Simon G's Blog

I attended the inspirational  Gather 2015 unconference today. As described on the website for the event “It is the digital, technical and creative community’s big day out”. There were several sessions running simultaneously and it was hard to choose what to go to since there were so many interesting topics. Below is a summary of my key takeaways (or interpretations thereof) from the sessions I attended. UAVs, Internet of Things, 3DVR: What are we going to do with these things? How do we get us/our companies/NZ to lead the way? What can we do to take advantage? These are the questions - does the room have the answers? MAKER CHANGE BUSINESS @lancewiggs Future Skynet Remote Monitoring UAV Tour - e.g. rent a UAV and do tour of Egypt Auto-herding GPS in humans Better battery life Sensors inc. in building beams to say if leak problem Track robber Traffic control Drone based terror Evidence-based thinking Data —> Interpretation Auto milk ordering fro...

With 300 attendees registered for this year, there were a lot of Web developers, designers, lawyers, investors and others in one place with several un-conference sessions running in parallel at Barcamp Auckland 5. A summary of my interpretation of key points from sessions I attended is below. Write once, run everywhere HTML 5 applications SmartBiller HTML 5 based desktop/iPhoneAndroid app. Used jQTouch as a framework; supports Webkit only. jQuery Mobile wasn’t ready at time, but this would be preference if rebuilding (better support). Sync driven from server. Device detection being done adhoc on client & server side. Would use MVC if writing again. fluidapp.com for Mac wraps any website and makes it appear like an application. Need to consider how to handle multiple open windows Check instancecount then “ping” other instance may be an option. Screen size, browser quirks / CSS, Intera...

I had a great day at Webstock on Day 1 and below is my synopsis of Day 2, which was also excellent. If you get the opportunity to attend Webstock, do it. Some of the key themes from the conference can be summarised as: Build with love, use common reusable blocks, deploy quickly, deploy often, listen to explicit and implicit feedback from real users, understand what their needs are (not what they say they are), consider social and ethical impacts. Repeat. The Lean Startup Eric Ries ( @ericries ) http://startuplessonslearned.com #leanstartup Slides can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/2010-02-19-the-lean-startup-webstock-2010 Why build a startup? Change the world Build an organisation of lasting value Make customers' lives better Pivot: change directions but stay grounded in what you've launched ...