2021 at Dygma would make for a great tv show. It had ups and downs, fun and drama, hellos and goodbyes, and plot twists.
So, before jumping head first into 2022, let’s look back at everything that last year had in store for us.
Freezing issue
2021 started amid a crisis. I’d even go as far as to call it a nightmare, our darkest hour.
Since mid-2020, some of our users reported freezing issues on their keyboards, and we couldn’t find what was causing them.
We replaced their cables with new ones, changed many neurons, and even sent new Raises and PCBs, but some still kept experiencing freezes.
Luckily, thanks to a lot of research and the help of our Dygmates, we found what was causing the freezes -Electromagnetic discharges, we officially hate you- and, most importantly, found a solution that fixed the problem; once and for all.
And it was just a firmware update!!
Design, production, and shipping of the tenting kit
Once the freezing issues were dealt with, it was time to dive into our next colossal project: designing and manufacturing a tenting kit for the Dygma Raise. And that wasn’t a walk in the park either.
Just picture it: we were trying to manufacture a new product in China during a global pandemic without flying there and controlling manufacturing on the ground. We faced some setbacks along the way, including power shortages in our factories’ region.
But you just kept asking for it, so we powered through. And boy, was it worth it.
We opened pre-sales in June, and the first batch completely sold out in no time. We had to prepare a second batch, which also sold out, and then a third one.
However, the great success of the tenting has not only been sales numbers but your awesome feedback, both on social media and in our post-sale survey.
Bazecor 0.3.3: the latest stable version of Bazecor
Alex has no time to get bored. We hit him back with more work when he thought he could focus on his beloved back-end development. In this case, developing a stable version of Bazecor, 0.3.3
Besides working on the stability of the software, which was the critical part, we also included new parameters in the preferences section. Now you can fine-tune how your mouse and dual-function keys behave or set Bazecor to dark mode.
Finally, we added a search box in the key configuration menu, so it’s easy to find the key you want, and we upped the macro limit to 64.
It might not seem like a lot. But the amount of work this required was insane. The rewarding part was that we finally offered you a configuration software that was easy to use, always worked, and was nice to look at.
New members of the Dygma Family
Last year we didn’t just expand our product line. The Dygma family has also grown.
- Stefan, our electrical engineer, joined the team in June. With his help, we develop new products much faster. Also, if the Raise gives you a shock, I can tell you where to find him.
- Boro joined our content department a month later, and he is the best. But he wrote this; so that that claim might be a little biased.
- Miquel came along in August to be the head of content, and we can’t say anything bad about him. Literally, he won’t let us.
- Chris G -not to be confused with Chris, our customer happiness officer- is our digital marketing expert. If you now see Dygma ads on Facebook, you can thank him.
- Finally, our new UI & UX developer, Thiago, joined in November. Since then, he has been developing the new Bazecor interface, and boy, do we like that.
On the other hand, you may have noticed Dominique hasn’t been around much in our videos. It’s not because wee keep her in the basement, as some of you suggested in other videos’ comments. It’s just that she has decided to pursue new challenges, so she’s not a permanent member of the team anymore.
However, we’re still friends (for real, not in a “we-can-still-be-friends-break-up-way”), and we will collaborate from time to time.
New website
Do you know how long did we want to overhaul our website?
I’ll sum it up with a quote from our CEO: “It makes me want to gauge my eyes out.” Maybe he should have used a more corporate approach, like “our website has lots of room for improvement,” but he prefers brutal honesty.
We designed and developed the website in-house, at the cost of sweat, blood, tears... and lots of swearing. We had half of the team working exclusively on that for more than a month, but it was worth it.
We know there are still some things to improve, but it’s our pride right now.
New Bazecor beta and revamped UI & UX
We spent half of the year without making big changes to our software. Until, finally, the first beta of Bazecor 1.0.0 came along.
Why did it take so long? Well, developing the new features was not easy, especially for the Superkeys. After many betas were released (we are at Beta 13 right now), we’re still polishing them. We’ve even gone so far as to build a debugger to tackle the last pesky bugs.
In the meantime, Thiago is working on the new UI & UX and testing it with some very helpful Dygmates. It’s almost ready to be developed, so you’ll get to try it sooner than later.
Over the last month, we’ve been redesigning the UI & UX of Bazecor -the configurator software of the Raise keyboard- from the ground up 🏗️
— Dygma (@DygmaLab) December 21, 2021
Do you want to take a sneak peek? 👀 👇 pic.twitter.com/H0ehO95kyF
New Discord channel
Probably one of the happiest moments of the year was when we launched our new Discord channel. We wanted to step up our relationship with the community, and we did it.
Thanks to Discord, we now have a more direct way to be in touch with you every day, and it has also allowed us to have live Q&A with you, which we will continue to do more frequently.
It’s also a great place to share thoughts, the good and bad things that happen in our lives, nice setups and keycaps, new ideas, memes, and much more.
We love hanging out there, so don’t overthink it and join us.
Black Friday Armageddon
We really need to talk about what happened on Black Friday.
As every year, we were expecting a surge in sales and had reinforced our processing facility, but you exceeded all our expectations.
At some point, half the office was at the warehouse preparing orders. Even our CEO was there giving mounting switches and keycaps.
But even that was not enough. We sold so much that it took us two weeks to catch up with all the orders. So we want to thank you all for your patience and understanding.
New Dygmate Partnership program
Another thing that we’re really proud of is our new Dygmate Partnership program.
Many of our users are adamant about their love for the Raise and praise it every time they can. Be it in social media, their blogs, or among friends.
We appreciate it very much, so we wanted to give something back and also help our community grow.
🚨ANNOUNCEMENT TIME🚨
— NGU || BJ Wafer (@BJ_Wafer) January 16, 2022
I'm STOKED to announce that I'm now a @DygmaLab
affiliate! If you're thinking about picking one up for yourself, you can use this link to support both myself and the Dygma team: https://t.co/Jbe7FsWGxk
Huge thank you to Dygma for the opportunity!
Limited Editions Colors
Finally, we didn’t want to finish last year’s recap without mentioning the Limited Editions.
It’s difficult to choose my favorite because they all look gorgeous, from the Daredevil Red and Atlantis Blue released on Black Friday to the Galactic Rose, Elf Green, or Egyptian Gold available during Christmas.
You’ve shown them a lot of love. So much that you’ve left none for us to have in the office -just the ones we have in the studio- so expect some new ones soon.
What’s to come in 2022 at Dygma
That’s basically all that 2021 had in store for us. It has been our best year so far and also a fun ride. Don’t you think?
Looking into the future, 2022 looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun too.We can’t go into the details right now but we can tell you that we will announce a new, very awaited keyboard, really soon. Really, really, soon.
We also expect to have Bazecor 1.0.0 with the new UI & UX before the summer and many other surprises we can’t unveil right now.
What’s no secret is that we will continue growing the Dygma team. Right now, we’re on the verge of hiring a new video editor and looking for a community manager, a Head of people, a firmware engineer, a manufacturing engineer, and a development engineer. And that’s just the beginning. We expect to grow the product and marketing teams throughout 2022.
And that’s all. I hope you had a good 2021 too, and I wish you the best for 2022.
