Why we love our global publishing community!

One of the things I most enjoy about working at Typefi is being part of a global team.

From our head office on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, I have the opportunity to work closely with colleagues in the USA, England, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Romania, Ukraine, France, Spain, and South Africa.

Typefi team members from around the world in Baltimore in 2019.

There’s great joy in learning about, celebrating, and sharing a few laughs about the differences in our cultures, our food, and the way we use language! But what’s truly remarkable is that, no matter how varied our day-to-day lives may look, we are alike in so many ways.

Without exception, my Typefi teammates are incredibly smart, interesting, and genuinely nice people who care deeply about our shared goal of helping Typefi customers DO MORE with their publishing.

More broadly, we’re proud to work with a diverse range of customers and partners in publishing around the world, including BookMachine in the UK, who are encouraging us to celebrate My Global Team Day on Friday, 28 August 2020.

With that in mind, I asked some of the team to share what they love about being part of the global publishing community.

Dinesh Amarasekara

Senior Software Engineer (Sri Lanka/Australia)

Typefi has customers from all around the world, many of whom are known and recognised globally.

It is an honour to work with these international colleagues in the publishing community, and I am proud to be able to help them with their work. I feel this especially when I get feedback from such clients after resolving their Typefi Server related queries. 😊

Dinesh Amarasekara and Shanna Bignell at the 2017 Queensland Export Awards finalist announcement.

Emily Johnston

Business Development Manager (US)

Publishing is everywhere! Whether a person is creating or consuming published content, it impacts almost everyone in some way.

It’s not just the publishing of a book or a journal by a “traditional” publisher. Publishing also includes the publication of print and digital content by organisations of all kinds—manufacturers, financial institutions, governments, community groups, professional organisations, and so on.

Such diversity in publishing creates, in turn, diverse perspectives, pressures, demands, and creative solutions for getting content out into the world.

Publishing is a place where all these various people and organisations can come together to interact, exchange, and develop, both personally and professionally.

With that also comes diversity in cultures and experiences, which shapes conversations and gives us opportunities to learn, grow, and better understand people around the world—all through the common thread of “publishing”.

Emily Johnston and Karl Jankowski at the 2019 Typefi User Conference.

Karl Jankowski

IT Director (US)

We begin relationships in a place once part of an arrival; the global distances break barriers. They remind us that we are all connected and made out of the same cells.

Gayanthika Udeshani

Engineer / XSLT Team Lead (Sri Lanka)

As developers, it is important to create circles with people who work in the same domain. We speak different languages, but using the same programming concepts, we know how to connect with our colleagues.

For instance, when we use XSLT to do XML transformations, the publishing community will always understand us!

Our network can be formed using forums, group chats, or any other communication platform. 

Last year I was working with the InDesign community, and I got the chance to meet people at CreativePro Week in Seattle where we discussed creating CEP extensions for Adobe Creative Cloud apps.

I believe meeting developers from different domains develops our knowledge and helps to widen our thinking patterns as well.

Within the Typefi team, we work with a bunch of international colleagues from different cultures. We are a sub-group of this publishing community, which helps to create a powerful relationship between us. We love to develop software with our team! 

Gayanthika Udeshani, Guy van der Kolk, and Peter Kahrel in Seattle for CreativePro Week 2019.

Peter Kahrel

InDesign Scripting Engineer (Spain)

The global publishing community offers opportunities to connect with similarly minded people in the same line of work. It’s important to be able to exchange ideas, and to become more aware of publishing traditions in other countries.

For home workers such as myself, it also allows us to be part of a community.

Ben Hauser

VP Engineering (Australia)

I find the exposure to different cultures and different ways of thinking invigorating and useful.

There’s a saying in software: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I’ve been stuck on several problems over the years that were quickly solved by an international colleague with a fresh perspective.

A diverse, international team is truly more than the sum of its parts.

Eric Damitz

Senior Solutions Consultant (US)

I like the different perspectives and experience that everyone brings to a project. Publishing is publishing the world over, but the details of how publishing is done can be different.

Learning the similarities and differences in how things are done, from both a workflow perspective and a design and typography perspective, is instructive to my own work.

I also love talking to and hanging out with people who are not from where I’m from. And I especially love visiting them where they live and experiencing their favourite places, foods, and especially cocktails! 

Dilum Samarajeewa, Chathini Uduwana and Eric Damitz at the 2019 Typefi User Conference in Baltimore.

Cheers to that!

Best wishes to all our colleagues, partners, customers and friends in the worldwide publishing community this #MyGlobalTeam Day. We’re proud to work alongside you!

Visit the BookMachine website to learn more about Global Team Day.

Original post: https://www.typefi.com/why-we-love-our-global-publishing-community/