Macrix Academy Awards Gala 2022

On February 23rd, it was time for one of the most important company events of the year – the Macrix Academy Awards Gala 2022.

Once again, the Macrix community came together to honor those employees who distinguished themselves through their hard work, skills, and outstanding commitment. This time, there were both an individual award and a team award: Most Valuable Player 2022 and Best Team Meetup 2022.

For the exclusive gala, we met in the Crystal Room of the Glamour restaurant in Przeźmierowo near Poznań. The gala was opened by Patrycja Bytner (Head of HR and co-founder of Macrix Academy), who, after a few words of introduction, invited the event’s hosts Dominika Kirschenstein (Communication & EB Specialist) and Max Żuchowski (Head of Development and co-founder of Macrix Academy) to the stage.

Before the winners of the two awards categories were announced, all guests were treated to a delicious multi-course dinner. In between meals, they could learn more about their nominated employees, but also about the upcoming projects of the Macrix Academy like the Young Potentials Program, an initiative to support the development of young talents at Macrix.

As a special surprise, the participants were introduced to the so-called Appreciation Initiative. Everyone attending the event could find an envelope with their name on a designated table. Throughout the evening, colleagues could put handwritten cards with words of appreciation into these envelopes or express their gratitude face to face.

The Nominees

After the first course, the four teams nominated for Best Team Meetup were introduced with short video presentations. Macrix Meetups are events that allow employees to share their knowledge about technologies, projects and digital trends with the entire Macrix community. Among all Team Meetups that took place last year, four were nominated for the award. The evaluated criteria were: presentation, teamwork, content value, and business value. In total, four teams were nominated for the award: Hotel, Sierra, Xray and Echo.

Afterwards, the Nominees for the Macrix Most Valuable Player award were introduced. The criteria in this category were: work results, readiness for duty, innovative ideas, community involvement and willingness to support others.

For both awards, the nominations process was similar: in January, all Macrix teams could nominate candidates in both categories. Based on the results of the ballot, the Macrix Academy Jury reviewed all entries and choose the winners.

“And the winner is…”

Best Team Meetup 2022

Finally, it was time to announce the winners of the first award of the evening – Best Team Meetup 2022 – and for this, Director Józef Eckert was asked to take to the stage to read out the winners of each place from a golden envelope. Competition was strong, but in the end, there could only be one winner of the Best Team Meetup award: Team ECHO consisting of Kamil Wilkosz (Team Leader / Senior Developer / Academy Coordinator), Lech Klimczak (Software Developer), Marcin Dyba (Team Leader / Software Commissioning Engineer).

For their meetup, the team demonstrated the use of the Factory I/O software in combination with Siemens PLCs and Macrix ProconTEL to simulate operations in an automated high-bay warehouse. Their project convinced the jury especially due to a wide range of potential applications in marketing, R&D and employee training.

The runners-up were:

2^nd place: Team Sierra, the all-female team with Justyna Trocińska (Scrum Master), Patrycja Bytner (Head of HR), Dominika Kirschenstein (Communication & EB Specialist), Joanna Duha (Administration Specialist), Emilia Ambrożejczyk (Administration Specialist) and Sylwia Wójcik (HR Specialist). For their meetup, the team presented the application of the Agile methodology in an HR project.

3^rd place: Team Xray, with Albaan Albakryn (Software Tester), Michał Zawacki (Junior Software Tester) and Dariusz Rudziński (Team Leader / Project Manager). In their meetup, they focused on the practical application of modern software testing tools.

4^th place: Team Hotel, consisting of Marcin Dyba (Team Leader / Software Commissioning Engineer), Lech Klimczak (Software Developer), Mateusz Sarbinowski (Software Developer). For their meetup, they created a proprietary program for routing calls between responsible people in service support using modern technology.

The winning team ECHO received a special statuette, a €1250 award from the Macrix Academy and an additional €1250 from the Macrix Board. The runners-up also received monetary awards.

Most Valuable Player 2022

After the teams had been awarded, it was time for the most eagerly awaited moment of the evening: the announcement of the Macrix Most Valuable Player 2022. Last year’s laureate Marcin Dyba was invited to the stage to read-out the name of the winner. It was clear that all nominees deserved the award and it would be a tight race. However, in the end, only one could be the Most Valuable Player 2022. When the name of the winner was read, the whole room erupted in frantic applause:

– Jędrzej Boguszyński.

In his role as IT Systems Administrator at Macrix, Jędrzej is not only doing a tremendous job at keeping Macrix and our clients safe from cyber-attacks. Jędrzej is also constantly pushing innovative projects, among them the complete transfer of the Macrix infrastructure to the cloud.

Marcin presented Jędrzej with a crystal statuette and a €1,000 voucher from the Macrix Academy. After this, CEO Marek Żuchowski came on stage to personally congratulate each of the nominees and present the prizes from the Board – €500 for each nominee.

After the announcement of the winners, it was time for a toast to the winners and a commemorative photo. Followed by what the Macrix colleagues like best – karaoke!

Congratulations once again to all the winners and we keep our fingers crossed for further achievements. It was a great event and will certainly stay in our memories for a long time.

Dominika Kirschenstein
Communication & Employer Branding Specialist

Filip Zuchowski
Head of Marketing and Sales