With the fireworks announcing the beginning of 2022, the snow turning into frost and the days sloooowly getting longer, Sirus takes the time to look back. We are looking back on a year full of excitement about new big projects, a bit of disappointment when yet another Covid variant sabotaged our 10th Anniversary, but the overwhelming feeling that lingers in our minds and bodies at the end of this year, while dragging out the Christmas tree, is optimism.
Optimism and enthusiasm. Because we are eager to start this new year, eager to fully develop the projects we have won this year and eager to see each other again. Together we want to build future-proof solutions which will stand the test of time and together we want to continue to grow, as a company and as a team.
Do you want to see the past year through our eyes? Take a seat behind our binoculars and have a look:
This year: we welcomed 8 new Sirus-superheroes
This year our team welcomed 8 new members and they are all great assets to the Sirus company.
We welcomed Matthias – a Senior Front End Developer who is working on our Smart City Platform & for one of our projects Digipolis Antwerp where he is redesigning a user friendly data mapping and transformation tool.
Joris and Brecht joined our team as Senior .NET Developers. They are working together on on our IoT and Data transformation projects for customers like BlueArk(Switzerland) and ODALA.
Another valuable member to our team is Filip – a Senior Full Stack Developer and Scrum Master. He is continuing his assignment at Infrabel.
We said hello to Jens – our marketing intern who helped Justien with the marketing for Sirus. For several months he helped make Sirus an even better planet! Furthermore, we welcomed Thomas, our driven new Data Engineer.
The one Jens was just leaving, when another Jens appeared – he became Project Manager for our Smart City projects. His mission will therefore be to further develop this great concept. In the past he has gained several years of experience in project management within the IT sector, but also analysis is not unknown to him. This combination makes him the perfect asset to our planet.
And last but not least, Sofie joined our team as an HR & Office Assistant and will therefore work closely with all of our astronauts. After being a sysadmin for 10 years, Sofie realised that the drive to help people extends far beyond IT alone. Sofie is always enthusiastic and doesn’t take no for an answer. Being a single mom makes her a great planner and organizer with a crazy touch.
Do you want to join the Sirus forces as well? We’re hiring more developer talent. Have a look at our career page.
This year: we went to several national & international events
Apart from the Covid virus, we still got the chance to be present at several national and international events this year. Being present at some of these events is important for us, since we love the chance to explain what we are doing and how we try to build smarter cities and develop futureproof solutions for companies based on their data.
CityxCity Festival
On the 13th of January CITYxCITY organised the first CITYxCITY Festival as an online alternative for the annual OASC conference. In this 2-day celebration speakers from all over the world were brought together to talk about how they want to amplify their impact on society. Our Sirus CEO Gert De Tant talked about global mobility, its challenges and opportunities for the Smart Cities of the future.
Microsoft IoT Show
The IoT show is a collection of live-streamed events such as trainings, talks, announcements, product and features demos etc. to which you can subscribe to stay up to date with the latest and greatest in Microsoft’s IoT solution world. One important part of the show talked about Digital Twins and its opportunities for the future. With our experience in working with ETSI NGSI-LD and the OASC MiM’s and through our partnership with Microsoft, we are in a frontrunner position to help cities and companies in their aspiration to build a virtual world based on real-time data.
Trefdag Digitaal Vlaanderen 2021
The themes of this year’s event were #Smart #Data #LowTouch #Pods. Sirus is hosting its own stand where we talked about the data challenges of the future, how cities can become smarter by utilizing this data and how we can guarantee data quality and counter misinformation.
Barcelona Smart City Expo
The Smart City Expo World Congress is the international leading event for cities. Their mission is to empower cities and empower urban innovation cross boundaries. Together with Cegeka, Sirus was representing the Urban Sense consortium at the Microsoft Pavilion. Gert, Jens and Justien were present and promoting our Urban Data Platform.
This year: we worked on a lot of exciting projects
Hospital Logistics
Hospital Logistics ensures that healthcare institutions can focus on their core task of administering care to their patients by providing everything needed to optimally fulfil this job. They asked Sirus for an application that facilitates the ordering process of products. Healthcare workers have to be able to easily and quickly replenish their department’s stock of consumable goods (e.g. syringes, masks, gloves…). The second thing Sirus provided was a web shop. A specific web environment where all of Hospital Logistics’ products are displayed.
Constructiv
Constructiv is a service organization for the construction industry. Since certain tasks on a construction site can only be performed by certified personnel, site managers must be able to verify that workers are capable to perform certain jobs. In the past, construction workers therefore had to bring paper copies of their certificates. In order to make this process run smoother, Constructiv asked for a website where employees could add new certificates, manage existing certificates and import old certificates.
And: we won some amazing new projects!
Smart City project Brugge – Leuven – Roeselare
Also this year, we won the tender for the Brugge-Roeselare-Leuven (BLR) urban data platform! We have been talking about it since November 2019 where we shared our dream of gathering data from different cities on one platform with two Brugge city’s spokesmen. This project is very exciting since it’s the first time cities in Flanders enroll this kind of project on such a large scale. The cities Brugge, Roeselare and Leuven will join forces and combine their data on one platform. Especially for this project we developed a new temporary partnership, named Urban Sense. This way both parties can approach the customer, the cities, as one team.
MobiliData
MobiliData is an ambitious mobility project where public and private forces are combined to make traffic safer, smoother and greener through smart data management and technology. Be-Mobile, a Belgian company specialized in smart mobility solutions, created a strong consortium to achieve this ambitious project. As part of the consortium, Sirus will help tackle this challenge by providing data interoperability (by implementing the Minimal Interoperability Mechanims from OASC).
Do you have a project for us as well? Feel free to contact us.
Or take a look at our other projects.
This year: our bond grew stronger thanks to a lot of team events
Sirus Sporty Summer Challenge
This summer we took on a challenge with all of the Sirus members. We were going to commit ourselves to exercising 33 hours each. This would make a total achievement of 1000 hours spread over 2 months.
All of our sporting endeavors accounted for a total of:
It was a fun challenge to push our limits and see what we could achieve together. Next summer, we are hoping to beat this challenge and do even better.
Teambuilding Durbuy & team event The Lab
At our teambuilding in the beautiful Durbuy, we:
– Rose to new heights
– Fueled our competitive fire
– Prayed that this efficient and fun way of working could last
– Challenged our building and survival skills
– And last but not least, enjoyed some of our freshly hunted wildlife (just kidding, we’re still software engineers 
)
Competence meetings
Every month, we organize competence centers. This brings the Sirus team closer together and allows for an open discussion on knowledge, the latest innovations, and simply a peer to peer discussion. Every competence meeting is led by a different team member. As an example, Brecht talked about hamburgers in his competence meeting and linked it with programming! Some food for thought, right?
Event: coming soon
A very exciting event was planned this year. We were going to celebrate our 10th anniversary! Unfortunately, the Covid regulations didn’t allow for us to celebrate the way we wanted to. But, no need for tears or a heartache, since we postponed the event to June 2022. And then we’ll party even more, since by then, we’ve added even another year worth of celebrating to our anniversary! 😉
This was our 2021 in a nutshell. In 2022, we’ll continue on the same road we were walking on and we’ll continue to build smart solutions as a team. Together, step by step, we aim to help Smart Cities and Smart Companies make better use of their data and implement Micorosoft 365 and .NET solutions.
Eager to know more? Don’t hesitate to contact us.
