At Apiumhub, we constantly seek new initiatives to promote knowledge sharing and learning from one another. We organize small internal events in our office in Barcelona on a monthly basis to give our teammates the opportunity to share their knowledge or thoughts about new technologies, frameworks, and tools, or simply to discuss projects.

3 reasons why we promote knowledge-sharing initiatives

It aligns with our values

This type of initiative aligns with one of our most important company values: “ Never stop growing. ” We know the tech industry is very changeable; new technologies or tools emerge every year, and it’s essential to stay up-to-date with those changes. Sharing our knowledge and experiences keeps us up to date on what’s going on in the world, and it also helps us grow professionally. It’s simple: In this industry, you should never, ever stop learning!

It encourages critical thinking

Critical thinking helps us analyze information, identify patterns, and draw conclusions to make informed decisions. It also helps us to think more clearly and logically and to develop our problem-solving skills. All our knowledge-sharing initiatives aim to promote this kind of thinking.

To have a good time

The idea behind these knowledge-sharing initiatives is not only to share knowledge but also to have a good time together. Since Apiumhub has a flexible work policy, we don’t always have the opportunity to see each other often. These initiatives allow us to discuss ideas and also catch up and have a laugh.

Some of our current knowledge sharing initiatives

Book Club

The book club is one of the knowledge sharing initiatives we have been doing for the longest time. Every two weeks, the members of our team who are interested get together to discuss tech books or articles from known experts in the industry. Some of the topics that we have discussed are monorepos, legacy code, refactoring, design patterns, concurrency, and many more. Last year, our team dedicated time to reading and discussing our book Software Architecture Metrics in which our co-founder, Christian Ciceri, wrote an article about “Case Studies to Improve the Quality of Your Architecture.”

Open Space

Informal meetings that generate engaging experiences for everyone. In these meetings, we present a specific topic to talk about, and each member contributes to the conversation. For example, on our last open space, we talked about unit testing: what it is for, how we use it on different projects, integration tests, and more.

Lightning Talks

A fun way to share knowledge! In these talks, each team member gives a 5-minute presentation on a specific topic using PowerPoint slides to spark conversation and generate ideas. We encourage all types of presentations, from QA automation tips and tricks to how to manage teams or benefit from a certain framework. At the end of each presentation, we give all participants a few minutes to ask questions or give feedback.

New knowledge sharing initiatives

This year we want to innovate, so we have thought of two new knowledge sharing initiatives that will surely be useful for our techies. We are talking about Sonar Talks and Tech Thursdays. Want to know what they are all about? Keep reading!

Sonar Talks

Sonar talks are similar to lightning talks but focused on specific tools. The idea is that each person who is interested in participating presents a tool and explains its history, the theory behind it, and technical examples. Each presentation should close with a conclusion and a suggestion of books or articles to keep learning about the tool. Presentations are short but loaded with a lot of useful and interesting information.

Tech Thursdays

This initiative is more casual, but we will surely take advantage of it! Every Thursday, our co-founder and software architect, Christian Ciceri, will be present to discuss interesting tech topics during lunchtime. The goal of this initiative is to encourage conversations, encourage critical thinking, and identify potential issues and solutions.

If you find these knowledge sharing initiatives interesting, look at our blog for more ideas or watch our YouTube channel.There we share videos of open spaces or other internal events with our community.