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The ESN Tech Talks seats were filled last Wednesday with over 30 attendees from Uppsala University, Spotify, Bwin, Go Interactive, Interactive Solutions and ESN. Oskar presented HTML5, while Markus talked about Python optimization techniques. The whole event was a great success, and we're looking forward to the upcoming talks during the year.

At the bottom of this post you'll find both presentations, powered by cloud based presentation software SlideRocket. Videos from the talks will also be available at a later date.

Next week, Wednesday February 17th, it's time for ESN Tech Talk #2. Marcus will be covering deployment with Red Hat, and Jonatan will talk about the NoSQL database MongoDB. Only 10 more seats available! Don't forget to signup!

In addition to our quarterly ESN Hackathons - 24 hour ESN Planet development sprints - we're now adding a new ingredient to the ESN Soup: ESN Tech Talks.

Starting February 3rd, ESN will be hosting 2 x 30 minute technology talks focusing on the social web, real-time and other kick-ass technologies. It'll be an informal meet-and-greet of other interesting people in the industry. The talks will take place at ESN's offices in Uppsala, Sweden. We're located in central Uppsala, a trip from Stockholm Centralstation is only 40 minutes. Complimentary snacks and beer will be served and after the talks we'll probably head out and grab something to eat.

We kick off with a full coverage of the future of the browser with Oskar diving into HTML5, and follow that up with the first chapter of The Python Holy Grail with Markus. Slots are open for anyone to join but they are limited, so sign up now! Find out more details at the ESN Tech Talks section.

Today is a big day. For the first time ever we'll be showing ESN Planet to a selected number of partners. We've spent the last 12 months distilling our five years of real-time web experiences into a final product. There's been ups and downs and it's been a tough journey but ultimately what we've achieved is a game changing web framework.

So without further ado, we present the Invite Beta Program for ESN Planet. Starting right now, invites are sent to our partners, including Interactive Solutions and Connecta. While the number of launch testers are limited, our goal is to expand this program as soon as possible.

The website has also gone through a serious overhaul. Our vision about the social real-time has been captured in a video and three showcases from our customers has been added. Curious people can also have a peek at what everyday life is at ESN is like.

In addition to this, ESN Developer Zone is launching. Our community for ESN Planet developers where documentation, guides and API references are intuitively available. We believe in engaging experiences not only with end-users but with our customers as well. Reducing communication overhead where possible is part of our agile development flow.

Interested in joining the ESN Planet Invite Beta Program? Drop us a mail through the contact form!

Last weekend the office set sail to Finland with a big, white cruise ship. We try to get away from the office once in a while with the team. It's usually very refreshing!

Anyway, rumour had it that Kicki Danielsson was onboard. And boy, were we excited or what? This was going to be the best boat trip ever! As soon as we got onboard we found our cabins quite quickly. A few prank calls later with the internal phones, we went wining and dining in the aft.

The nervousness was spreading a bit since the World Cup qualifer was on tonight and we didn't have a TV. Luckily, after some words about keelhauling, the game was on.

To raise the stakes a bit, Oskar had earlier promised beer and eternal sunshine on everyone if Zlatan scored in the game. However, things didn't work out as planned. We ended up center ship with our football shirts on and beer in hand, cheering Zlatan for what would be a disastrous defeat :'(

In agony, we comforted ourselves in the tax-free. Preparing for a night-long party on upper deck that would last 'til dawn. All in all, the trip was huge fun. I'm sure the pics tell you the same, we put them up on Flickr. Arrr!

Fear no more, as of today ESN is officially twitter ing! We hope twitter will help us listen to the things people are saying about us and giving other people a chance to see what we're up to. That means whether you are genuinly interested in ESN or just want the latest gossip f rom our office, I suggest you start following us now! Some of us are already doing it, check out Oskar (@ogabrielson) or Carl (@cgbystrom) tweets.

Last week our man-sized Planet logo was put up on our office wall. With the end result so pleasing, a digital version to decorate our virtual desktops is naturally in order.

Martin cut'n'pasted some pixels and hooked us up with two desktop backgrounds. One center aligned together with a right aligned background - grab them while supplies last!

There are many ways to prepare for a product release. One of those ways is of course to have your own wall-sized logo. Any company with some self respect has one. Or so we've heard... anyway. To everyone's joy, ou r long-awaited Planet wallpaper arrived this morning.

Not long thereafter, Johan and Micke and their fine handyman skills were getting their hands dirty putting it up. A few moments later they were done. Well on tim e for our Monday Sprint planning breakfast!

Worked out pretty well, don't you think?

Finally. We're live.

The last couple of months we've been at hard work with our ESN Planet Closed Beta Program. Together with the nice guys at Interactive Solutions, and Stockholm based Connecta, we've been sorting out the last details and improving our kick-ass, realtime, community framework. It's looking awesome.

Sometime mid-May we'll be announcing some more details about our third generation ESN platform and we'll give you guys a look behind the scenes at some of our client productions.

On top of that, we'll be keeping you posted on what's happening at the ESN office, the countdown to the official Planet 1.0 release, reports from the ESN Hackathons and much more.

Lots of people are talking to us about our ESN Planet technology. And at the same time we have some really cool client projects coming up in the next couple of months. So, we need more people to join our Uppsala development office.

We're looking forward to your application.