May 15, 2014 : Appirio acquires Coderbits, providing its Topcoder community a unified profile that showcases skills and experience from GitHub, Stack Overflow, Behance, Codecademy and more; Maryam Norouzi appointed to VP, Community Operations and Strategic Programs
SAN FRANCISCO – May 15, 2014 – Appirio, a global cloud consultancy, today announced the acquisition of Coderbits, creating a new state-of-the-art profiling system for developers and designers to showcase their skills and accomplishments from across a vast ecosystem of online platforms. The integration of Coderbits' universal rating and profile system with Appirio's Topcoder platform will provide objective insight into a developer and designer's skills and achievements. The new profiling system incorporates information from GitHub, Stack Overflow, Behance, Codecademy and more than 60 additional communities where developers and designers answer questions, contribute code, share designs, gain certifications and more.
With more than 630,000 designers, developers and data scientists in the Topcoder community and hundreds of different technologies emerging each year, it is more important than ever to have a platform that provides an objective view of skills and expertise. Coderbits' ability to see skills and experience across a wide array of platforms, combined with Topcoder's ability to evaluate and rate design, development and data science activity, is an unprecedented alignment that creates the first global, objective, publicly documented window into developers' real world experience.
"With so many online communities where people regularly contribute code, answer questions, and showcase new ideas, relying just on educational achievement or a listing of work experience is limiting. We no longer have to guess how that background will apply to getting work done in the real world, we can see it," said Narinder Singh, president of Topcoder and co-founder of Appirio. "When developers and designers can share their experience across more than 60 ecosystems we achieve a better, factual and unbiased view of skills, expertise and achievements."
As part of the acquisition, Coderbits' lead architect and co-founder, Thabo Fletcher, will fill a key role on Appirio's research and development team. "Combining the capabilities of Coderbits and Topcoder elevates the experience for all our members," said Fletcher. "We set out to make it easy for developers and designers to share their key competencies transparently and automatically. We admired Topcoder and used it as one of our sources of data; combining the two communities is a perfect opportunity to accomplish this at much greater scale."
To increase the emphasis on broad scale programs to benefit the Topcoder community, Maryam Norouzi has been appointed to the role of Vice President of Community Operations and Strategic Programs. Norouzi is charged with community operations and outreach as well as adding a broader focus on women in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics).
"Topcoder prides itself on having the best and most extensive developer talent in a single community, and I look forward to continuing to help create new opportunities for professional designers and developers around the world," said Norouzi. "As an advocate for women in technology, I'm also excited to drive initiatives to bring these same opportunities to STEM programs."
Coderbits will be integrated into Topcoder's new profile system later in 2014. For a full list of Coderbits supported sites, including Behance, Bitbucket, Code School, Codecademy, Coderwall, Dribbble, GitHub, LinkedIn, Meetup, Stack Overflow and Twitter, visit https://coderbits.com/integrations.
Additional Resources:
Read the full Gartner report, "Use Crowdsourcing as a Force Multiplier in Application Development" (Gartner subscription required)
Read Appirio's crowdsourcing application development eBook
About Appirio
Appirio is a global cloud consultancy that helps customers achieve results in weeks, not years by harnessing the power of the world's top talent. Appirio's 600,000 member Topcoder community and crowdsourcing platform, combined with the company's business and technical expertise, have helped 700+ enterprises confidently use technology to increase innovation and transform business. Founded in 2006, Appirio is a trusted partner to companies such as Apria, Coca-Cola, eBay, Facebook, Japan Post Network, L'Oreal, NetApp, The Four Seasons and Virgin America.
About Topcoder
The Topcoder community gathers the world's experts in design, development and data science to work on interesting and challenging problems for fun and reward. The community helps members improve their skills, demonstrate and gain reward for their expertise, and provide the industry with objective insight on new and emerging technologies. Topcoder is managed and operated by Appirio.