Three Years: A Retrospective
Limopalm is a total solution digital media design agency from the Maldives, managed by a good friend of mine, Sujuaan Ali. This is a reproduction of his post on their company blog to mark their anniversary on Thursday, 5th January 2012. I wish him many more years of success.
Happy Birthday Limopalm! Three years have passed since the beginning of Limopalm and we feel so proud to be a part of it. Previous anniversaries have been very different from this year. On 2009, I remember very clearly like it was yesterday, we had just one computer, one desk and a small little office. On 2010, we had three desks, three computers and one sofa. On the year of 2011 moved in to our brand new offices. Speaking today, in 2012, we now have a separate lobby and working area, with a work area suitable for six people, with 5 computers, all the necessary gadgets, a glass framed whiteboard, comfy sofa, a separate meeting area, a coffee room and a large relaxing balcony with the breathtaking view of the Indian Ocean. This is our progress visible and we are proud of it. But this really is only the beginning for us, as our ambitions far exceed than our current achievements and we look forward to what the future holds. There is a whole wish-list of things yet to work for.
New furniture, gadgets and office space aside, we wanted to share the milestones and achievements that have come to pass in the past three years since we started.
Milestones and Achievements
- Developed more than 30 Websites and Uploaded 25 of them to our Portfolio-
- A Clientele of more than 30 organizations which include Businesses, NGOs and Government Entities
- Developed a Dhivehi News website
- Developed an iPhone & iPad application
- Developed an E-Commerce Website
- Developed Web based Intranets and Management Systems
- Developed & wrote Web Copy for one of the most complex, complete and unique travel agency websites in Maldives, Sandy Maldives.
- Brought developers and industry related firms and individuals to one table and made it the key beginning of something amazing (Discussions)
- Expanded our services from being just a merely Web Designing firm to, Development of Mobile & Web Applications, Copy-writing, Consultancy, Web Photography, Branding & E-Marketing, making our little firm into a total solution Digital Media Design Agency.
- Released three varied versions of websites for Limopalm
- Started up a blog for Limopalm, and we promised ourselves to update the blog regularly.
- Expanded Team Limopalm with some amazing guys.
But with all the successes, there also came some unexpected failures and disappointments that we were able to draw from and learn. With new lessons learnt, we re-developed our business strategy and have come out stronger.
During the past few weeks some amazing events have taken place. I thought of writing a separate blog post for them, but my hectic schedule at Limopalm have hindered me from writing alone calmly.
Yes, a Hackathon! A few industry mates and I have been getting together the last month or so planning the Maldives first ever Hackathon. For those who do not have any clue of what a Hackathon is, it is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming.
This historical event, targeting Maldivian application and software developers, is to be held within just almost a month from today. During the planning meetings we have had at Leaf Technology, the brilliant Idea of “Hackathon” was proposed by Jawish (Jaa) from Semicolon.
The event is planned to be kicked off from February 23rd to 25th. Within the past few weeks the hype of hackathon was immense within our meetups. One of our colleagues, Shafiu from Octove participated in a Hackathon in Malaysia named Hack Weekend and won the People’s Choice Award for the best app. His contributions indeed speeded up the procedures and gave us a clear idea of how the event is to be organized.
The organising team was later determined with Hamid, Jaa, Shaff & Ripha working on the Admin side while Sujuaan (Me), Bassam, Muju Naeem and Oppo working on the Marketing and fund raising side of the team. To date, we have brought
MNBC One as our Media Partner (Thanks to Muju & Bassam) & Ripha from the Admin side is trying his best on securing Girifushi Island to host the event.
We already have some amazing developers ready to hack at the event. Flash, (lead developer – Limopalm), Shariz and Shamikh are going to hack together as a team and a number of other popular developers through out the Maldives are going to hack and build up some great applications during the event.
New Websites in Portfolio
Apart from the Hack event, we have uploaded two great websites to our portfolio this month, the latest Dhivehi News Website of the first private channel in Maldives, the popularly known DhiTV and one of the complex and unique travel agency websites from Maldives, Sandy Maldives.
It has always been an aim of Limopalm to include some unique attributes in every product we cater. DhiTV, being a news website from Maldives also have some unique features which enhances usability and experience. The floating navigation, user friendly and minified urls and easy commenting system are some of those unique features. In addition to designing and developing an appealing and tantalizing UI & an easy to manage and complex content management system for Sandy Maldives Limopalm also provided copywriting for the website. We wrote all the content required for the website and uploaded all the content which include Resorts, Liveaboards, City Hotels, Activities, Special Offers, Maldives and the rest of the pages.
MV Startups, a fantastic idea and initiative by Muju Naeem partnered with Re-invent Maldives and Limopalm, was completed and uploaded in just one night. The purpose of the website was to portray startups and new websites from Maldives in one platform to the greater Internet audience. The website now compiles many of the recently launched and initiated startups and websites from Maldives and have received positive and supportive response from all corners of our industry.
That is all the time I have right now for the updates from the world of Limopalm. Next post, we will give you a lot more details about Hackathon and other activities we are involved in. Before I finish, I want to send out a great big thank you to all stakeholders, friends and family for all the support and love we have received in building the success story that is Limopalm.