Happy Holidays! 2017 Remembered…

Tim Alby, Full Stack Software Developer

This year I have fully embraced the digital nomad life. I’ve spent all year travelling both across the globe and in my home country. I’ve met many people, saw marvelous landscapes and ate plenty of good food. Last year I discovered kitesurfing and today I’m literally hooked, so you’ll usually find me in windy spots, checking the weather forecast while keeping an eye on the ocean.

The digital nomad life isn’t just about travel: over the year I connected my laptop to 128 different wifi networks and exhausted my computer’s battery in order to carry on building, maintaining and improving Overleaf.

Here’s to another year of great experiences, with already a few trips planned in Europe and beyond.

James Allen, ShareLaTeX CoFounder and Product Manager

Having got married, spent 5 months away from home, entered my next decade, and worked to bring ShareLaTeX into the Overleaf family, 2017 has been one of my most defining years. It’s been fun, challenging and rewarding, and since nothing really obeys the arbitrary bounds of a calendar year anyway, I’m sure it will continue into 2018!

The Overleaf team are all fantastic, both personally and professionally, and working with them in 2017 has been a pleasure. By the end of 2018 we will have brought the two services together into a single best-of-both-worlds product, that we can all be proud of, so as product manager there’s a lot to look forward to!

Mary Anne Baynes, CMO

2017 has flown by—it feels like yesterday that I was writing an end of the year post for 2016!

It has been a great year—full of fun, laughs and growth. For Overleaf, I attended 14 events throughout 2017 and Overleaf has now partnered or integrated with over 23 publishers, over 10 enterprise customers and over 30 institutions. That huge growth and success is thanks to the incredible team we have at Overleaf—I feel so lucky to be working with such an amazing group of individuals. Everyone works so hard, pushing themselves to make Overleaf the best it can possibly be (and then some!) and yet we’re able to have so much fun together – what a special time in my career!

In my personal life, my twin boys are now driving! What a change that makes in our lives (no more last minute trips to the grocery store for me!) My husband and I continue to cheer them on and support them in their cross country running, wakeboarding and improv comedy endeavors. My parents still live close and we’re lucky enough to have lots of opportunities to get together as a family, travel and create lasting memories. Some of my favorite memories of 2017 are spending time at the lake with my family, my son Jacob playing the Easter Bunny at a local Easter Egg Hunt, and having my Mom travel with me to London, where she got to meet the Overleaf team! It’s been an amazing year!

I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas, holiday and new year! 😍

Graham Douglas, Content Development Editor

I joined Overleaf in April 2017 as Content Development Editor and have thoroughly enjoyed my first 8 months: working with a fantastic team, writing articles, blog posts and lately producing videos… despite the best efforts of our two Bengal cats: Oscar (pictured) and Alfie. In my Overleaf bio I note that I work from home accompanied by 2 cats who I describe as “delightfully inquisitive”—but what I failed to mention is the well-known Bengal trait for being really, really vocal! During 2017 I’ve grown to admire their exquisite vocal timing: either during video conference calls or, their favourite, whilst I’m recording voiceovers for video tutorials. No doubt they’ll maintain their enthusiasm and, like me, look forward to 2018. We adore Oscar and Alfie, but if anyone knows of a microphone offering a Bengal cat noise reduction filter, please get in contact…

Hayden Faulds, Software Engineer

I can't believe it's already been a year since the review of 2016!

Since then I've visited a freezing Hamburg in January and scorching Iași in June. I also did some more exploring of the UK, visiting the Yorkshire Dales and Devon walking and to Fort William for an outdoor bonanza of cycling (road and mountain biking) and climbing Ben Nevis. My partner and I also helped look after 3 trainee guide dogs which has been an incredibly rewarding experience. And most recently I became an uncle to an adorable little boy.

For Overleaf I've had the pleasure of working with the OSA to develop the Overleaf conversion API that now integrates with PRISM. But the biggest news of the year was ShareLatex and Overleaf coming together. Working within our new, larger, team has been a real joy and I'm excited to continue working towards Overleaf V2!

John Hammersley, CoFounder and CEO

My year in pictures 😎—bonus points to anyone who knows where the bottom-right picture was taken!

It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since we first launched Overleaf as WriteLaTeX! I certainly can’t say I anticipated all of what’s happened since, but it’s been amazing nevertheless. Indeed, as I recently mused upon, I’m quite glad I didn’t know everything that lay ahead, as otherwise we probably would never had got started! Joining forces with the ShareLaTeX team this summer has been the highlight of another remarkable year.

It feels like Overleaf is getting all grown up, and at home has two sisters competing for my attention—my daughters Julia and Annabelle 😍! It’s remarkable the similarities in starting up a company to raising small children…

Lots of exciting things on the cards for 2018, and I’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a great start to the new year! See you in 2018!

Villy Ioannou, Institutional Sales Manager (EMEA)

This has been another fantastic year at Overleaf—great projects, new partnerships with institutions in the UK and abroad, conferences, and loads of fun! Honored to be part of all the exciting developments and growth! The highlight? No doubt the exciting news of ShareLaTeX and Overleaf joining forces! Thrilled to have the ShareLaTeX folks onboard, what a fantastic addition to the Overleaf team 😊. Looking forward to celebrating the launch of the new integrated platform with our friends and partners!

Aside work 2017 was full of fantastic moments with family and friends and lots of traveling! I sailed the blue waters of the Aegean sea, walked the streets of magical Pompeii, visited the breathtaking Vesuvio and more… and will say farewell to 2017 by the icebergs of Iceland!

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all !!! Cheers to a Healthy, Peaceful, Productive and Exciting 2018!

Liz Kluk, Institutional Sales Manager (Americas and Oceania)

Since joining the Overleaf team this year in May, it has been a whirlwind of trainings, product demos, conferences, and constant learning and evolving as an individual. With a company that never slows down and strives for perfection, I am looking forward to a successful 2018 and thrilled to be a part of this ever-growing company. On a personal note, I am looking forward to my horse Prince recovering from an injury, so that we can continue our training in 2018. However, an injury never stops us from having some pony fun 😊.

Jessica Lawshe, Software Engineer

I started off 2017 getting married and our dog, Muffit, assisted as the flower girl. In the summer, we decided one dog wasn’t enough and adopted Mirin. Then, in the fall my family grew even more when I joined Overleaf.

For the past couple of months, I’ve worked on a LaTeX validation service with one of our publishing partners. This project introduced me to a new programming language—Ruby! I’m very grateful to work with such a brilliant team that values professional development.

In 2018 I look forward to adopting more dogs. Well, not really, but one can dream!

John Lees-Miller, CoFounder and CTO

Foremost among the many things that we’ve done this year, it’s been a pleasure to welcome the awesome ShareLaTeX team to Overleaf. There’s been a great exchange of ideas and an atmosphere of excitement as we work toward delivering the combined service. We’ve been very busy scaling the services and the team behind them, and there is a lot for our community of over two million authors to look forward to in 2018. Personally, the highlights of my year have been volunteering on a paleontology expedition in Montana, visiting Yellowstone for the first time, completing a Self-Driving Car Engineer nanodegree with Udacity, and furthering my vital research into the mathematics of the game of 2048.

Lian Tze Lim, Community TeXpert

2017 was the Year of the Templates for me! I worked a lot with the Sales team to develop a number of templates for our journal and university partners, as well as for our own publicity material and documentations. I’m rather happy that I managed to pull off some layout tricks here and there 😊. And wow all the support requests (and lovely messages) that come in through the support inbox; can’t thank the dev team enough who helped to make Overleaf to work better for users! 2017 was also when I finally met up with the Overleaf team in person at the London office, and had my home nearly flooded twice (climate change, sigh). On other fronts, now that LaTeX is not quite my productive procrastination outlet (it’s work albeit fun work 😊), I’ve found a new one—Chinese knotting/braiding. Hmm…, all the knotting, weaving, learning and untangling out of my own messes isn’t that much different from LaTeX support after all…

Ryan Looney, Client Services Manager

This year has brought a lot of fun challenges! I’ve worked on optimizing the onboarding process for our institutional and publisher clients, and have launched the Tip of the Week blog post series. I’ve traveled far and wide to visit colleagues and clients—as close as an hour’s drive away from my home in Virginia, and as far away as Romania. I earned my Advanced Communicator—Bronze award from Toastmasters, and ran my first trail half marathon. I’m looking forward to everything 2018 has in store!

In my pic you can see me enjoying the eclipse in South Carolina with Max and Sami 😎

Shelly Miller, Senior Institutional Account Manager

Natalie Palkovich, Marketing and Events Support

This year I taught a BA in Children’s Literature at the University of Haifa, arranged two weddings in two countries and got married twice, ten days apart, I moved country three times and then joined Overleaf. And, of course, I got a dog, Fiddle—who is an Overleaf fan (well, he appreciates the indestructible ducks anyway). Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, New Year to you all 😊.

Ali Smith, Software Developer

This year has been exciting for me with Overleaf joining forces with ShareLaTeX (and doubling our dev team!) and the opportunity to go the San Francisco for SciFoo! Back at home, recently I’ve been really enjoying teaching refugees and asylum seekers how to code, it’s been extremely rewarding. I’ve also started playing ultimate frisbee again, which I haven’t done since college… Looking forward to the upcoming year and releasing the Overleaf V2!

Nate Stemen, Software Developer

Having just graduated in May I was happy to be able to intern for a company I had experience with and was passionate about. As someone who knew how to code, but had no real development experience, I was quite out of my element! I spent my share of time splashing about, but the past 5 months with Overleaf have been an amazing learning experience and I am so glad to have been able to work with such talented people. Moving to London was again, an amazing experience and allowed me to see some of Europe. I hope to live there for more than 4 months next time!