Our 2022 in review

19 Jan 2023 5 min read

Written by

The XWiki Team

In 2022 we continued getting comfortable in the 'new normal' while also getting accustomed to a 4-day work week. It was, as usual, a busy and fruitful year, with many initiatives, challenges, and rewards. Here is how 2022 turned out for us and what we have done throughout the year.

Company Achievements

Maintained great clients and founded new partnerships

  • Univention App Center - Univention Corporate Server (UCS) is the innovative basis for the cost-efficient operation and easy administration of server applications and entire IT infrastructures. Starting with February 2022, XWiki is available in the App Center. After installing XWiki Standard in UCS, you can also try XWiki Pro for free from your wiki's Extension Manager.
  • KnowledgeBase Consulting - our partnership comes from a mutual desire to make XWiki accessible to as many people as possible and help enrich collaboration across organizations. This is why in May 2022 we joined forces with KnowledgeBase Consulting to further our missions and encourage collaboration across organizations by providing a more personalized, comfortable experience for German customers.  
  • Université de Cergy - XWiki took part in the creation of their e-learning online campus platform, meant to provide an ecosystem of digital solutions oriented towards student life and employability.

Continued working and launching new Confluence migration tools

Besides the dedicated migrator, in 2022 we continued improving the Pro Macros Package with new compatible macros that make the migration from Confluence to XWiki a breeze while maintaining the look, feel, and functionalities of your instance. For easier comparison, we've also launched a comprehensive, easy-to-follow comparison page of the most commonly used Confluence macros and their alternatives in XWiki. We have continued offering expert consulting and migration services across the world and we are glad to notice more and more organizations seeking an Open Source alternative to proprietary software.

Reconnected with Open Source communities at European events

  • FOSDEM 2022 - as is tradition, 2022's events season started with our participation at FOSDEM 2022, the biggest free Open Source event in Europe, where communities can meet, share ideas and collaborate. We held online our "Collaborative Information and Content Management Applications" devroom, and participated with presentations, tackling different hot subjects from new features, improvements, and alternative tools and services to proprietary ones.

  • Journées du Logiciel Libre - Ludovic and Clément joined the 23rd edition of Journées du Logiciel Libre, an event dedicated to introducing Free and Open Source software to the general public. They had the honor to share impressions, discuss collaboration, and also hold presentations about both XWiki and CryptPad.

  • Cloud Expo Frankfurt - on May 11 & 12, our colleagues, Silvia and Ludovic, attended Cloud Expo Frankfurt, in Frankfurt, Germany, and had the pleasure of meeting Open Source enthusiasts, discussing privacy, and knowledge management, and answering any XWiki-related curiosities. 

  • Univention Summit - in Bremen, Germany, on May 17 & 18, our colleagues, Ludovic and Clément had the opportunity to meet industry aficionados, share opinions and discuss knowledge management topics. 

  • OW2 Con' - during this event, our team had multiple talks on our product, the power of Open Source, and best practices in knowledge management.

  • Open Source Experience - in this edition of OSXP we took part in discussions related to digital sovereignty and how Open Source can provide solutions for this issue and the topic of financing Open Source. Our team also held 2 presentations, one about the future of knowledge management and another one about XWiki's open-source business model, commercial offering, monetization strategy, and licensing choices. What's more, this year we've also noticed a much greater interest overall in Open Source products and also in Confluence migrations. We also met our NextCloud and Passbolt friends during the conference and had the opportunity to discuss potential partnerships.

  • Capitole du Libre - another event that we were delighted to participate once again in after two years of a break due to the pandemic, with insightful talks from Ludovic and Clément about the financing of Open Source, documentation of personal projects, and CryptPad. Being an Open Source community-based event, we’ve been thrilled to meet many people already using CryptPad either self-hosted or on cryptpad.fr.

  • Campus du Libre - Ludovic and Clément attended the event, shared knowledge on free software, and also had 2 talks focused on the financing of FOSS in the context of a small, ethical SME, and on how as a student you can document your projects with Open Source tools and what are the criteria for choosing the right one as well.

Engaged with students and educated them about Open Source

  • PhD Talent - in October, Diana, Ludovic, and Clément attended PhD Talent, an event meant to connect companies with Ph.D. students, PhDs, and researchers to foster innovation. We were joyful to see young people’s interest in Open Source and privacy.

  • FII IT-ist - our colleagues, Any, Ștefana, Alexandra, and Marius joined this year's FII IT-ist — an annual event directed at students from the Faculty of Computer Science from Iași. Marius held a presentation about how we have implemented at XWiki the "Export as PDF" feature that converts multiple wiki (web) pages into a single PDF file, while Any, Ștefana, and Alexandra discussed with students of different study levels how is it working in an Open Source company and what career opportunities are available inside XWiki.

  • CY Tech Forum - Ludovic and Clément offered a crash course on the subject of Open Source to students that weren't very familiar with this topic.

...and held our own events

  • From Confluence to XWiki - Migration tools demo - during this webinar, we showcased our new migration tools, some tips and tricks about migrating to XWiki, and, finally, held a demo on how to use the dedicated migrator in just a few quick, easy steps.
  • From Confluence to XWiki - Latest migration tools demo - in this dedicated session, we highlighted the latest migration tools that our team has developed in 2022, went through a step-by-step migration guide covering different use cases, and discussed extensively your questions and the compatible macros that support the migration from Confluence to XWiki.

Continued to advocate for Open Source

At XWiki Open Source is part of our culture — it's the tools we use, the practices we adopt, and the way we conduct business. This time instead, our teammates told us their perspective about working in Open Source through our ongoing series of articles about their professional journey at XWiki:

We've also continued to use (and even experiment) our A to Z guide of Open Source tools. Updates coming soon on the list as well. In the meantime, we wholeheartedly encourage anyone to continue participating by sending us any suggestions here!

XWiki and CryptPad are not only our software, but they also belong to the community and you. You are welcomed to participate by developing, reporting bugs or features, and also sponsor the development of these projects: XWiki & CryptPad.

Product

14.x Cycle overview

This development cycle brings many new features around working with images, as well as attachment and PDF export improvements that enhance the collaborative capabilities and usability of your wiki. In total, we fixed 828 issues (and counting).

XWiki Cloud updates

XWiki Cloud is the most convenient and cost-effective way to run XWiki. We take care of the setup, hosting, upgrades, maintenance, and backups, so you can focus on getting things done. In 2022, our cloud demo platform was updated to XWiki 14.4.3 which brought new features and bug fixes for a better experience. Moreover, our team has worked on improving the Pro Apps so you can extend your wiki and enhance its functionalities. We also provided extensive documentation about everything you should know about XWiki's Pro Applications.

CryptPad

2022 has been quite a full year for the CryptPad team. From introducing a new, more modern, and minimalist design, bringing forward highly requested features (repeating events in Calendar, filtering the drive by document type, enhancements, and new features for forms), to participating in many events, in a bug bounty program coordinated by Intigriti and sponsored by the European Commission, creating a new list of public instances, standing up against #chatcontrol for end-to-end encryption and privacy, welcoming and saying goodbye to team members — we can say it was quite a busy year. You can dig into the CryptPad overview here.

Spread the word

Our team is continuously working to improve and make XWiki better by implementing new features, improvements, or sharing useful tips. Whether it's via chats, emails, our help center, or articles, we want to make sure everyone gets the best out of their instance. Below is a short list of the pieces we put together in 2022:

Knowledge sharing for better experiences

Guides for easier usage

Consolidated the team

XWiki would be nothing without the people that compose the team (incredible teammates, by the way). Our team is formed of highly motivated and independent individuals, passionate about what they do, and together we form a very powerful formula to collaboratively work together and make the most of it. 2022 was no different and it helped us further consolidate our team:

  • We parted ways with some great colleagues: Nicoleta, Silvia, Edi;
  • We welcomed stellar additions to our teams: Raphaël, Alexandra, Guilherme, Daniel as a 3-months intern, Maxime as a 2-months CryptPad intern, Dorina, Nikita, Adina, Mathilde, Theo, and Arnaud. The wonderful news is that we've already welcomed a few new colleagues this month as well (shoutout to Wolfgang, Bianca, and Lucas)! emoticon_smile

This year we finally had the traditional on-site edition of our company's annual event: The XWiki Seminar! Besides the joy of seeing all together on-site after 2 years of virtual/hybrid Seminars, we had our first Seminar at the seaside and during Autumn! emoticon_grin With guitar-filled evenings, we got a mental refresh and enjoyed spending some much-awaited face-to-face time together.

Switched to a 4-day work week every two weeks

At XWiki, we have always enjoyed experimenting with new ways of working, particularly when they have the potential to lead to a happier and more engaged team. We don't put emphasis on when or where we work, but rather on individual strengths, offering much-needed flexibility for each member of the team to thrive and do their best work in their own schedule. Therefore, to mitigate burnout symptoms and promote a better work/life balance, starting with February 2022, we have decided to implement an extra day off every other week through 2022. Our ultimate goal will be to transition towards the 4-day work week over the following years. The report on this new benefit will be released soon. In the meantime, if working in Open Source is your cup of tea, we invite you to check out the currently available positions inside XWiki and CryptPad.

What's more, after 9 years of working from the 3rd arrondissement, in Paris, our France team finally moved to their new XWiki SAS office address.

This was truly a full year and we are truly grateful to our colleagues that make working at XWiki a worthwhile journey, and to our supportive and dedicated XWiki community, customers, and partners, while staying faithful to our open model and to our Manifesto.

We are definitely looking forward to seeing what 2023 brings!

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News

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XWiki SAS has long upheld its commitment to independence, with shareholders exclusively comprising current and former employees. However, recognizing the importance of strong collaboration among major open-source projects in the EU, the company is embracing a strategic shift through a symbolic investment in XWiki SAS from Frank Karlitschek, Founder and CEO of Nextcloud. Moreover, Nextcloud GmbH and XWiki SAS have signed a mutual resellers' agreement to provide their customers an easy way to purchase a complete solution from either vendor. Read the full article to learn about the why, how, and what.