Kentico Developer - Getting Their Hands Dirty

Getting Their Hands Dirty

31 Dec 2009 Candice Pendergast 0 comments

In any other situation, trees and bugs would not be a marriage made in heaven. But with the Kentico team planting a tree for every bug found in Kentico Version 4.1, it’s a win-win situation for partners, developers and the environment. Candice Pendergast reports.

Saturday 7 November 2009 was cold and wet in Šuterňa, but nevertheless, true to their word, the Kentico team were out in force, armed with trees to plant for every bug found in Version 4.1 of the Kentico CMS.
And it was all hands on deck. “The participation on the event was voluntary for the employees and of course they didn’t get paid for it, still more than three quarters of the Kentico team took part in it! In addition, some of the employees’ girlfriends came along with us to support our efforts. Since we had more trees then it was needed to plant, we decided to dedicate these extra trees to these girlfriends who helped us,” says Petr Passinger, PR Manager for Kentico.

The planting of the trees was the end of a year-long initiative. “With the success we achieved in the recent years, we were first thinking of contribution to some NPO. But just paying the money without being really involved in what they do seemed too simple and casual to us. Plus, if you have clients in 83 countries, it would be hard to choose the right place that needs your money the most. By planting the trees, we supported the environment globally. Also, doing that manually got us really involved,” says Petr.

And involved they were. As a part of the initiative, the developer who worked on the module where the bug was spotted had to plant the tree for that bug, sparking some friendly competition around the office. “The number of bugs depend on the complexity of each of the modules, so it might have happened that some developer had to plant fewer trees because his modules aren’t that complex or simply because he didn’t have to change a lot in his modules for the 4.1 version.

“But the Czech Partnership Foundation provided us with the book Planting Trees For Dummies and this book circulated around our developers for a while, always ending up on the desk of the developer who had most of the bugs at that moment.” Petr laughs.

In the end, Trees for Bugs was a win-win for everyone, particularly Kentico partners, who have been enjoying having their bugs fixed in 7 days, a policy that will continue despite the Trees for Bugs initiative finishing up. The feedback from partners was all positive, with one partner even commenting that the initiative really was better than “bugs for beers”, no matter what the developers thought.

Further, the planting went a long way to helping the restoration of Šuterňa, an area which was devastated during the communism era and is now getting back to its former glory.

What’s more, Kentico’s support of the environment carries through to their everyday activities. “We think twice before we print something and we do separate the trash. Our office assistant is actually very strict on this – she always notices if someone puts even a very little piece of paper into wrong bin and assertively warns the guy about it!

“But I think that our approach is very similar to any other company today – we don’t have a strict green policy, but on the other hand we use the resources (paper, electricity) in a reasonable way. In addition, this year we decided that instead of sending paper greeting cards, it would be better to donate the money to those less fortunate than ourselves. So we saved the paper and gave the money we would spend on it to charity.”

According to Petr, this won’t be the last of these kinds of initiatives. “We are working on a new fresh initiative that will be similar to Trees for Bugs – but I am going to keep it a secret for the moment. “ Petr smiles.

For more information on the Trees for Bugs initiative check out the following links.
Yes, we can: 60 Trees planted, 0 Developers injured!
Tree gallery
Feedback on the Trees for Bugs initiative
Trees for Bugs Map