Introduction

Hi, I am Rina, and I work in the development and operation of “mobility market”, one of our products at KINTO Technologies. I mainly work as a frontend engineer using Next.js. My hobbies include gaming and I recently started getting into Minecraft 🎮.

It’s that time of the year again when KINTO Technologies will start with the Advent Calendar 🎄. In this article, I will break down the changes in our 2023 version, upgraded from last year!

Past Advent Calendars

This year's Advent Calendar will be the third one since KINTO Technologies started holding them in 2021🎄
We did not have a Tech Blog yet when the 2021 Advent Calendar started, so our volunteering team members wrote the articles at the Qiita Advent Calendar.

https://qiita.com/advent-calendar/2021/kinto-technologies

We launched the KINTO Technologies Tech Blog in July 2022 where we were able to hold our own Advent Calendar that same year 👏

The articles had two themes: the first one, to spread awareness of technologies acquired individually, and the second, to present each department in the organization. They are focused on sharing the employees’ technical knowledge and work styles.

https://blog.kinto-technologies.com/posts/2022-12-01-advent_calendar/

(Reference: About the Advent Calendar)

Advent Calendar 2023

As usual, this year's Advent Calendar will come in two series! Last year, we created two Advent calendars, but this year we plan to have one with two series comprising a total of 50 articles.

https://qiita.com/advent-calendar/2023/kinto-technologies-tech

Not only that... but there will also be giveaways 🎅✨
Please invite your friends and colleagues to join us!

https://qiita.com/advent-calendar/2023/kinto-technlogies

Now, I will explain the themes of the 2023 articles!

1. Technical Articles

We will talk about the skills and technologies that each KINTO Technologies employee has acquired this year.
We will publish technical articles on a wide range of fields, including infrastructure, backend, mobile, and organizational development.
Through the articles, you can learn how the employees of KINTO Technologies work to solve problems and acquire skills every day, and about their work attitudes!

2. Article Relays

This year, there will be an article relay with five themes! The themes were selected among large-scale projects launched this year and topics that were popular at in-house study sessions.

(1) New Vehicle Subscription Site Renovation

We launched the renovated new vehicle subscription site (KINTO ONE) In August 2023🎉.
This was a large-scale project with a development period of about two and a half years.
The site renovation made it easy to add new features and improve it, and we were able to build a more modernized site.
This series of articles is about the improvements and technology stacks that the people involved in the project have made in order to improve the site!

(2) Agile Development

The company uses agile development, a software development methodology, for the development of multiple projects and products. We have been holding study sessions on agile development for a long time, but since the main focus was sharing information in a closed environment, such as individual departments, starting this year, we are going to focus on promoting agile activities throughout the organization.
We have created the Slack channel #help-agile-scrum, where you can exchange information about agile development, and will hold sprint demonstrations for other teams so people throughout the organization can exchange information casually. In this series of articles, we will give some examples and ideas of Agile that we are working on for different products!

(3) KINTO FACTORY

KINTO FACTORY is a service enabling Toyota and Lexus vehicle owners to keep their vehicles up-to-date by introducing modularity. It allows users to customize both software and hardware functions promptly, in alignment with new technical updates.

KINTO FACTORY obtains master data from Toyota and its dealerships, and the implementation is conducted in collaboration with Toyota's affiliated companies, while considering together the appropriate data structure. There will be articles giving glimpses of the entire back office operation, from EC site reception to ordering of parts to delivery. Other articles will be published focusing on front-end technology. We recently released a split QR code reading feature for vehicle inspection cards. The articles will include how we are developing these features and how we are working daily on "evolving" our site to make it easier for users to use. There will also be articles about building operational structures and adding new features!

(4) QA

This is a series of articles by the group responsible for pre-release verification of various services provided by KINTO Technologies. KINTO Technologies, which is part of the Toyota Group, needs high quality control standards in software development. Data is linked between each product including those from KINTO ONE and KINTO FACTORY. Verification across multiple products is also important for quality control. Each product development member performs tests in their product scope. The QA Group is important and not only verifies individual products, but also verifies products among other products, and collects information and cooperates as a communication hub for entire products (projects).

The QA group, which is indispensable to KINTO Technologies, will write about the importance of communicating with the development team to verify products and managing quality!
(Reference: Introduction to the QA Group)

(5) Diversity & Inclusion

The company has many colleagues with diverse backgrounds and from various nationalities, and about 25% are not Japanese (as of November 2023). We have many mothers and fathers with young children, and the number of men who take childcare leave is increasing.

In this series of articles, we will focus on the careers and work styles of non-Japanese members, including how they work depending on their stage of life and lifestyle, and how they manage international teams, and we will write about leadership, parental leave, and communication in cross-cultural teams!
(Reference: Active Non-Japanese Employees)

https://qiita.com/advent-calendar/2023/kinto-technologies-tech

Gift Calendar

This year, we will be participating in the Qiita Advent Calendar gift project! We will award gifts to the top three people who posts the best content here✨

The theme is CCoE Christmas! Post a story of how cloud technology has helped bring kaizen(improvement) to your organization!.

Among the various activities, we will focus on CCoE! We are taking the lead in CCoE activities across the Toyota Group, taking the stage at events such as AWS Summit Tokyo 2023 and AWS Autotech Forum 2023, and hosting the DBRE Summit 2023.

Now, we are accepting stories from engineers about how cloud technologies have helped with their kaizen! Whether you are a vehicle lover or not, tell us about how you have brought improvement (à la Toyota) in your daily work.

The Gifts🎁

KINTO Unlimited Award (1 person)
Apple AirPods Max - Space Gray

KINTO ONE Award (1 person)
Anker PowerExpand Elite 12-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Dock (APEX) Docking Station

KINTO FACTORY Award (1 person)
BenQ ScreenBar Halo Monitor Light ScreenBar Halo USB Desk Light

https://qiita.com/advent-calendar/2023/kinto-technlogies

Conclusion

In this article, I gave an overview of the 2023 Advent Calendar🎄. I hope that the KINTO Technologies Advent Calendar will lead you to new discoveries.

We will post the latest information on the Advent Calendar, lectures, and more on X. Please follow us there.

https://twitter.com/KintoTech_Dev

I hope you forward to the 2023 Advent Calendar as well ✨