During this session, Kevin, Daniël and Nick each gave a presentation on a topic they have been exploring recently. The topics ranged from technical innovations to personal development: a nice mix that shows exactly how versatile we are at Zooma.

In this blog you can read what was discussed and what we as an organization learned from it:

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kevin presented the results of a recent R&D sprint in which he and colleagues researched Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform. With this session, he wanted to take the team through the possibilities of this technology and show what it looks like in practice. Recently Kevin, along with three colleagues from Zooma, traveled to Copenhagen to attend the conference on the subject. Read more about KotlinConf in this blog.

During his presentation, Kevin showed how Kotlin allows you to reuse multi-platform code and UI on different platforms; both Android and iOS. This can allow us to build apps faster and more efficiently. He also gave a demo of what has been realized with this technique.

The presentation provided a lot of inspiration. Because this knowledge is now shared internally, other teams can also experiment with it and see how they can apply this approach within other projects.

Giving feedback

Daniel focused on another important topic within Zooma, namely behavior within teams. This is something he learns a lot about as a group commander with the reservists in the military. His goal was to teach colleagues this knowledge for giving feedback on behavior. This often happens unconsciously, but can have a great influence on cooperation within a team, and therefore on results achieved.

According to Daniel, up until now Zooma has mainly been concerned with improving processes, but behavior has not been discussed much. By discussing behavior and making clear agreements about it, irritations and ambiguities can be avoided. The larger Zooma becomes, the more important this theme will become.

The presentation offered recognition to many colleagues and made them think about how we work together. By giving more frequent and better feedback on behavior, we can become stronger as a team and take Zooma to an even higher level.

Technical depth: Docker, Qodana and Git

Nick closed the session with a technical presentation in which he covered three topics that contribute to the quality and scalability of our work: custom Docker images, the use of the software Qodana and a unified Git approach.

Custom Docker images

Nick showed how a new Docker image, which runs PHP in conjunction with Apache MPM event instead of MPM prefork, allows more users to use our applications at the same time. This can be done without having to deploy additional servers. Consider Youmie, for example, where this efficiency is of immediate benefit.

Qodana

Next, Nick explained how Qodana works. This tool performs automatic checks on our code and identifies code smells & vulnerabilities. He showed how to add Qodana to your project and how to interpret and use the reports. This helps us write higher quality code and prevent bugs earlier.

Git approach

Finally, Nick discussed how we work with Git: a tool our software developers use to keep track of changes to their projects. By better separating releases from each other, we can test them separately. It also makes it possible to automatically generate a clear changelog. This makes it easier to see what changes have been made, the status of new features and why certain choices were made.

This approach ensures that our workflow remains scalable as Zooma grows, and helps teams work together more efficiently and consistently.

The knowledge session was a valuable meeting in which three colleagues shared their knowledge and inspired the team. By organizing sessions like this regularly, we ensure that we continue to learn from each other and grow as an organization. We share knowledge in many different ways, read more about it in the blog about the first phase of our approach: gathering feedback and ideas.

Whether it's technical innovation or improved collaboration, at Zooma we know that progress starts with sharing knowledge.