Avantica Supports Costa Rican Green

This post was written by Marisol Briceño, our marketing coordinator and champion of all things green!

We’ve Gone Green!

With only 51,000 square kilometers of land (about 0.03% of the earth’s surface) Costa Rica has over 4% of the planet’s biodiversity ranking among the 20 countries with the most biodiversity in the world. Growing up surrounded by green mountains, secluded rain forests and impressive volcanoes, Costa Ricans are by nature very concerned about the environment.  That is who we are and a very important part of our identity.

The Costa Rican government has set the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2021, and while industry and government leaders have taken significant steps over the past few years to kick start the country towards carbon neutrality, full-scale implementation of actions is needed in order to meet our international declaration.

Everyone is accountable for carbon emission reduction, and as individuals every one of us should evaluate our actions and rethink the way we do things, reform our patterns as consumers and reduce our carbon footprint. Living a simple life using only what is necessary and avoid waste. It sounds like a big compromise, but really, it takes a few adjustments to our every day routine to make a big change. Really!

With this idea in mind, Avantica as a corporate citizen has taken actions to reduce the carbon footprint of our operations.  We noticed a strong interest in environmental issues in a group of Avanticans and leveraged that initiative to start Avantica Green.   The idea of going green was put on the table and immediately we saw an amazing reaction from Avanticans. After just one meeting, the ideas started flowing and given the various backgrounds of the members of Avantica Green, from marketing to engineering, we achieved an interesting mix of perspectives and solutions.

The team is currently investigating ways to make our operations more earth friendly and developing projects to involve other Avanticans in the process. We believe that a process such as this will never be successful unless it conveys a sense of responsibility and community to all it’s participants.  And this is something that came natural to our team.

We started by joining the 10:10 campaign, assuming the commitment to make small changes that will reduce our carbon footprint by 10% starting on 2010.  You too can find out how to join 10:10 here.

Here’s just one example of what our teams came up with.  Being really close to a large supermarket, we noticed that the consumption of plastic bags was alarming.  Imagine nearly 200 people with the munchies! That is way too many unnecessary plastic bags. We came up with a very simple solution, hand crafted canvas shopping bags. This way we avoid waste and also help Santa Clara Group, an association that motivates women in social disadvantage to learn to sew and build their own business to support their families and keep their children in school.

This is just the beginning of our journey, and we are very excited about all the ideas and projects that are yet to come.

Here are some ideas you can use to make your business more sustainable:

1. Turn off the lights and monitors when you don’t need them. How hard can that be?
2. Avoid unnecessary printing, and use recycled paper for internal documents
3. Find alternative biodegradable cleaning products for your offices
4. Use a glass of water to rinse when you brush your teeth, you can save up to 5 gallons of water in 3 minutes just by doing this!
5. Keep track of your energy consumption and make someone responsible of developing a plan to reduce it.
6. Upgrade your equipment to energy efficient models
7. Reduce unnecessary travel by using video conferences
8. Motivate your employees to assume a commitment to make a difference in their homes too!
9. Involve all employees in this plan, it is a responsibility for all of us
10. Come up with fun activities and competitions to reward positive change

Tell us what you have done to make a difference, the more ideas we share the most we make of our efforts to preserve our planet.

Visiting Avantica’s Northern Development Center

I had the opportunity to visit our northern Costa Rica development center near San Carlos on my last trip to the country.  Avantica has resources in many locations including 2 development centers in Costa Rica, a center in Lima, Peru, and a collection of folks in the US.  Our distributed resources enable us to grow and staff effectively to meet customer need.  Hiring tight in San Jose?  No, problem we’re finding good people in Peru as well.  Need a consolidated work force?  We recommend a hybrid team with resources in the US and San Jose.  I think you get the point.

How exactly do we choose where to open a development center?  Generally, it is driven by opportunity or availability of resources.  The San Carlos office was a bit of both.  Our team in Costa Rica built up a partnership with a company called Northek.  Northek had created a talented pool of engineers through tight collaboration with local universities like the Tecnológico de Costa Rica by supporting programs such as workshops, technology fairs, and internships.  Some team members continue to work as part-time professors helping to form new groups of talented young engineers in each graduating class.  In 2009, Avantica formed a joint business with Northek under the name Avantek. and officially Avantek became part of the Avantica group.

Today, Avantek is one of the most recognized software companies in northern Costa Rica.  We have over 30 people in the office and grow more each year.  You definitely feel the technology vibe when you walk from desk to desk discussing projects with various team members.  The strong educational pedigree and agile development philosophy driven by the leadership has produced a talented and motivated team doing great things for our clients. But wait, I didn’t tell you my favorite part about the office.

It’s part of a larger corporation but it feels like a startup!

People collaborate around desks and share ideas and have interesting opinions on technology, software development and the industry.  Engineers are not only coding to specifications, but also evaluating new product ideas to help clients create innovative software.  During the company meeting pictured later in this post, some of the more senior engineers asked good questions about the corporate culture and what is happening in the US industry.  There is nothing like the energy of a startup, and I am very impressed they have been able to retain that energy while joining the Avantica group.

I can only assume that comes from the top.  My discussions with the general manager Jose Pablo Rodriguez, and all the Vargas brothers (there are 3 of them and, I tell you, these guys are smart), validated this group is lead by people who truly get software development.  They simply love hard problems and we have thrown a few at them including some pretty complex code architectures.  Who would of thought that the model for a US startup would be replicated in a city in northern Costa Rica?

To me, our partnership with this development center seems like an excellent growth strategy.  Here it is in plain and simple:

1. Find pockets of talented people throughout Latin America.
2. Hire them

Makes sense to me!

Here are some of our pictures from the trip.

On our way to the office we stopped at a well known spot for a traditional Costa Rican breakfast including gallo pinto and flavorful coffee.  In the picture, you see from left-to-right Tom Johnson, SVP Development, Bob Benedict, CTO and resident short guy, Mario Chaves, co-founder and CEO, Gerardo Delgado, GM for Peru and Luis Carlos Chaves, co-founder and President.

Mario Chaves, Luis Carlos Chaves and Jose Pablo Rodriguez address the development team.

The company meeting.

Our northern development center is located near San Carlos, Costa Rica.  It is a few hours drive from headquarters (A is HQ).