echonet communication

Independent with Digital Handcraft in Vienna since 1999 - but why?

Inspired by Independence - Long story short.

What we believe, here is our cause in a nutshell:

Independence is our inspiration. We share it with you! We create independence by developing our software ourselves, line by line, and operating all the other things you need for your digital presence as a solution ourselves. This has led to our own content management system, but also to video tools and map services. These things keep the problems with the GDPR at bay. But they also free you from the clutches of companies over which you have no control. You have ownership and control with echonet over your content, be it text, images, videos or maps. Only if you have the rights to your content are you truly independent.

Short Story long. Why does echonet exist?

We are driven by freedom and independence. That's why we do digital craftsmanship, so that we can give our customers complete power over their digital communication and thus drive justice in a digitalized world!

We founded echonet to challenge the future of communication. We play by rules that we define ourselves and are disrespectful to supposed fixed sizes in the market. We change the status quo. Every day. With every work.

echonet exists because we use our digital craft to ensure that our customers and their customers always experience justice in the digital world.

In digital communication, we make this possible with self-developed software that we put in the hands of our customers. We make these tools so that they are easy to use, provide security and give our customers the opportunity to have their digital communication completely under their own control.

This results in communication solutions such as websites, online stores, intranet systems, database solutions, exciting applications and much more. Our customers use this infrastructure for their success. That's why there are people in the team and also in business relationships with echonet who challenge the status quo and change the rules to make them fairer. If necessary, we play Kobayashi Maru - the unassailable test scenario that James Tiberius Kirk (captain of the USS 1701 Enterprise) only passes because he changes the rules. (Feel free to search the web for Kobayashi Maru if you don't know the analogy, but it's best to use a search engine like Qwant.com from Paris, which doesn't just serve your "bubble" but searches the web neutrally).

HOW echonet thinks and works?

Radical and without compromise.

We think DIGITAL different. Because we don't believe in the status quo, but always look for the challenge, we advise our clients according to these criteria. They should not become a commodity in the internet but use it successfully for the higher goals of the company or organization. Therefore, we create websites and digital solutions that have the character of being a part of the infrastructure of our client. Websites and digital solutions we create for our clients are not a marketing channel. They are infrastructure. They are the digital equivalents to the real infrastructure of our clients.

To put it simply: an online shop is not a marketing channel of a company that sells products and services, but the online store is the digital equivalent of the real store, the restaurant, the service center. And that's why we always support our customers in building this digital infrastructure.

We love our digital craft.

echonet is probably not better than other digital agencies. We don't care about that, we don't measure ourselves on the market. We don't compare ourselves with the "competition". We don't work to be better than other digital agencies. We are working this week to be better than last week. We are working this month to be better than last month. And last month we worked to be better than the month before that.

Because we love and value digital handcraft and are always challenging the status quo, not content to simply chase what "the world" says, we work. We feel like a workshop for digital craft and it's important to us to have a handle on and understand the things we work on.

We do not accept the status quo. We always challenge. That's why echonet's customers are in good hands when they define themselves to be challenging as well. We appreciate market leaders in their industries. But we love much more the number 2 in the respective market. The number 2 who wants to challenge the powerful counterpart. For the number 2, echonet is the right agency, because we want to win with our client. For companies that are number 1 and rest on their laurels, echonet is the wrong agency.

We are the motor mechanics of the internet, who are able to use screwdriver, pliers and welding machines. We are not those, who can only plug in a USB-stick and then helplessly look at a screen.

We are the plumbers of the internet, who are able to lay and bend a water pipe. We are not those, who can only lay the pipe when the 30-degree spare part of the pipe it is fortuitously available in the hardware store. 

We are the carpenters of the internet, who are able to create furniture also when the room is in an unusual shape. We are not those, who can only build a shelf when boards are drilled in advance.

WHAT does echonet?

We do digital handcraft. How and why we exist is the reason we work the way we do. echonet develops its own products and works with its own software solutions.

We develop things ourselves, we create our own solutions or - to say it in the style of Alan Kay (computer pioneer, scientist from Massachusetts, born 1940): People who are really serious about their websites should make their own content management system.

For all those who can't relate to Alan Kay, let's go back to the year 2007: Apple's founder Steve Jobs presented the original quote by Alan Kay during the presentation of the "iPhone", a product that was revolutionary in many aspects: 

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

Our products, like our own content management system content.life or our own invitation management system invite.life as well as the invoicing system invoice.life are the expression and the result of how we work.

Because we believe that an agency that takes the websites it makes seriously must also develop its own background system.

Accessibility of digital infrastructure is one of our core ideas. And we attach importance to this even if a social trend would demand it differently, we are not available for the status quo even then and we also challenge a social trend with all radicalness.

The implementations are always characterized by our will to consider everyone - in the clientele of our clients. This is also the reason why accessibility has a high priority at echonet. We want to practice inclusion and we practice this inclusion for our customers in the form that we work every day to make and keep functions, information and possibilities accessible.

Because echonet regards its own works as infrastructure and not as a marketing channel, our customers also act according to this pattern. This includes - just to show a flash of thought - that the presences of marketing channels should not become part of the infrastructure.

Those who believe they can enhance themselves by requiring their own website to have many logos from social media platforms are actually devaluing themselves and their digital infrastructure.

Those who challenge the status quo like echonet are also on the side of companies and organizations that do and think the same. Projects that echonet implements always serve those who challenge. Because our successful client also always challenges the status quo. echonet has never worked for companies that rest on the laurels of their own market leadership. For them, a pretty "face" is enough, it doesn't require an idea or creativity, that's why it doesn't inspire us.

Following the reason why echonet exists, the methods how we make this idea real, our products and results are created.

History of echonet

In this timeline, we show you the most important years in our history. Take a break with us and walk back in our time machine through the years until we're back at 1999. Just know that projects we name in our timeline are of course only samples of our work in the mentioned year. This does not fully cover the work in the selected year.

1999

First year, the idea of echonet gets orange and blue. The team is made up of a few fellows as a part of the ECHO Advertising Agency and the VWZ Publishing House. echonet is there to be the department for the digital agenda. Initially Marcin Kotlowski, who was already working in the advertising agency, startet echonet and formed a team of digital experts around him. Some of them were already in the company, others were taken on board for building up echonet. In december 1999 a team of 4 people moved in to a small office of about 12 square meters (about 130 square feet) at the first floor of the companys office in the 7th district of Vienna (Austria). The founders team were Marcin Kotlowski as a CEO and responsible for business administration, Matthias Bendel as a CTO for the technical part and Roland Vidmar as CD for the creative part of echonet.

Representing the team of our three founders Marcin Kotlowski defined the idea of echonet:

We founded echonet to challenge the future of communication with one more idea every day.

2000

Of course, how could it be otherwise: We're preparing for and looking forward to our first trading day at the stockmarket. No, seriously: Of course we are not becoming a shareholder company, but somehow we are fascinated of the dot com boom of the year 2000. echonet expands from 4 to more than 30 employees and we begin working on our next step: A new office in Salzburg, about 300 kilometers away from Vienna.

In reality, the first version of our content management system "content.life" comes up, we create the new website for the local newspaper "Wiener Bezirksblatt". We also start working on a new website for the austrian samaritan organisation "Arbeiter Samariter Bund Österreich".

Honestly:

We had actually planned to go public soon, to do our IPO, because the idea from last year "We demand the future of communication" is in our heads. But this year, there are more people in the echonet team than customers who hire echonet.

2001

Back to the reality. The stock market seems not to be ready for us... we don't go public. :-) The team decreases to 12 members, but echonet continues working on the content management system and also releases a small business edition of the cms with the brand "keinporto.at". (Literally "no poststamp") The idea behind "keinporto" was to create a web based content-managment-system for non profit organisations to create digital publishings, news channels and member areas for their members. They then could replace printed membership magazines with this digital version. All that happened because the Austrian Postal Service increased the prices for delivering magazines. There was a special postage pricing for those products.

As a matter of fact, keinporto.at was used for different purposes. But for example we created the digital magazin for a vienna based tax consultancy "Steuerberatung Weiss" as a "pop up" window on their classic website.

In the year 2001 we also created a new website for the austrian department of the french industry company ALSTOM. We create a new inspiring website for the "Advertising Academy" and the famous jewelery Ernst A. Haban in the noble first district of Vienna. Also a young online communty for the youth magazin nightline was created in 2001.

2002

Still echonet is not a real company, we are still a department of the ECHO advertising agnecy. Many new projects and new customers are aquired by echonet, we do websites for shopping malls like "Donauzentrum", the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Austria ("A1 Ring") and a huge wine trading company in the federal state of Lower Austria, named IWB Fohringer.

Also this year the next generation of the content-management-system keinporto.at is going live. Also echonet becomes name sponsor of the austrian motorsport-team (Ralley) of Gery Nutz and Max Tauder. The new brand "echonet racing" is born. Sport sponsoring becomes part of our activities.

2003

3D Animation becomes part of our work. We to multimedia-projects on CD-ROMs. For example echonet creates and designs a CD-ROM with a package of information for young employess about worker rights for the youth department of the austrian trade union (GPA) - named "Know your rights!". Therefore we built a city in 3D with different topics in the city like an airport for travelling, a bank for financial tasks and much more.

Also we launch in cooperation with the Austrian Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired the feature set "easy2see" for websites. This becomes an extetion feature for accessible websites, enriching the functionality of the websites by color-contrast-switches and text-size-switches. We relaunch also their site www.braille.at this year. Among others also the taxi company "Taxi 40100" goes online with echonet.

2004

echonet becomes a real company. From now on we are "echonet communication GmbH" (Limited company) and the company is 100 percent owned by "echo medienhaus ges. m. b. h." in Vienna. Marcin Kotlowski, one of the founders of echonet, becomes CEO. During spring we work intensively on the new website for the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Bahrain, which happens to have the first race on 04/04/04. We also relaunch the website for the City Airport Train (CAT) in Vienna and the medical publishing house Universimed get's a new website with a huge knowledge database.

Also we increase our sport sponsoring acivities and become name sponsor of the soccer club "FC echonet Inter Meidling" which of course is a reference to the famous italian soccer club "Inter Milan" (in German it sounds more similar, because it's "FC Inter Meidling" and "Inter Mailand"). While Milan ("Mailand") is a big city in northern italy, Meidling is the name of the 11th district of Vienna.

This year echonet also creates a children online-community for the austrian author Thomas Brezina and a new website in cooperation with the Austrian National Broadcasting Company (ORF) for the kids show "Forscherexpress", which is also produced by Thomas Brezina and his company.

2005

How should we explain: echonet creates new websites and some multimedia cd-rom-projects in 2005. For example we relaunch the shopping mall "Donauzentrum", "Vienna Private Investigator" (Wien Detektiv) goes online which is also a platform for kids telling an interactive story around a book of Thomas Brezina. The "Vienna Crime Night" events get their website from echonet and we bringt online an e-zine called "Der Durchblick" with the Austrian Federation of the Blind. This happens in cooperation with Telekom Austria.

2006

ALSTOM, the french industry company get's a new website for their dependency in Austria. echonet works for many art- and culture-projects like the Bank Austria Kunstforum in Vienna or the artist Gottfried Kumpf.

2007

Marcin Kotlowski, the CEO of echonet communication leaves the company in february 2007. In march 2007 Daniela Feuersinger and Roland Vidmar become the new CEOs of echonet. The company is still 100 percent owned by echo medienhaus ges. m. b. h.. For own purposes we start developing the factoring and invoice-software "invoice.life" to regulate our own financial affairs.

echonet creates many websites and portals, for example for the gulf resort Haugschlag in Lower Austria, the restaurant Novelli in Vienna or the public libraries of the city of Vienna. In cooperation with the echo medienhaus and the Raiffeisen bank echonet also creates a Vienna Island in the gaming area of Second Life. As we started in 2006 with video streaming services online we this year try to proove our capability of video streaming by simply streaming live from the CEO office of echonet. So everyone can watch our CEOs for months during their work live on the internet. But the stream of course is muted, so people can not listen to speeches or phone calls.

2008

A new year at echonet starts with some new websites and projects. We publish the relaunch of the local newspaper Wiener Bezirksblatt as well as a marketing blog for the swedish telephone company TELE2 in Austria. For a new customer in Africa we create the website "Kiss Mix" for a alcoholic drink which is distributed in Africa and Western Europe.

The viennese public libraries get a new special interest website for kids which is named "Kirango". And also a new website for the public start-up offices of MINGO goes live.

2009

After finishing a relaunch for the Bank Burgenland, a local bank in eastern Austria, we also create a new website for TrendCom, a research and marketing agency in Vienna. During the year more and more projects are realised in our company. Most important is a huge project for the ticketing platform WIEN TICKET, but this one is not ready in 2009.

The US hedgefonds Cerberus Capital Management invites us to place an offer for the realisation of the online annual report of the Austrian Bank "BAWAG PSK" which is owend by Cerberus. We create their first HTML-based annual business report with hundrets of sites and thousands of tables. A critical job, because due to stock market regulations we have to finish the project and put it online in a timeframe of only a few seconds. Still fun, but some of us are pretty tense.

2010

Welcome to the next decade! At the beginning of 2010 we convice the jury of ICE Vienna to support our concept, layout and idea for the project "Ideenkiste" and therefore we win the tender. Ideenkiste enables parents to find ideas for spending their free time with their kids based on circumstances like weather, time of the year, age of the kids, size of the group... it is also made for people who work in the kindergarden with kids. Also echonet realises the online precence of the Austrian Waterworks at wasserwerk.at. And for the Social-Democratic Party of Austria we create "Ö2020", a community based website which enables people to take part in descition processes of the political party.

The french radio company "Energy" goes online in Austria with its local dependency in Vienna, Salzburg and Innsbruck with a new website made by echonet and the big ticketing webshop WIEN TICKET based on a german ticketing software also goes live. For the Social-Democratic Party of Vienna (governing party) echonet launches a new website for the election campaing in Vienna in October 2010.

Also the "LIST Group of Companies" finally signs up with echonet for new websites for some of their hotels in Austria. For the austrian energy drink company "Power Horse" we create a global banner campaign and do also the media booking in advance of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa 2010. The main target countries of the campaign are the Arabic area with Saudi Arabia, Jemen, Quatar and Syria, some countries in Africa and also United Kingdom.

2011

A year of Open (Government) Data for echonet. We not only create apps and websites reporting about pollution and air quality based on the measurement data (OGD) of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Sustainability. We do also fun stuff like the "Swimming Price Calculator" based on the OGD entry prices of the public swimming areas in Vienna. 

For the german JAB Anstoetz Group in Bielefeld we create a new website, the public libraries in Vienna get a mobile version of their website and also the Leopoldmuseum in Vienna goes online with our content management system and our design.

In spring 2011 CEO Daniela Feuersinger finally leaves echonet. Roland Vidmar, who was Co-CEO with Daniela, takes over and is now the single CEO of echonet.

2012

We move out from the 7th discrict of Vienna to our new home in "St. Marx" at the area of the MediaQuarterMarx in the 3rd district of Vienna. This changes many things in our technology structure, servers have to be moved and so we spend much time of late winter and spring with internal works. Still there is enough capacity to create new website like for the new animal shelter in Vienna TierQuarTier, where we put a sweet little cat as a video behind the website. Afterall this makes people even staying longer on our fundraising campaign for the new animal shelter - they keep watching the little cat.

We also create a new website with a desktop and mobile only version for the City of Schwechat in Lower Austria. And we create our frist truely responsive websites for the Bank Austria Kunstforum, the below the line marketing agency Freecard and leisure communication, a PR agency in Vienna. Based on Open Government Data we create the first mobile to use city-map of Vienna based on the public data system. This project is finally taken over by the Citycouncil of Vienna and implemented in the public website of wien.gv.at.

In autumn we decide for a funeral: Mobile websites are dead, so we bury them.

2013

In January 2013 Roland Vidmar does a management buy out and earns 95,1 % of the shares of echonet communication GmbH. From now on the company is driven by the new owner. We stay with a team of 10 people in the MediaQuarterMarx in the third district of Vienna in the office building with the former owner of echonet together.

The further development of the agency and our software products continues. We do a new website for the local newspaper Wiener Bezirksblatt, we also create the new website for the Fisherman's Strong Men Run in Austria. And we create a new intranet for the Wiener Kinder- & Jugendbetreuung, which is then shown in a huge presentation in front of about 1000 people in a big hall in the Museumsquartier in Vienna. Our CEO Roland Vidmar does the presentation there.

2014

A new year brings us to a new office in the noble first district of Vienna. We move out, but of course this does not effect our capacity of production. In a huge project in cooperation with WIEN TICKET we create a system based on the SAP ticketing-platform combined with JETticket online shops to build a single sign on-system for the Austrian Soccer Club "FK Austria Wien". Also the magazine "Wien mobil" goes online as a project for the Vienna Public Transport Agency (Wiener Linien).

2015

War in Syria gets relevant to Europe - no surprise for us and some of our customers. As thousands of refugees arrive in Austria we perpared with the Vienna Social-Funds a new version of volunteer.life. This time it gets many new features for immediate help by volunteers in Vienna. The system calls people via SMS on their phone to sign up for volunteering in different projects.

Also the federal state of Salzburg and the federal state of Upper Austria as well as the district of Göttingen in Lower Saxony in Germany get a licence for volunteer.life. The system helps them all to coordinate and gain volunteering people to help.

We create a ticketing webshop and website for the Kronenzeitung, which is by far Austrias biggest newspaper and a ticketing webshop for UniCredit Bank Austria.

Finally we expand our sport sponsoring activities again and are now the presenters of the echonet Beachvolleyball Team Hupfer/Hörl.

2016

There are many projects for new websites and relaunches, especially about ticketing shops. We create the new websites for Musical Vienna as well as the opera house "Theater an der Wien". The fresh PR startup "Sister Act" get's a media serivce website and we create the new webportal for the beautyclinic Yuvell® in Vienna.

Also we start relaunching a few banking websites like Capital Bank, Bankhaus Brüll Kallmus and we also work on own projects like the global multilingual platforms ride77.com, detective77.com and dance77.com.

2017

Finishing our work for the GRAWE Banking Group we put online the new version of Capital Bank, Banking House Schelhammer & Schattera in Vienna and we create also a matching platform for private banking customers to find their perfect consultant in the bank. The platform is "Perfekter Berater" (literally perfect consultant).

Also Vienna Region get's a new website from echonet. It was founded 2008 with the aim of internationally marketing and positioning the business location Vienna Region and is owned by the federal states of Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland. In cooperation with WIEN TICKET echonet creates also a new ticket webshop for the cellphone operator Hutchison 3.

2018

We create the front-end for the Austrian Federal Computing Centre in cooperation with a swiss design agency. Our competences in accessiblity and responsive webdesign are not only useful therefore but also for the relaunch of the website of the Austrian Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired. It get's new, fresh and good looking - but still accessible from hair to toe.

Also the wine trading company CIVEDIAMO goes live with echonet. The new bar and shop in the first district of Vienna not only get's the website from echonet, but also its logo, corporate design, corporate identity and folders, business cards etc...

2019

We started into the year 2019 with a great full-service project. We created not only the website for the advertising-agency "Werbehelden" (literally "Advertising Heroes") but also the corporate design, logo and we could realize some of our own cool ideas there - thanks to the guys of Werbehelden for their approach to the project. We also redesigned our own website, finally after more than a decade. Internationally optimized for different countries and people on different continents is the new corporate website of echonet now available also with special information for Russian, American, British, Canadian and many other citizens.

The most effort this year was put into developments that are not really viewable to the public. We created a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) with our yearslong partner Wien Ticket, with many specialized features for online ticket sales. There is also a B2B surface for ticket sales in ticket stores and kiosks available now. The biggest public viewable project for sure this year was the relaunch of München Ticket (Munich, Germany). 

Also this summer we finalized our contact- and address management system with newsletter features, content.life version 3 is now online and available to our customers. In the late summer, we presented our own startup "GoCubaGo", a ride-hailing service in Cuba, to the public which was also greatly featured in the public media. A main focus next to internationalization and AMP this year was also the development of design and user interfaces.

2020

At the beginning of 2020, numerous extensions were created in the area of the CRM system and the B2B system for our ticketing applications in cooperation with Wien-Ticket. In addition, echonet has boosted product development again and, with sales.life, created an interface and statistics system for identifying business contacts on websites at the beginning of the year.

After the lockdown from mid-March, the whole team at echonet was switched to the home office. This also led to echonet finally bringing a video streaming system online with echonet.tv from the end of May. In the summer we were responsible for the technical interface and the handling of the Viennese gastro voucher with the large project "Viennese Restaurant-Voucher". The development of our next generation in content management was also pushed forward in the summer. With content.life 4 - Russian Mule - a new CMS is introduced.

2021

The new year has begun, we are in the home office. Still. Nevertheless, the projects are progressing well and very efficiently, and in the background, further work is being done on the upcoming new content management system content.life 4. In the course of the spring, the agency has created powerful upgrades for existing systems in addition to further developments of numerous products and basic systems.

The largest project in spring is the intensive further development with our partner Wien Ticket both on their front-end system as well as significant upgrades in the background up to the B2B system for Wien Ticket's business customers. Here, numerous business intelligence applications and new interfaces for Wien Ticket's customers and partners are being created, also in view of the upcoming resurgence of the event business with - hopefully soon - a subsiding pandemic.

The small business content management system basic.life has implemented a complex, practical - and as the first shops prove - successful e-commerce system with numerous databases. This, like all other basic.life modules, will be further developed in the coming months of the year.

2022

Home office has become the standard for us. Via our video conference system echonet.tv we connect almost daily for a "stand-up" meeting. The big work of this year is the realisation of the new content management system content.life 4 "Claw Hammer" - we still haven't created an online presentation for it (shame on us!) - but we will nevertheless go online with the first projects based on content.life 4 "Claw Hammer" in 2022.

Big projects this year are the relaunch of the Vienna Opera House, the Theater an der Wien, as well as the online launch of Euro-Access, the EU funding advice and consutling agency in Austria, and also the organic delicatessen from the city of Vienna often seen in TV commercials - Wiener Gusto, a landlords' project of the city of Vienna. In November 2022, we will already start with the first updates for content.life 4 "Claw Hammer" and roll out these updates to our projects so that there are automatic improvements to the system in regular steps.

In addition, we have strengthened our team and brought two new people on board in the technology department to be able to manage the big projects.

The head of echonet has not managed to send out even a single newsletter this year, the patience of the team is strained. Also the references page of echonet is not up to date. We hope he will do the job better next year.

2023

Onwards, onwards, ever onwards - our ideal of independence is to come closer with more development resources for our core product content.life 4 "Claw Hammer". The CMS will be the future core of the other software developments on our digital workbench. As a major project at the beginning of the year, we are working intensively on the relaunch of the Wiener Stadthalle - after all, it has connected us for over 60 years and we ourselves also feel connected to the Stadthalle. But not only the Wiener Stadthalle is going online, there are numerous other, also smaller projects around our small business CMS baisc.life, which will go online in this leading year.

The question of real figures is increasingly coming into focus for us, which is why the first clients have already decided to use stats.life from echonet (based on "Matomo") in addition to or as an alternative to free statistics systems, which, however, cause problems with the DSGVO, in order to see real figures and not just assumptions. Also in spring, we completely digitised and redeveloped a personnel scheduling system with an external long-term partner, which then went live at the commissioning site in summer 2023.

Our efforts to achieve independence - and we want to accompany our clients to this independence without any "ifs and buts" - are progressing. In autumn 2023, some important decisions will be made in the agency, there will be other tools for even more independence in addition to the website statistics we run ourselves.

2024

In 2024, the CMS contentlife became version contentlife 4.1, codenamed ‘Deep Space’. We also revised our branding over the course of the year, and the planets in our solar system - all inhabited and animated - have retained the nickname ‘life’. However, the meteorites orbiting through our solar system have a collision course with the outermost planet in our solar system - this is the planet cookielife, our GDPR consent banner. The consent banner will be destroyed by ourselves over time.

At the beginning of the year, the next version of surveylife was created as a survey tool. This was followed by the revision and further development of our systems on the client side, a lot of maintenance work, further developments, new functions and, from summer to autumn 2024, the biggest relaunch of this year with the new platform of ‘Musical Vienna’ at Vereinigte Bühnen Wien (VBW). At the same time, we expanded our meteorites, meteolingo as an integrated translation system in contentlife 4 as well as other cloud services. In December 2024, our plan for meteotube, echonet's video service, had to be implemented in a flash, as we quickly and painfully realised what dependence on large corporations means for us. We do not accept dependence, that is simply our nature.

Curious? Call me!