Welcome to Code Campfire! The Atlassian Ecosystem Marketing team is launching a new content series: Code Campfire. We're interviewing developers who build Atlassian apps to find out what makes them tick and how they got where they are today. Think of it like meeting a new friend and hearing about their story — only on the developer blog instead of over a coffee.
"In Confluence blooms, projectdoc Toolbox blossoms, Agile docs flourish" - Haiku by Anton Kronseder
What do you get when you combine two developers, a passion for helping customers build modular documentation, and a mindset for continuous learning? You get smartics, a two-person company that's been building documentation extensions since 2002.
Today, we begin the Code Campfire Series by introducing Anton Kronseder, Co-owner of smartics. Anton embarked on his programming journey almost 40 years ago and has since become a successful entrepreneur on the Atlassian Marketplace. His journey began in his youth when he started programming in Basic and Assembly on the classic Commodore 64. It wasn't long before he was copying line after line of hex codes from programming magazines in order to play video games. Eventually, this early love of programming led him to go and build software of his own. Fast forward 40 years, and Anton is the co-founder of a successful company on the Atlassian Marketplace.
Turning an idea into an opportunity
smartics was founded after Anton and his partner discovered an opportunity to improve the documentation experience for developers. Back in 2002, Anton and his partner built a documentation site with Maven and open-source software. When they presented it to the client, they were impressed with the online documentation and references between the docs and the code. However, there was room for improvement. Whenever a spelling error occurred, it unexpectedly took over 10 minutes to fix it. Anton and his team also realized that different teams working together needed a centralized hub that would be accessible to all, not just developers.
Confluence surfaced as the best choice for smartics because they were allowed to write their own apps and implement their own way of working. The lack of markup syntax made it accessible to everyone. Additionally, Confluence's integration with Jira also helped solidify their decision.
Thus was born the projectdoc Toolbox for Confluence. The toolbox empowers users with a non-technical background to act as Solution Architects for their information architecture, enabling them to implement their ideas without the need for coding experience (Low Code / No Code). The Toolbox empowers you to transform customer feedback into actionable results while also adding structure to your Confluence collaboration platform, allowing you to easily implement your specific use cases and get work done. Furthermore, smartics offers a REST API that allows users to build their own tools based on their own unique requirements.
Never stop learning
As with any product or project, a wide range of expertise is required – from build processes and virtualization to backend and frontend technologies. You never stop learning! This is the right job for anyone who loves to learn new things and work with other people as a team.
With this in mind, it's important to note that smartics hasn't just stopped here. They are continuing to evolve and adapt Artificial Intelligence into their apps. Anton described the exciting possibility of being able to find specific pieces of information in Confluence using machine learning – an example of the way his company and product are continuing to evolve.
Words of advice
At smartics, Anton and his partner are working on making documentation-building sites a fun experience for Confluence users. Anton ended our conversation with a bit of advice for anyone considering building for the Atlassian Marketplace: lean on the ecosystem and community, and use the platform to build things that would otherwise be outside your grasp. Thank you to Anton for sharing his story about smartics. You can learn more about his company and products on the Atlassian Marketplace.