Posted by jan
When we were in Jacksonville, we paid a visit to Hashrocket. These guys are extremely nice and took the time to show us around the office. Of course, Hashrocket is getting a number of things right including pair programming, work ethic, performance… but I have to admit it is their office and beach location that impressed us most. A day like today (dull and rain in Limerick), I wish we could swap!
Hashrocket office from jan blanchard on Vimeo.
Posted by jan
Thanks to Eircom for placing a TouristR advertising on their home page this morning…
Posted by jan
Liam Ó Móráin from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute gave a talk to the well-regarded Institute of European Affairs on the Semantic Web.
Interesting presentation for all interested in the semantic web and the initiatives taken by DERI.
Posted by jan
As part of its six-month talent search to identify, mentor and promote Europe’s top startups, Innovate Europe was hosting a workshop in Dublin some weeks ago.
We had the opportunity to pitch TouristR.
In recession era, most of us (working in small internet start ups) select carefully how to spend their “pitching” time. Pitching our business to investors is extremely time and energy consuming. Now that investments are rare, and that our business’s survival relies in our ability to generate cash, I choose to sell to customers before investors.
However when I heard that Guidewire group’s founders were coming to Dublin to meet some of us, it was hard to turn it down and I’m glad I went.
It was the most interesting pitching session, feedback from Chris, Mike and Carla was sharp and above all listening to the other pitches was very refreshing.
We face similar challenges, telling a compelling story, being clear, concise, demonstrating our market, business proposition… All the guys who presented were good and their pitches really excelled in one area, it means that I leraned something new at each pitch and that made my day.
For example, Robin with decisions for heroes had an inspiring story, Gary from Emergence had an amazing slide deck that told his story extremely well, Joe did a great product pitch, Caelen from RevaHealth and Matt from SentryWireless mastered their business proposisiton, and much more…
I am not surprised that most of us are going through the Master Class in Zaragoza. I am looking forward to it, the fact that David Sifry (Offbeat guides, Technorati) is one of the mentors is a big plus.
GuideWire is still touring Europe for applicants so check it out.
Photo credit - Alan (toddle.com) at innovate!europe dublin - from Robin Blandford
Posted by jan
App on vacation was a resounding success. We covered so much ground under the Floridian sun.
It has fastracked our development process immensely and allowed us to get things right.
Of course, it takes more than a week to build an app like TouristR but we are getting closer to pushing the big red release button.
One of the main benefit of the week was the interaction with one another.
We are a small team who works well remotely but spending time together in a different environment has made a big difference. Of course we were quicker to respond and plan our work but we also got to know and understand each other better. This means that the team is now more confident and effective.
The fact that we planned ahead was a main advantage, it allowed the team to be focus on writing codes and save time. There is no substitute for knowing what you want and being clear when you communicate it.
Overall I would highly recommend this process for building an app. It gives fresh perspectives and energy to a project.
It’s also possible to do this on a very small budget. In times like this recession, you can travel for less money and do more things on a small budget. Also if you live in Ireland, cost of life nearly anywhere else is cheaper than at home. Actually you could end up saving money spending a week abroad!
Steve says all he needs now is a vacation without an app!
Posted by jan
A good part of the last two days was spent refining our data structure and search algorithms. This subject has by far been the most discussed item of the week.
It is so central to our app, If we get this right, it will improve user experience drastically.
We’ve also tackle the collaborative features of TouristR. Our objective is to allow more than one person to plan a trip. This gets useful when a group of friends are going on a trip and need to liaise, tweak and collaborate on their plans.
Privacy settings are also completed where users can make trips private or public.
Posted by jan
While going for a morning walk in the neighborhood, I was surprised to see how much water is present in this part of Florida. Between the ocean, rivers and creeks, water is everywhere. Together with the many variety of trees, it gives the place a feel of tranquility.
Back in AOV house, we made really good progress the last days and it feels good to build TouristR this way. Today the discussion focused on what we internally call "tripies". Tripies are the things users add to their trip. They could be destinations, todos, attractions, hotels, flights..
Tripies are displayed on an itinerary and are easily accessible from each page of the app.
They are displayed by date and destinations and can be tweaked, re-ordered or deleted.
The feature to add “tripies” is built so that it’s easy to add things. Once it’s added, people can tweak it. I love the To Do “tripies”, being the most unorganized person, they’ll become handy when I plan my first trip on TouristR. In the evening, Steve brought us to see watchmen, first time of many in a US theatre!
Posted by jan
The day started very well - the weather decided to switch from Winter to Florida Spring (eq. Irish hot summer day). We went to Starbucks in the morning and enjoyed having our breakfast outside for the first time in years!
Back to the house, today was Pair Programming day for Arnaud And Steve
Pair programming is where two programmers develop software side by side at one computer.
This is excellent for Arnaud as it is an opportunity to get first hand Ruby and Rails in a real way.
At start I think Pair programming slows things down because it takes time for developers to get in phase and adjust to the collaborative way of doing things. This is especially true if the pair has a different experience level in the given language.
When perfected, pair programming is brilliant, programmers who work well together avoid doing things twice, the coding goes faster, the two brain effect and continuous review process means the overall quality of the work will be much higher.
I think in the long run, it is better, cheaper and more effective to pair program. It is cheaper because the time spent in fixing bugs, QA tests and correcting major design or user experience flaws is reduced. The team overcome more of these issues during the development process and you end up building a more useful and beautiful app. The chalenge is to get the right team in place.
In the evening we all met Carl from Ngenworks and some of his friends in Cork and Keg. The extensive choice of beers and wines was impressive. Carl and his wife entertained us with some extremely funny family stories, perfect ending to the week. I can’t believe we are already at the end of day 4.
More photos here.
Posted by jan
Our commenting system was broken in the last few days - Our blog is ran on Typo 5.0.3. and there seem to be a javascript conflict. We don’t really know why but it’s back working now. Hopefully it will continue to work until we update to the latest version of Typo. Apologies for the poor experience and thank you to the twitter community for alerting us.
Photo Flickr by spud murphy
Posted by jan
We started the day early (8am) - Arnaud focused on the search functionalities, Steve on trip features and Conor on site templates.
The team is getting into coding mode. It frustates me, I really want to jump in and join the fun. Can I learn how to code in a day? please.
I got P.F Chang’s takeaway, we enjoyed lunch. It’s great to be in the US, there are so many options for lunch.
The highlight of the day was refresh jacksonville, the dev community meet up for a few beers and to share their work. The meet up took place in the coolest office, open space, art photos, office kitchen, bikes, an underground arty design that fitted well the spirit of the meeting.
The format was relaxed and informal. People were doing 5mins demo of their apps. It was quick, fun and informative. The guys here really know how stand up in front of a crowd and communicate the essence of their work. I was also amazed by the quality of the work, there was a really cool music streaming app, a number of twitters services including the famous Lisa Turtle is smoking hot.
I should have taken more notes but here is some of the work I can remember;
* Kevin from Molehill presented Buzzsprout - it has yet to be released but we got an early demo. Buzzsprout makes it easy for users to publish and distribute podcasts. It’s well build and really does look like one to watch.
*Andrew from hashrocket showcased UxBooth - a service that review websites - The app allows users to sumit their apps, the commnity gets to vote which site to be reviewed for free. Reviews are indepth with many usefull details.
*Joey from ngenworks presented First Wedenesday Art walk - a service to post and share art events.
Jim hosted and organised the talks and it all went very smooth. I wish we had a similar event in Limerick.
More photos here.
