Perfect.
Good morning, guys.
Maybe just before we immediately saw many cameras.
Maybe before we will start talking about how we work together,
we will briefly explain what we are working on.
My name is Alexander, this is Samuel.
And we have two big products which we are shipping in so far just two nations.
One of them is Open Desk. Open Desk is a bundle of different productivity apps,
so to say, which we call a server in workspace.
And you can do basically everything from your day-to-day work
up until collaboration and real-time communication as in chat or video conferencing.
And we do it as Sanders.
Sanders is a German state-owned startup, so to say,
Sanders stands for the Center of Digital Sovereignity.
And we will have a teaser in regards to where you can find us later on.
On the French side, we started with another way around with last suite.
We had since the COVID, we had some standalone applications for one for video conferencing,
one for instant messaging and one for collaboration online,
but there are separate applications.
And so we, to make it a suite, we worked on SSO.
Because Francis is more centralized state, so we have a central SSO.
And we start with this application that has been starting now to make them interoperable
and try to make a suite from this.
So these are two different approaches.
And although we have different approaches, we are starting to see how we can work together.
That's the magic of open source that we can iteratively find common grounds.
Earlier last year, there was the idea that France and Germany should work together.
And it was a process, I think it was two years in making of a three-page document,
such a memorandum of understanding where two states would share common efforts.
And once it was signed for the French and also for the German team,
we said that we should make results faster.
That's the power of your computer.
And we said that we should create results faster and an unbeerocratic manner.
And the idea that we worked on is, how can we work together as two separate teams without any joint?
That's really cool to see all of that.
I'm sorry.
There's an open source alternative to the source.
We'll provide a team.
Anyhow, so what we did, it's all good.
We will just skip like that.
So what we did was we figured out the way that both teams as in product and also developers and also some policy people created for themselves challenges,
which we gave in a hundred-day budget each, so to say, to solve and tackle.
And to tell you more about the challenges that we decided on, Samuel is going to briefly explain that.
So we decided on three challenges.
The first challenge was to try to connect our SSLs.
So see if the French side could log in our applications.
Sorry, if the German side could log in to the French application and also the country.
And so this was the first project.
There's not much development, it's more on configuration.
But it's a big impact if we manage to do this.
The second project was to work on our collaboration tool.
We had, we see a lot of people doing shadow IT, going to the notion.
And so we thought we need to have something to this level, to be able to do documentation and real-time collaboration.
So we started working on this kind of tool together.
And the third challenge was, are we able to put some AI in one of our products?
Okay, a big objective.
So nowadays people want to finance AI.
I want to see what Europe is able to do.
So we said, as very pragmatic approach, what are we able to put in our tool in a few days of work?
So that's the three challenges we gave ourselves.
And we had quite some success with these challenges.
They went from September to December.
And in December we had a big show in Berlin where we showed what we have done.
It's basically, I think it's always interesting to see if two governments work together.
It's always either you have state dinners or something like that.
Or it's completely informal.
And we really liked the fact that we created some sort of a joint team where people shared across language barriers across just also state barriers.
So to say, common tasks, we had hackathons where both teams met either in Germany or in France.
We always, and that was, I think, also really important.
We shared results with other countries as well.
So we had a hackathon with, I think, eight other countries in September in Paris.
Then we had a final event also with representatives also from the commission.
And also from other countries back in December, we provided food.
It's not only 24-7 work, but we also provided food.
It's always important to all the developers and the different tasks and the different challenges were conducted in a very different manner.
And it's really interesting to see culture also within governments, which are sometimes different, work together actually.
But we had one team, which, up until now, sometimes, it's now it's sometimes daily, but they had just daily stand-ups where there was no real, I don't know, there was no task that they would have to tackle in such a manner.
So to say, but we created an environment where basically all the developers could figure out a way how they can work best to provide this results and come up to that idea.
And I think it's really important on that note.
Also to say, thank you, thank you to the developers who worked with us and are still working and are maybe in the stream or are going to see it somewhere.
But also thanks to the CIOs of France and Germany that we could start something like that because it's nothing out of the ordinary, so to say that two states can work on a really easy manner in that regard.
And what we noticed is that it's something that not only sovereignty doesn't stop at the German or the French or the German French border, but it's European or a joint effort.
And in December, we had not only the results of the 100-day challenges, but we also added up a new partner to that project with the Netherlands.
And I think the Dutch team already was involved somehow in advance as well because it's a topic which is, I think, also dear to their heart.
And we see that you don't always need to have documents, I don't know, with the light, maybe you can't see it, but they all have folders and it was a, it was really easy to get the results of the 100-day challenges.
But for example, deciding on what kind of paper, because each state has a separate paper for international documents.
And if you try lateral document is being signed, what kind of paper is going to be used for that.
These were topics which were much more important, so to say, to figure out rather than the results and maybe Boris.
So we have a new partner in this endeavor, so to say, and we are going to, I think, announce soon what the next challenges are going to be.
And maybe Boris, you can explain, maybe, the motivation, but also what you guys expect from such a cooperation with us.
It's completely spontaneous, that's what it's supposed to be.
Yeah, because we joined the project away after the first talk deadline.
So here I am.
Now, we were looking into the problems that come with technological sovereignty and so on.
And we were really trying to find, like, how can we have office tools that fit our civil servants better than the tools that they're using now?
And of course, it was very logical for us to think about, like, okay, how are others doing it?
And really seeing this collaboration between the two of you is also already really fruitful and very useful.
So when we started that project, we really thought, like, let's take as a base assumption that we are going to first try all of the things that you are doing before we're going to invent our own.
We're fully knowing that at some point we're going to need to do our own things, because we are very different countries.
We are organized differently, and we need to find out how to match this software to our own workings.
And what I really hope and what we're really looking for is that in the longer term, we can build the common infrastructures on our public administrations together in a way that will allow us to express those particularities of ourselves.
And as well as we can, and I think open source, and the, the fault of collaboration is really the way to do that.
So we're very happy to be, to be a part of this.
Cool.
Thank you.
Do you want to?
Yeah, maybe just saying that, yeah, we have different approaches, and we need to have our, we need to answer the needs of our public agents, our political leaders.
So important is we share what we do.
If we are committed to open source and whatever we do, we share it, and when we find common grounds, we work together.
And we will produce maybe some time different things, sometimes things in common, and in the end we, we create a great common for Europe, and we hope more countries can join this.
Yeah.
And if you want to know more about what we are doing, we have our own deaf room in the afternoon, which is right across the whole.
If you want to know more about last week and open desk, we have obviously we have websites, and also chat to us.
Also, there are many people from, from the product teams from last week and open desk.
All of them are going to be in this room today in the afternoon.
And we will demo one of the second.
Yeah, we will demo the second, yeah, we will demo the second challenge.
And if you want to talk to us, you can use the third challenge, which is the video conferencing solution.
Yeah. So, feel free. Thank you guys. We are on time.
Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah.
So, we all do things very differently, but I would recommend Belgium to join.
Because we already have the colors of the flag in some of the software.
And for us, it was really easy because we could just turn all the friends software at 90 degrees, and then it would look very Dutch.