Affinity Bridge: Ten years, with gratitude

It can be hard as an organization, in the spaces between projects and daily workloads, to look ahead and plan for where you hope to be in even two years time; which makes us all the more grateful to be celebrating our tenth anniversary at Affinity Bridge. With Thanksgiving weekend just behind us, we’ve been thinking about the things that we appreciate the most, and how that gratitude will affect our work as we head into our next ten years.

Ten years is a long time to devote to strong relationships with great clients. We’re grateful to have spent years working with some of the best clients around on interesting and challenging projects. From some of our oldest collaborations with the Co-operative Housing Federation of BC and the Dalai Lama Center, to newer ones with Vancity Credit Union, OpenMedia, and the Vancouver Foundation, the clients that come to us always bring an interesting set of challenges and problems to solve… and we love to solve complex problems.

Our team has grown over these ten years, from one person (our intrepid leader Mack Hardy), to a couple of developers in a small home office, to the nearly twenty-odd developers, technical analysts, engineers, designers, project managers, strategists, and scope tamers that spend hours working together in Vancouver’s Dominion Building. When I ask any of my co-workers what they like most about Affinity Bridge, it always seems to come down to the team -- we enjoy the time we spend working with the committed, like-minded, smarty-pantses (if that’s not a word, it should be) and are grateful to consider ourselves friends as well as colleagues.

With this much collective experience and knowledge behind us, we’ve found ourselves frequently in a position to choose projects and clients that match our values as an company and as individuals. We know that everyone doesn’t have the opportunity to work on projects that they can feel proud of, not just for the work they’ve accomplished, but also because that work is contributing to making the world a better place in some way. We are grateful to both have that opportunity, and to keep collaborating with these vital groups on important projects.

In an industry that’s constantly changing, with new technologies taking over, and older ones being used in new and exciting ways, it can sometimes seem impossible to keep up with the cutting edge. We’re grateful to have been able to grow, change, develop our skills, and maintain a place in the Vancouver tech community over the last ten years; and we’re looking forward to the next ten with anticipation of more great things to come.