Posts tagged with 'testled'
Posted on 19th October 2009. Tagged as event, barcamp, testled
I attended Barcamp Blackpool this weekend, it was great. There was a really wide diversity of speakers and sessions (I attended sessions on sign language, writing Android apps and geocaching, among others).
This was the first time I'd been to a Barcamp, and I liked the format. Hayley, who doesn't attend geek events often at all, said that while the content of the talks was generally technical, the fact everyone spoke with passion meant that all the talks were entertaining, even if you didn't understand the entirely of what was being said. Having sat through a really entertaining hour of looking at circuit diagrams to control a church organ with a BBC micro, I totally agree.
I was also very pleased with the reaction to the rock and lollipops which Testled provided. Looking round the room and seeing everyone with bright blue mouths has convinced me that the business card is dead; branded confectionary is much more effective. Testled's sponsorship in general has been a positive for us (this was the first time we're done any event sponsorship), I certainly found it easier to approach potential customers with a little more legitimacy than before. I think we're going to micro-sponsor Barcamp Manchester as a result, so if anyone is anxious for more blue lollies, you won't have long to wait.
I won't repeat what has already been said about the great sponsored bar, the magician (who I think might now be performing at our wedding), and the food, but I will repeat the thanks to Gemma for organising such an awesome day. See you all next year (or maybe at Barcamp London this weekend).
Posted on 25th October 2009. Tagged as event, barcamp, testled
I've just finished at Barcamp London. It was worth going, but very busy, probably a little too busy. There were so many rooms that I had to choose between two good talks in each session, which was great for the event, but not so easy for me.
The standout sessions were the elevator pitching practise, which was a lot of fun once the room warmed up a little, and it's definately an idea which I'm going to steal for Barcamp Manchester. Less fun, but nevertheless interesting was the session on the new Paypal APIs. We've been considering moving Testled's payment provider to Amazon's Flexible Payments Service, but it looks like in a few weeks we'll be able fulfil all of our requirements (mainly on-site micropayments) without changing provider.
Also, a quick note to those attending Barcamp Manchester, Testled are again sponsoring a small part of the event, so we'll be bringing yet more of our popular blue lollipops. I bet you all can't wait.
Posted on 11th August 2011. Tagged as django, web, mobile, event, testled
Leedshack 2 was brilliant.
I'm going to write a more technical teardown on the Testled blog in the next few days, but I thought I'd just blurt out some nonsense while it was still fresh in my mind.
We built Barebones, which is a minimal wireframing tool from the iPad, written using Django, a bit of HTML5 and the Dollar gesture recognition library
Our intention in the weeks running up to the event was to try to 'just hack'; that is, to aim for something technically different and interesting, rather than building a product, which is what we did at the first Leedshack, and what Pete, Bryn and I did at the Opendata Hackcamp. Not that building products it a chore, but at times before now we've spent valuable time building the dull bits (like user registration, payment/subscription systems etc.) and when time is limited that hasn't served us well. We've always 'finished' our products at hackdays, but sometimes if felt like we had created work which we just didn't need to do.
As it turned out, we built the functionality of Barebones earlier than expected (in fact, we were functionally complete by around 2am), so we did end up polishing it into a final product, but this time it didn't feel like a rush, and I'm incredibly proud of what we achieved.
There seems to have been a gradual shift recently at hackdays towards larger teams and building more 'finished' systems. I'm pleased about this, not only for the competition we find in it, but because people are launching truly amazing sites like Please Pledge, which would look at home in the portfolio of any high-end agency. I'm always amazed at what a motivated team can get done in 24 hours, but this year I was particularly impressed. If you consider that our team has a combined day rate of about £2500 (and 24 hours is around four 'working days'), and weigh that against what we would charge for comparable work in a 'day job' setting, motivation is clearly the key difference, but it's still very satisfying to know that you're presenting something which just existed in someone's head 24 hours previously.
As usual, I didn't get around to speak to enough people, but the usual fantastic crowd was there (and Kian's shrieks as he shoehorned 4GB of data into an sqlite database was particularly funny), and if anything Leedshack has made me look forward to Barcamp Blackpool even more eagerly so I can have the opportunity to talk to everyone without the distraction of hacking.
Thanks, Dom and team for organising. You're all invaluable.
