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VR at Ubilabs – Extensively testing Vive, a virtual reality system developed by htc and Valve -
Martin Kleppe is a regular speaker at conferences around the world (Source: Wherecamp Berlin)
Ask a CTO: Interview with Martin Kleppe on Honeypot
Honeypot is a job platform, linking tech talent with approved companies. On their blog, the team features the coder scene in Germany. In an interview with Emma Tracey, Co-Founder at Honeypot, Martin Kleppe, Head of Development at Ubilabs, talks about our core business and how are projects organized at Ubilabs.
Here is an abstract of the interview:
Emma: What are the key skills of developers working on interactive maps?
Martin: We work on quite complex technology, which is frequently very new. You don’t need to be someone with a computer science degree but you should be curious and passionate. You have to have a good way to structure your work and a feeling for how to make code easy to understand and manage for others. Good visual sensibilities are also essential because maps are so visual: colour, typography, how to use lines and stuff like this is all very important.
Ubilabs is continuously trying and testing new technologies. What technologies excite you at the moment?
We are working on some really cool stuff. It has become possible to code interactive VR scenes on a mobile browser using JavaScript. And we are using WebGL and Three.js on top of the Google Maps API to draw millions of data points and make them interactive. This was not possible until quite recently because of the limitation of CPU power.
What excites you about the future of maps?
There is so much going on with interactive maps in the browser, so many different levels coming together. You can really pack a lot of information into a map. There are so many new technologies emerging every day.
What is it like to found a startup in Hamburg? What are the advantages?
We are not a startup anymore, but 10 years ago, when we were a startup, there was very little going on in Berlin. Everyone said that it’s not the right place to go. It changed hugely in the last five years of course. Nonetheless, there are some great developers in Hamburg and a good demo scene. Recently I co-organized the JSUnconf here in Hamburg and I also organize the Hamburg JavaScript meetup. Aside from work, Hamburg is a nice city to live in – it’s small and focused. It is super green and people are very nice.