Poppy (Living Apps sprl) is a private technological company helping the authorities and emergency services to better prepare and manage crisis situations through a better use and understanding of information technologies.
We design products and provide advices to speedup decision making by simplifying and accelerating information transmission, with a deep understanding of their limitations and their interactions with the users, particularly in crisis situations. Bits and bytes are our daily lunch and telecoms, maps, real time and data analytics are some of our core competencies.
Founded in 2014 by Christophe Cloquet, PhD, Poppy is a proud GovTech member of software.brussels.
We want to be a positive actor of change towards a better society, and for us, technics of any kind (information technology, security technologies, finance, …) should be at the service of both the human beings and the mankind.
Resiliency requires agility and diversity
We believe that our independence makes us complementary to public and para-public structures in collaboration with which we want to do our bit.
As an asset for your organization, our small size allows us to adopt a human approach and to quickly adapt to change. Small also means a sharp answer to your needs: we are integrated in a network of carefully selected professionnals, that we sollicitate every time that it is needed.
Our specificity expresses itself through a freedom of initiative (research & development of new products, building of new competencies, communication and interpellation about emerging problematics…), by a neutral external point of view to analyze and challenge the cases you submit us, and a fighting spirit fostered by our daily risk-taking.
Our external position allows us to bridge the gap between public entities that would otherwise be disconnected, allowing for relevant and non-confidential but often unaccessible information and innovation to flow when appropriate.
Diversity and inclusion are key to resiliency and we want to promote them. Diversity makes us smarter. When appropriate, we for instance collaborate with the consultants of Passwerk, who are carrying an autistic syndrom disorder (ASD) to test the software we develop.
We believe that resiliency is built by strengthening both the links within local communities and the exchanges – knowledge, experiences, arts and necessary goods and services – with distant communities.
To stay far from both extremes, the balance between local and global scales should continuously be adjusted. Currently, our way to help requilibrate the balance is to choose local suppliers when possible, and be part of the Zinne network. In any event, we must do all that is in our power to make more connections and not staying closed on ourselves.
Migration is to us one enabler of diversity. This theme is much debated and we do not ignore the practical issues it carries. We are convinced that these issues can be solved if adressed with creativity and humanity. At our scale, we want to be part of a better welcome of refugees in Belgium, by supporting Singa-Belgium. This association has as goals the creation of links between refugees and local people. Links, again!
Security is at the service of the weakest of us
Whereas emergency preparedness and disaster rescue are generally positively percieved, security is sometimes more debated, particularly when it is conflicting with freedom.
We acknowledge that in today’s society, there is no perfect solution to the freedom-security paradox, because no one is perfect.
That means we all must progress every day. We strongly believe that security must be at the service of democracy in the sense of a peaceful public space where citizens – minorities included – can make the society evolve by making their voice heared. Security should be the tool that protects the weak against the strong in view of the common good, and that is why security must be subordoned to a strong ethics, at least encompassing the Human Rights Declaration.
To us, technical security measures are therefore a mean, and no solution in themselves. On the long term, education, solidarity, culture, and strenghtening of bonds between will be the best warrants of a peaceful society.
When we both agree on a common vision, we work with you to serve your objectives, your organisation, your members and beneficiaries through innovation and co-creation of solutions, thanks to the meeting of our expertise and your knowledge of the field.
We feel inspired by complexity thinkers such as Edgar Morin, by statements like the Agile Manifesto and principles and by frameworks such as ITIL v4.
Our holistic and systemic approach allows to consider the objectives, people and means within the same living picture. This ensures strategies are applicable, people are respected and means are used at their full potential.
Confidence, that goes through ethics and integrity and open collaboration at each step and towards every person involved or impacted are core for us. We value your autonomy, through which we try to stay away from position revenues. It goes through open products each time it is possible (open-source, open data, …) and the open sharing of our expertise, like on our blog, even though both open-source and proprietary are needed at this time.
We are not perfect, tough, and we engage willingly in conversations with you to better respect our values, and make them evolve.
In coherence with our vision, we proudly and actively support OSGeo Belgium (Open Source Software for Geography), we promote the use of the QGIS software, we take part in Singa-Belgium activities that aim at creating links between migrant and local people, and we are part of the Zinne network (Brussels' local economy vouchers) and voluntarily share our knowledge with the working group « resilience and crisis management » of Brussels Prevention and Security.
Our profits help us to invest in that direction, thereby helping the society as a whole.