Tasktop 2012 Year in Review
, January 9th, 2013Well fortunately, there was no fiscal cliff (though the U.S. government did nothing more than my 4 year old son; it just kicked the can down the street) and somehow there was a day after even though the Mayan calendar just stopped. As such, I feel a little more comfortable writing a retrospective blog that is as much about the past as the future…

2012 was an eventful year for Tasktop. We kicked off 2012 celebrating our 5th anniversary. In this blog, I wanted to take a few moments to reflect less on Tasktop’s outwardly facing accomplishments that we highlighted in the press release and focus more on the behind the scenes aspects at Tasktop.
I truly believe that when we look back on 2012, it will be viewed as an inflection year for Tasktop.
Eclipse Mylyn and Tasktop Dev keep doing their thing. Driven by Android development and Asian programmers, Mylyn rode the wave of Eclipse adoption in 2012 and regularly sees 2+ million downloads per month. Tasktop Dev continues to make Eclipse and Visual Studio software programmers who use commercial tools (Mylyn is a great free choice if your development tool stack is open source) more productive.
2012 was the year that we validated Tasktop Sync as a viable solution for connecting the world of software delivery. Not only did we demonstrate the need for tools integration but also exposed how integration matters for process, collaboration and reporting. It’s been fascinating to learn how big a problem we have unearthed. With our Mylyn roots and our partner ecosystem, Tasktop is uniquely suited to address the challenges of tool heterogeneity which is ever-present and growing in the enterprise struggling to deliver high quality software in a timely manner.
As a bootstrapped company, we continued to grow steadily. We moved our corporate headquarters in Vancouver. We are thrilled about the new office because it allows us to create the team environment that is conducive to the innovation we are driving and the challenges we are trying to solve. We also opened an office in Austin, TX where our US headquarters are located and where many of our partners (CA, IBM, Micro Focus / Borland, Thoughtworks Studios, Smart Bear, etc.) and hopefully future partners (Planview, BMC, etc.) have a presence.
As we strive to do every year, we added some of the best and brightest young minds in the industry to our staff, and are proud to continue giving back to the educational system that has been so good to us as company through our active internship and co-op program. In addition, we added some grizzled veterans (I can’t say grey haired because some of them don’t have any hair) like Lance Knight, Dave West, Nicole Bryan and Jason Baldy. All of this has resulted in an organization that is inspired to solve a big problem, enjoys celebrating victories, has fun as a team, can be silly with each other, but has the organizational maturity to deliver high quality software for our customers and partners. At the end of the year, we added our 50th employee.
I am very proud of the work environment that we are creating at Tasktop. Its one thing to believe that we are balancing a fun place to work with the aspirations of a company trying to solve a really big problem; its even better when our staff and others in our community back that with recognitions such as BCBusiness Best Companies to Work for in BC and Technology Impact Award for Emerging Company of the Year.
We were also quite proud of our CEO and founder Mik Kersten who was named a finalist for the World Technology Award and a Business in Vancouver Forty under 40. We are thrilled that Mik is being recognized for his leadership and technical excellence.
We are excited about 2013 where you will see even more innovation and fun from Tasktop!





Exciting HP strategy and technology discussions were only part of the fun. The Tasktop booth attracted numerous people who wanted to discuss how to connect HP ALM to other tools and extend the L of ALM for their company. Lots of conversations about Atlassian JIRA, IBM RTC and MS Visual Studio TFS, but also some interesting conversations about PPM tools, service desk automation and customer lifecycle management platforms. Software development seems to be moving up the stack, with ALM being connected into broader and broader business systems. As an advocate of ALM and its mission, it was very exciting to hear ALM mentioned in the same breath as other more traditional business processes. And, for many organizations, ALM is a key business process!



It’s been an exciting time for Tasktop. Our Vancouver Headquarters has moved to a new West Georgia location, overlooking Vancouver’s cool Coal Harbor and beautiful Stanley Park, and sporting a spacious 7,000 square feet runway for us to ‘grow into’.
Want a chance to check out our new space and meet some interesting people? Join us for the 
No, Mik is not joining politics nor has he started writing a book. Along with Paul Jacobs, David Kelley, Reid Hoffman, Ben Horowitz, Vinod Khosla, Neal Stephenson, Kara Swisher, Elon Musk, and approximately 90 others, he is a
When you look at the incredible names of this year’s finalists and past year’s winners and finalists, its an incredible list of who’s who. As a company, we take a great deal of pride that our CEO and co-founder, Mik Kersten, is a finalist and of course, we hope Mik wins. As a colleague, I am extremely gratified that Mik is being recognized. Mik has been an incredible evangelist and leader for Tasktop and for software professionals all over the world. In my mind, his management, leadership, and focus on company culture are some of the things that set Mik apart.
Tasktop showed off it new digs in the











