ISSUU'S TASTY BITS & BYTES
NOVEMBER 2016
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
The new issuu
THE #NEWISSUU ISSUE
Editor in Chief Alette Holmberg-Nielsen Writer Joel Barnard Creative Director Nicole Chiala Guest Illustrator Maya Gürtler Lorentzen
The issuuees: Alexander Grosse, Amalie Rosenstand, Anders Hellerup Madsen, Anders Fugmann, Andreas Dahl, Andrei Ungureanu, Cameron Gallacher, Christian Kastbjerg, Denise Twum, Elise Sabbag, Fabio Stabel, Fernando Romero, Francesco Zanitti, Frej Soya, Grace Cheung, Greta Baranauskaité, Jesper Torp Kristensen, Jesper Holm Olsen, Joe Hyrkin, John Sturino, Jonas Nielsen, Joshua Davis, Karen Mørkholt, Kenneth Skovhus, Lasse Bach, Laurits Langberg, Louise Gonzalez Lauridsen, Maciej Pekala, Mads Sejersen, Marie Bjerregaard, Martin Koch, Matt B., Michael England, Michelle Yang, Mie Tandrup, Mikkel Jensen, Musharrif Hussain, Nicolai Gylling, Paul Kim, Peter Assentorp, Rachel Torres, Rob Siwek, Rolf Ussing, Simon Ellefsen, Slavko Krucaj, Slawomir Smiechura, Søren Thomsen and Yan Hong. The issuu Interns: Anisa Tavangar, Ashley Zhang, Jessica Wong, Joseph Kind, Kaija Hsiao and Maya Kandell. The issuu Production Babies: Frode, Issac, Lea, Lucjia and Naja. Special Thanks: Fredrik Linåker, Juan Jose Romano, Jiyu Zhang, Jonas B. Jensen, Mads Hartmann, Raghav Karol, Sorin Dimofte and Søren Vind. This publication was created using Adobe InDesign. The project workflow was managed seamlessly using issuu Collaborate, the easiest way to plan and produce publications in one place.
Carefully Crafted, Freshly Squeezed When I joined issuu as a Senior
we still questioned everything
Product Owner exactly one year
and chose better over faster.
ago, the thing I first noticed was the care and passion with which
With this premier issue of
everything here is crafted. From
ORANGE JUICE we’ll share the
the beautiful content being
story of our remarkable year-
uploaded by publishers to the
long journey. It’s definitely not
animated discussions of technical
your typical tech story about a
architecture, an acute attention
shiny new feature or an amazing
to detail was everywhere I looked.
growth story. It’s much grittier
These were definitely my kind
than that. Our story is about the
of people.
dedication, hard work and sheer guts necessary to rebuild the very
During my first week at issuu, I
core of a massive existing product.
was thrown into a major project
And we figured what better vehicle
— at the time no one knew how
to tell our story than the one
big it was going to be — rewriting
that hundreds of thousands of
the core of issuu from scratch.
issuu publishers use to tell theirs
Initially, we were driven by the
each month. It’s also the perfect
upcoming changes in the browsers
opportunity for us to show
(i.e. the slow death of Flash).
off all the big little details we’ve
However, as we started digging
built into issuu’s incredible new
into it, it turned out to be so much
reading experience.
more than just about technology. We were re-engineering and
Happy reading!
redesigning issuu to be ready for the future. Despite working under
Alette Holmberg-Nielsen
taxing deadlines, I’m proud to say
Editor in Chief
When Life Gives You Oranges...
Words by Joel Barnard Illustrations by Maya Gßrtler Lorentzen With the world changing around us, the issuu team saw an opportunity to reimagine the reading experience from the inside out while keeping true to the original issuu vision. Time wasn’t on our side, but our aim to deliver a stellar reading experience everywhere and our commitment to quality was.
If there’s one constant in the
had faced before — could we
technology game, it’s change.
change the experience millions
The better, faster, smarter
of people already love in ways
version is always just around
that would make them love it
the corner. Sometimes no one
even more? Would it be possible
sees it coming. Sometimes its
to rebuild such a large plane
arrival date is plastered on every
mid-flight? And how much
blog, bus and billboard. And in
time would we have to do it?
the case of the imminent demise
One thing we knew for certain
of browser and mobile support
is we would stay true to our
for Flash (the core technology
philosophy of not rushing
issuu’s reading experience was
products to market that we couldn’t be proud of. Of course,
I was really excited to work on this project because we had a chance to rethink all the past established practices. We didn’t do things the same way, just because that’s how they were always done. Instead, we searched for the absolute best way to deal with each task.
this time the stakes were much
— Maciej Pękala, Engineer
Senior Product Owner, Alette
higher. It was a race we couldn’t lose. And yet, no one knew if doing things the right way would allow us to reach the finish line in time.
All or Nothing By mid-2015, we began by putting together a rock-solid engineering team tasked with finding a solution. This included several long-standing issuu engineers, plus some newer brains, like the project’s Holmberg-Nielsen. In the very
built on), it has been a long time
early days of the project, our
coming. Smartphones never had
end goal wasn’t completely
(real) Flash support, and the
clear and a vision had yet to
desktop browsers announced
be formed. We were driven by
they would finally be pulling the
the slow death of Flash in the
plug “sometime” in 2016.
browsers, but according to Alette, “It quickly turned out
Staring down the barrel of this
this could not — and should not
unknown deadline, we faced
— be only about a technology
the dilemma other companies
change. Really, it had to be about
Anders Lead / Back-end
Soren Director
Alette Product Owner
Peter UX
Mie Support
Frej Back-end
Yan Front-end
Anders Front-end
Greta Support
Mads Full-Stack
Setting Up the Team The team was set up with people having different experience, skill sets and personalities. Four developers had worked on various aspects of our previous reading experiences. Three developers, the product owner and the designer were new. Team members had a mix of artisan, science and philosophical backgrounds, and everyone was highly motivated. One key to our success was our ability to listen to each other (even during heated discussions) and treat each other with respect. We also had a good balance of agitators and moderators. All meetings were open to everyone on the team and those in attendance understood their roles. We almost always pair programmed. And rather than having only experienced people making decisions, we gave newer members a bigger voice, which worked out surprisingly well. Søren D. Thomsen Director of Engineering
Rachel Marketing