20 years is a reason to celebrate
There are many reasons to celebrate. I think it’s especially wonderful when a company can celebrate its 20th anniversary. We’re proud that we were able to mark this milestone with a big party this year. In addition to customers and partners with whom we maintain strong relationships, Kasper Skårhøj, the founder of TYPO3, was our guest of honor. He opened the event with a very personal speech, sharing anecdotes and photos from our time together.
After another speech on the history of our company (which I’d also like to briefly summarize in this post) and a look ahead to the future, we celebrated over food and drinks, engaged in discussions, and then hit the dance floor. And for those who found it too cold on the terrace or too loud in the ballroom, there was an adjacent room where they could retreat and find inspiration for new projects. We had set up a sort of showcase of our expertise, where we presented the services we use to help our clients move forward.
Founded under the name WEB Internet Services GbR, the staff initially focused on creating websites based on HTML 3 and provided support to clients in the areas of dedicated lines and security. Two years later, the GbR became a GmbH, and the first website project went live: fertiggarage.de
The company was renamed “ punkt.de ” in 2001, and as early as 2003, punkt.de added the then-relatively unknown content management system TYPO3 to its portfolio. Since then, we have been deeply involved in the TYPO3 community. For example, we initiated the organization of the first T3CON as an international TYPO3 conference in Karlsruhe, which has been held annually ever since. In addition, Managing Director Jürgen Egeling served as chairman of the TYPO3 Association for three years, and our marketing team at punkt.de has been actively supporting the association for the past two years. Since 2014, we’ve also had the Neos content management system on board, and we’re proud that two of our colleagues are demonstrating their commitment to this system by continuing to develop it as part of the core development team.
In 2010, we decided to implement Scrum and used this agile development method to build a partner portal for our client, Deutsche Post. “Convinced by the process and results, we began in 2015 to apply the principle of self-organization across the entire company and gradually transition our corporate structure to self-organizing project teams,” explains our CEO, Jürgen Egeling. In addition to development, we also have many years of experience in hosting: we’ve been operating our own data center in Karlsruhe since 2001, and this year we launched“punkt.de Hosting” as a standalone brand, replacing the long-established pluspunkthosting.
One of our most recent successes was winning the 2016 TYPO3 Award. For the children’s charity nph deutschland e.V., also based in Karlsruhe, we developed an online store (www.hilfefuerwaisenkinder.de) that allows customers not only to contribute to large-scale projects through donations but also to fund specific relief supplies. The donation shop was named the best “Small Website” project at this year’s T3CON. Additional projects can be found in the case studies, with more to follow in the near future.
punkt.de As an Employer—At Home in Karlsruhe
Founded in Karlsruhe, having moved several times within the city, and based at the Mühlburger Tor since 2008, we feel a strong connection to the city and the region. “That’s why we actively contribute to the local economy: first and foremost as an employer and a training company,” says Jürgen Egeling. What started with three employees has grown to 32 today; the proportion of women has risen steadily—it now stands at more than 30 percent. This is due in no small part to the company’s strong commitment to family-friendly policies: We introduced the concept of working from home as early as 1999; part-time work and other flexible work arrangements are standard practice.
Since 2010, one or two students from the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) have also been an integral part of the team each year, completing the practical portion of their dual degree program in computer science at the company. Currently, one of the three students is in China, completing a semester abroad. He’s writing about it on our blog (see the first post). In addition, as a partner company, we support the informatikBOGY initiative (launched by KIT Karlsruhe) to help introduce young people to the world of computer science.
