orange

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 usingissuu Collaborate, the easiest way to plan and produce publications in one place.

Carefully Crafted,Freshly Squeezed

When I joined issuu as a Senior Product Owner exactly one year ago, the thing I first noticed was the care and passion with which everything here is crafted. From the beautiful content being uploaded by publishers to the animated discussions of technical architecture, an acute attention to detail was everywhere I looked. These were definitely my kind of people.

During my first week at issuu, I was thrown into a major project — at the time no one knew how big it was going to be — rewriting the core of issuu from scratch. Initially, we were driven by the upcoming changes in the browsers (i.e. the slow death of Flash). However, as we started digging into it, it turned out to be so much more than just about technology. We were re-engineering and redesigning issuu to be ready for the future. Despite working under taxing deadlines, I’m proud to say

we still questioned everything and chose better over faster.

With this premier issue of ORANGE JUICE we’ll share the story of our remarkable yearlong journey. It’s definitely not your typical tech story about a shiny new feature or an amazing growth story. It’s much grittier than that. Our story is about the dedication, hard work and sheer guts necessary to rebuild the very core of a massive existing product. And we figured what better vehicle to tell our story than the one that hundreds of thousands of issuu publishers use to tell theirs each month. It’s also the perfect opportunity for us to show off all the big little details we’ve built into issuu’s incredible new reading experience.

Happy reading!

Alette Holmberg-Nielsen Editor in Chief

When Life Gives You Oranges...

Words by Joel BarnardIllustrations by Maya Gürtler 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 thetechnology game, it’s change.The better, faster, smarterversion is always just aroundthe corner. Sometimes no onesees it coming. Sometimes itsarrival date is plastered on everyblog, bus and billboard. And inthe case of the imminent demiseof browser and mobile supportfor Flash (the core technologyissuu’s reading experience was

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.

— Maciej Pękala, Engineer

built on), it has been a long timecoming. Smartphones never had(real) Flash support, and thedesktop browsers announcedthey would finally be pulling theplug “sometime” in 2016.

Staring down the barrel of thisunknown deadline, we facedthe dilemma other companies

had faced before — could we change the experience millions of people already love in ways that would make them love it even more? Would it be possible to rebuild such a large plane mid-flight? And how much time would we have to do it? One thing we knew for certain is we would stay true to our philosophy of not rushing products to market that we couldn’t be proud of. Of course, this time the stakes were much 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 Senior Product Owner, Alette Holmberg-Nielsen. In the very early days of the project, our end goal wasn’t completely clear and a vision had yet to be formed. We were driven by the slow death of Flash in the browsers, but according to Alette, “It quickly turned out this could not — and should not — be only about a technology change. Really, it had to be about

Soren Director

Anders Lead / Back-end

Anders Front-end

Yan Front-end

Frej Back-end

Mie Support

Alette Product Owner

Peter UX

Greta Support

Mads Full-Stack

Rachel Marketing

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. ThomsenDirector of Engineering