Born from an Idea: Unveiling Fluendo's Innovation Days

The seed of the Innovation Days was sown by an idea from Rubén Gonzalez, a team member, who envisioned a dedicated time for unrestricted creativity and innovation. Fluendo fosters an environment where ideas are valued, and everyone is empowered to propose innovative thoughts.

The proposal resonated with our innovation committee, recognizing it as an opportunity to cultivate our innovative spirit further. The committee embraced this proposal, setting in motion a plan to turn the idea into reality.

Thus, the Innovation Days were born, marking a new chapter in Fluendo's journey of continual evolution. The first Innovation Days were met with anticipation and excitement as everyone prepared to step away from their regular roles and let their creativity flow.

Our Innovation Days span four productive days designed to promote creativity and foster team-building. The decision to step away from regular roles for this period is not one we take lightly, but we believe the potential outcomes and enriched working relationships are more than worth this time.

The theme of our latest Innovation Days was to explore the impact of artificial intelligence on Fluendo's offerings and operations. We wanted to harness our entire team's collective knowledge and diverse perspectives. Hence, we opened up the idea submission process to all employees, allowing everyone to influence our innovative direction.

Ideas were submitted, evaluated, and then put to a vote. The most favored ideas were selected to be developed into real-life solutions, creating a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation. To bring these ideas to life, we formed teams based on personal preferences, recognizing that people are often most creative when they are passionate about their work.

Each team set measurable and realistic goals according to their size and skills. This ensured that every group had a clear direction and set of outcomes to work towards. The authors of each idea then planned the tasks for the Innovation Days, creating a roadmap for their vision to transition from concept to reality.

Although we typically work remotely, we made an exception for the Innovation Days. Almost everyone was on the premises, fostering an atmosphere of vibrant collaboration and real-time problem-solving. The energy during these days was unlike any other, with everyone deeply engaged in their projects while building stronger bonds with their colleagues.

Our Innovation Days have been a breeding ground for brilliant ideas, with our latest edition seeing a range of projects that push the boundaries of technology. Here's a snapshot of the innovation brewing at Fluendo:

1. Quick Quality Recording Software: Born from one of our 2023 OKRs, a team developed desktop software for fast, high-quality video recording, incorporating features like noise cancellation and automatic transcription.

2. Parallel Encoding Rust GStreamer plugin: Reflecting our commitment to performance optimization, a dedicated team worked on developing a GStreamer plugin that parallelizes encoding across GPU or CPU cores, maximizing the use of resources and heavily reducing transcoding times. This plugin was rewritten in Rust for enhanced safety and speed.

3. Running GStreamer on the web: Aiming to expand our technical capabilities, one team worked on porting GStreamer to WASM, deep-diving into its feasibility and potential applications.

4. Market Intelligence AI: Some innovators focused on enhancing our market research capabilities, developing an AI agent that can automate and streamline various aspects of market research.

5. LLMs for Improved Onboarding and Work Process: Another team capitalized on the Innovation Days to create an internal tool that leverages Language Models to improve the onboarding process and the daily work of our different teams.

6. ML Model Execution Optimization: Addressing a common challenge in the industry, one group proposed a solution to optimize the execution of Machine Learning models on edge hardware, potentially leading to faster inference times and better utilization of resources.

Upon the conclusion of the Innovation Days, we analyzed the results from a company and team perspective, designing a survey to capture feedback from our staff. The team viewed it as a positive experience, personally and corporately, with positive responses between 68 and 75 % for all questions and negative answers below 12.5%.

Feedback was divided into five main categories, reflecting potential areas for improvement:
Scheduling: We will work towards clarifying the event's schedule and considering common objectives for teams to strive for.

Idea Presentation: We will strive to improve team leadership and ensure all ideas move in the same direction.

Company Time Management: We aim to provide information about the event's goals earlier and ensure the event's timing works for everyone.

Teamwork: We will seek to improve opportunities for networking and getting to know people from other departments, especially considering our remote work setting.

Idea Generation and Evaluation: We will improve communication about the event and the idea submission phase, ensuring project continuity so participants save time.

The feedback from our first Innovation Days has been invaluable, and we're excited to continue improving this event as we look forward to the next one. 

Stay tuned! We will be sharing content related to all the developments we work on. If you want to know more about it, please get in touch with us here.