faster in the U.S., so America will be a key market for our high-tech services. Needless to say, by starting as an global team, we will be more prepared to send our satellites out across the world, including to the U.S.

By starting international, we are subtlely prepping for the day when we open the first sociomantic labs office in Silicon Valley, or London, or Tokyo. Yes, we’re thinking big.

Now seeking: Adventurers

The willingness and audacity to move to a foreign city in a foreign country on the other side of the world says a lot about the person who chooses to do so. Though we hate to overgeneralize, it’s seems safe to say that someone who’s willing to hop continents is someone who has an innate sense of adventure, and it also seems likely that this sort tend to be open minded, ambitious, cosmopolitan, and highly adaptive. Although there are certainly many people here in Berlin with these very characteristics, by hiring an international team we help ourselves to a pool of applicants who are already advertising these characteristics by their lifestyle choices.

Anyone who’s started a company before can tell you that startup life is fast and furious. To keep up, we need team members who are not only willing to jump on the ride, but excited about it. So far, keeping our team international has helped us to ensure that we’ve got team members that are ready for any sharp turn on the road ahead. (And as we’ve said before, for a bootstrapped startup, those turns can come at any moment!)

Plain & Simple

I think our managing director Tom Nicolai best summed up the final reason why we chose to run a global startup. When I asked him about his perspective on our strategy, his first answer was plain as day:

“Fun!”

Of course. It’s interesting and mind-expanding and inspiring and just plain FUN to get to know people from around the world, much less work with them. And if we’re having fun doing our jobs every day, in part thanks to the people around us, we’ll humbly count ourselves as some of the luckiest folks in the biz and do our jobs even better.

Think you have a one-of-a-kind perspective to bring to our diverse team? Check out our career openings and get in touch if your CV’s a match.

As you may have noticed, we’ve just finished implementing our sassy new website design! While we really hope you like the design (thanks, Frank Müller), more than anything we hope you take some time to look through all the new information we’ve added to the site. These are the biggest changes:

Solutions: Customer network analysis

Customer network analysis is a still-young addition to the field of customer intelligence, so we did our best to give a thorough introduction to the topic. The best place to start is with the presentation, then if you need more info, you can read about how CNA can be applied for:

• sCRM
• Product Marketing
• Market Research, and
• Social Media Marketing.

Solutions: Real-time social targeting

This is a totally new section of our website highlighting an new solution that we offer in the field of online ad targeting that can increase revenues for advertisers, publishers, and ad networks. Take a moment to learn about this cutting edge methodology for digital marketing, and let us know if you have any questions that we could clarify personally or in future blog posts.

and last but not least…

CAREERS

We’re hiring! Four new positions were posted today:

• Software Developer
• Trainee Web Developer — User Interaction
• Trainee Web Services Developer
• Web Developer — User Interaction

Our company is growing fast and we need more hands on deck to help support our development. If you or someone you know is looking to join a fun-loving, hard-working (and totally awesome)  team, our inboxes are waiting! You can get to know our company culture and team spirit a little bit by perusing “The Labs” blog channel. Though we’re situated in the heart of Berlin, we’re an English-speaking team from all over the globe, so if you’re a qualified programmer with a solid knowledge of the English language, send your CV our way.

And even if these positions aren’t a perfect fit for you, we’d love it if you’d share the openings with your personal network to help us spread the word.

We took it easy on them. So easy, in fact, that they beat us by a couple of points. But our sociomantic warriors played valiantly, bumping the ball to new heights as sunset fell over Berlin. All in all, a lovely summer’s eve spent in the company of some of Berlin’s coolest tech geeks. We’re already looking forward to the next battle.

Team sociomantic

New shirts

Tom brings the heat

Nice! Dylan in action

Dinner break

The servtag team catchin' some rays

Thomas returns from a conference in time to cheer us on

Berlin sunset

Tom reflects on the game

Labs FTW!

Thanks to everyone from sociomantic labs and servtag for making it a great night!

All photo credits go to our VP Product Development and Innovation, Lars Kirchchoff. There are more beautiful macros here if you’re interested in seeing more of our world.

Everything Social

It seems as though the social bandwagon has finally made its way to Germany’s marketers. The dmexco Berlin Night Talk brought together representatives from German media agencies, PR professionals, and brand managers to listen to and engage in a discussion about the need to get “More Strategy, Less Experiments!” into the business  side of social media. Keynote speaker Sebastian Küpers (Senior Consultant, Pixelpark) hit the nail on the head when he (power)-pointed out the ludicrous number of variations on the SOCIAL meme: Social Media, Social CRM, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Monitoring, Social Gaming, Social Reviewing, Social [insert any word here]...

His point was that “social media” and all its manifestations shouldn’t be the focus — the CUSTOMER should be the focus. A customer-centric mindset must be the first rule for any business using social media.  It’s not enough to just use social media — you have to make discoveries about your customers, then carry those findings back into the heart of your organization. There must be a digestion process for the social media feeding frenzy to have any lasting impact.

After the keynote, there was a brief debate about social media practices. These were some of the key points made by the debaters:

• “Social” will evolve to the point of becoming totally standard and mandatory channel/tool for every business, regardless of brand type or industry
• This is just the beginning — everyone is still expecting a major growth spurt
• Right now all the focus is on control — PR and Brand managers scrambling to make sure their brand is safe out there. This is important, but there are other measures to be taken with social media, like product innovation, etc.

Conclusion: German marketers are discussing many of the same topics and the U.S. guys we saw speak at M2C in Paris this March. Most professionals somehow feel that there is something “going on” with social, and all seem to agree that it’s becoming a must for every business to position themselves in the social context. The tools and stories are the same, but so far there isn’t much answer to the big question of ROI.  In the end, it all comes down to defining the concept of “influence” and “word of mouth,” as it seems that most ROI is expected to be found somewhere inside these concepts.

Tonight we’ll be heading over to 40seconds for the dmexco Berlin Night Talk, hosted by Wolfram Kons. The social media talks will also feature the following speakers:

Hubertus v. Lobenstein, Agentur Von Lobenstein
Dr. Markus Schröder, Bereichsvorstand Marketing EnBW

We’ll report back here with our learnings soon!

Gavin in one of his favorite habitats

As our senior developer, Gavin is responsible for the development of the search aspects of our back-end technologies, including our search robots. In particular, Gavin programs in the D language to develop what we call our “dive” library, which harvests all the data we collect from the net.

Originally hailing from Sussex, UK (where he mostly lived in the town of Brighton), Gavin comes to us with many years of experience in programming. Prior to working for sociomantic, Gavin received his Master’s degree in computer science from University in Essex (where he earlier received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science & artificial intelligence). For his Master’s thesis, Gavin created a generative rhythm synthesizer for creating beats in the style of Autechre & Aphex Twin. “It worked with a genetic algorithm to create random beats using granular synthesis, which the human user could then selectively breed to hone,” explains Gavin. (Check out one of his later musical productions below)

In the past, he’s worked for six years as a C++ programmer in the games industry, making Xbox, Windows & Playstation2 games. Since moving to Berlin in July 2009 to be with his girlfriend, he’s worked with KS12 Creative Studio on the project postcardsfromberlin.com, working on extensive customization of the Wordpress engine in php & jquery.

But now, he’s ours. “I’m excited to be working on the cutting edge of new web technology,” says Gavin of his new position at the labs.

The Fun Facts

Outside of the labs, Gavin likes to be… well, outside: hiking, picnicking, lake swimming – you name it. He’s a nature guy — passionate about environmental issues, buying organic (in Germany it’s called “bio”), and permaculture. When it comes to music, his listening tastes fall into the categories of “experimental and unusual,” with favourites running the avant-garde gamut: Current 93, David Bowie, Lustmord, Aphex Twin, Zoviet*France, Fennesz, Biosphere, and his old fave, Kate Bush. As you can hear above, he even makes some music, too (although we don’t foresee “abstract dronescapes” having much commercial potential anytime soon).

When it comes to movies, David Lynch is his man. Though Gavin is certainly a fan of Lynch’s films, his true fanhood falls behind the director’s acclaimed 1990s television series Twin Peaks, which Gavin says to be “without a doubt, my favorite TV or film ever.” (He so loves it, in fact, that once he and his girlfriend were inspired to learn how to make plum pie in homage to Twin Peak’s “Double R Diner,” which was known in the series for its delicious pies).

Amidst his love for nature and culture, at the end of a long day of programming, you might find Gavin playing RPGs – but not the online ones. He only plays the “old school ones with pencils, paper, odd dice and weird imagined stories.” He’s currently running a game using the Savage Worlds rules system.

Welcome to the team, Gavin!