Stories
People and technology change quickly and Once Upon with it
1. Januar 1970
Hans Eklund is the CTO at Once Upon. In this article he writes about a walk by the river during lunch hour. A walk that raised some unexpected questions to say the least, questions whose answers could be part of Once Upon's future. (He also managed to find time for a little hubris and Carpe Diem.)
Written by Hans Eklund
hans.eklund@onceupon.se
We had just figured out how we needed to change different parts of our system in order to support one of the most requested features in the future: being able to add text to each image in your photo book.
There was a lot that needed to change in order for us to get the dynamic solution we envisioned and our feelings were mixed. In a blink of an eye we could go from "no, no, no" to "go, go, go". Despite those mixed feelings, we decided to go! As you could tell I had a lot in my head. I was working from home and decided to take a walk by the river during lunch hour. Usually that's a good way for me to clear my mind.
We must always be relevant. Always follow the right eddies.
It was May 2020, so the pandemic was a fact, scary and a big change in everyone's everyday life, but on this particular day, it was as if several positive moments made it all a little easier.
The weather was fantastic and I had good energy from the meetings earlier that morning. On the sunlit promenade by the river, I met an elderly couple walking arm in arm. We kept as much distance as we could and greeted with a short nod when we passed each other. The man har, what from a distance looked like a classic Nokia 3310 pressed to his ear and was engaged in a conversation with what I guessed was one of their shared children. I got a little warmer inside. Partly because of the warmth a friendly glance could give, but also because such a relatively simple technical gadget can form such a life-changing contact with those closest to you.
I kept walking and for a moment I looked out over the flowing water of the river. The Power plant located upstream released extra water that day, giving the water foam and formed a lot of eddies that spun around each other, it looked like a dance. The bigger, slower eddies caught the smaller, faster ones in a constant movement downstream until they finally got to deeper water where they disappeared. As soon as the eddies disappeared a new one were born and the dance kept on going. I took a couple of photos of the show with my cell phone but realized that a video would probably do it more justice and filmed a short clip.
Vilket poetisk metafor för livet! Tänkte jag i ett plötsligt anfall av hybris. Födelsen, uppväxt, möten, vänskap, separationer och återföreningar. Och till sist ska vi alla dö. Det gäller att ta vara på det. Lite sådär Carpe Diem ni vet. Rather quickly I realized that my poetic skills were limited, but I dared to use the metaphor about the water eddies on Once Upon instead. The constant forward movement, the change. Many of our original hypotheses about Once Upon and our users still hold true, but the world, people and technology are changing rapidly, and so are we. We must always be relevant. Always follow the right eddies.
On the way back I met a woman who impressed me with her ability to slowly ride a bike. She managed to ride the bike very stable and straight forward, but really slow. Presumably to give the dog she had on a leash the opportunity to explore the world exactly as it wanted.
At the same time, a guy came running behind her at top speed. You could tell he was an experienced runner and he was well equipped: the clothes, the shoes, the sporty sunglasses, Beats headphones and the Apple Watch on his arm.
The dog, apparently a very curious dog, suddenly ran over to my side of the road and I reflexively took a few steps to the side. The runner, who had been busy checking the time, or perhaps heart rate, on his Apple Watch, looked up from his watch and realized that an obstacle in the form of a stretched leash was suddenly part of the day's training. He began a somewhat panicked jump, still with his right hand convulsively gripped around the watch.
In the meantime I staggered when I took a step sideways on the curb and my left leg threw out uncontrollably towards the dog, who got scared and turned back to its owner. It wasn't many inches from the leash making a perfect loop around the runner's back leg, but he made it! We couldn't help but smile at this improbable traffic jam on the promenade at the edge of town where it's usually hundreds of meters to the next person. Slutet gott, allting gott.
Fast forward a year, til the moment of writing all this down, til today. The system changes required to resolve image captioning have been ready and live for a few months now, and the feature is about to be released to all of our users.
We did it!
A lot has happened along the way, far more than I could tell here, but one thing I would like to point out is: texts can be a lot more complex than it first might seem. In addition to what you see in the app we now have a good foundation to further develop, but above all much more knowledge about our users, the technology and the environment. And we have more ideas than ever.
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