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Together with the mobile team, I am in charge of the development ofapp for Android and iOS.
Definitely reach end users with a high-quality application that works without ifs and buts. This means simplifying the lives of farmers and helping them in their work, particularly with regard to the collection and management of data useful for on-farm decision making.
Theapp mobile is a market need: everyone has a cell phone at hand. Using it exclusively from a desktop does not allow real-time operations directly from the field. Theapp mobile therefore becomes the gateway to a service such as that offered by xFarm.
There is a big difference, even at the developmental level, between web and mobile applications: theapp lacks certain features found on desktop, for example, there are no certain tabular information, which would be difficult to display on a mobile device, while from a PC you do not have features such as connecting to a tractor, which is useful only from mobile, not the web.
I am mainly self-taught. I developed a passion for programming in my family. Already at the age of 12 I wanted to make my first PC video games. My graduation paper was about a mobile application - a digital school diary. Upon graduation, I decided to enter the working world right away and delved into the development of app for iOS and integration with server-side systems.
The first contact with xFarm came through the web agency that had been commissioned to developapp. Then when the mobile team needed to expand, Salvatore (CTO) and Matteo (CEO) turned to me.
I felt very close to the project because I saw it start from scratch and exceed 30,000 registrations. It was my first project to reach so many people, so I wanted to take it to higher and higher levels. Also, I was attracted to the idea of working as a team.
Currently I still live in Biella and mostly work remotely. When I come to the office in Milan I find a fast-paced environment but with very defined and firm goals. There is a sense that there is a need to bring a valuable product to farmers. We are the first testers of the product, so it happens that we go out into the field to test functionality before we reach customers.
Ours is a team that is widely distributed across the territory. It is a necessity, because unfortunately mobile development is an area where it is complicated to find colleagues based in Milan. To date there are four of us, all under 30.
We get a lot of feedback from farmers through our support chat. At the level of new features, the product team, led by Camilla, defines requests directly with customers, and they submit them to us. Together we arrive at a design that is taken on to be implemented.
Connectivity: using theapp with almost nonexistent bandwidth connections is a challenge in itself. Interactions with the IoT world, particularly with regard to the Android world, which is particularly fragmented.
Last but not least, usability: theapp is used under the sun, in high temperatures, perhaps with a screen with low brightness. It must therefore be developed with these aspects in mind.
That time we went around Italy with Daniele.
I am passionate about the blockchain world, so I happen to attend themed conferences and symposia and like to stay up-to-date on technological advancements in this area.
At xFarm we use blockchain, mainly to trace the agribusiness supply chain, to know where, when and by whom the product was processed. From the field to the end consumer.
I would like to grow together with the team, both in numbers and professionally. We have several items planned for 2023: new modules, new services from the R&D team. Also, we would like to make it easier to useapp even with very little or no connection, to operate directly from the field in any condition.
Having the latest technologies at hand in the field or on board a tractor is a decisive advantage for the farmer and for the entire agricultural sector. We are working more and more in this direction, including at the level of Artificial Intelligence in the service of environmental sustainability. In particular, we are focusing on developing image recognition algorithms that will find application in counting insects caught by traps, and predictive models for phytopathologies.
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