What kind of year was 2018 for you?
The answer probably depends a lot on where you live, which political party you’re aligned with, what industry you’re in, and, of course, your astrological sign. 
For us here at IOD, 2018 was all about growth: growth in the number of customers we serve, growth in how many freelancers we employ, growth in the regions of the world in which we do business, and growth in the types of domains we have expertise in.
In 2018, we opened up a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, led by VP of Business Development Jen Maidenberg, who transitioned from her role leading our editorial department to heading our US expansion effort. To that end, we also promoted Natalie Chetboun, one of IOD’s seasoned editors, to be our managing editor. Natalie is located in Jerusalem.
Our operations department expanded, as well. We welcomed Ivan Arsenov, who acts as VP Operations Ofer Prossner’s right hand in all things production and traffic management. (Ivan hails from the fine city of Belgrade, Serbia.) And Alina Matsa — currently living in Tel Aviv, but originally from Athens, Greece — joined us to be responsible for managing internal accounting. Petar Marinkovic, our CTO, keeps tracking down and recruiting the industry’s top tech bloggers to write for our customers!
IOD was represented at many industry events this year, including our first time at VMWorld, Oracle Open World, Cloud Expo, and Infosec. You may have a new CloudCeleb sticker for your laptop as a result of that effort, not to mention expert-based content for your company blog. Of course, some of our core team members, as well as our senior experts, did the rounds at re:Invent and a bunch of AWS Summits, as well. It’s really one of our favorite parts of the job — seeing in-person the folks we normally correspond with only via email or social media.

There are other exciting developments that are still a little too early to announce, but all in all, just want to say that 2018 was a stellar year for IOD, one in which the theme was definitely growth. We really have our customers to thank for that and our contacts in the industry who are so generous in spreading the word about IOD’s services and areas of expertise. Thank you!
It’s an honor to be part of such a creative, groundbreaking, and influential industry. Your successes — whether groundbreaking new technologies, innovative solutions, or increased web traffic — are our successes. Here’s hoping to a bright and fruitful 2019!
Happy holidays!
Ofir Nachmani, CEO, IOD