The last four weeks have been busy. We’ve had a few great meetings with some new potential international customers and development partners. We have been putting things in line for our September grant application. Iceland tends to slowdown, if not stop, during the summer. The grant application board is changing the whole process, but hasn’t published the new format yet. They are expecting todo so at the end of June and they close the office in July… we are fully expecting nothing to get published until August. That will give applicants about a month to month and a half to complete the new forms. In the mean time, we’re at least putting together what we can and be ready.

Apple’s WWDC event was in week #226. We were expecting some interesting developer tools to appear for a potential project. Unfortunately, they did not. Maybe they will soon, or maybe not at all. Until then we’ll continue to build some wireframes and demos hoping the platform will catch-up.

Week #227 was a bit swiss-cheese too. June 17th is National Day in Iceland, so that was a public holiday. The day after was planning and meetings and Friday was a half-day since it was the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in Iceland. We did atleast manage to get this post out the door!

The general strike has currently been avoided. A new contract has been drafted but not yet approved. All the union members need to agree or disagree to the new contract terms before the 22nd. If the proposal failed, then the strike will potentially resume. For now, we are in the clear and will keep working until we hear more.

The goal for week #228, is going to be focusing. We have a lot of project leads and potentials on the horizon. We also have a very large grant which, if we get it, would take-up a lot of our time, so we are looking at which of our customer we will continue to work with and which we will no longer try to pursue.

Part of the time recently we’ve been evaluating the number and types of projects that we are engaged in, are bidding for, and are somewhere in the pipe-line. As it stands we estimate that we have worked on, planning or trying to coördinate 15 projects. Two of which we are sending invoices for on a regular basis, and two others we have estimated the hours and are awaiting sign-off. That leaves 10-12 projects that we are putting time into and not getting any work. We have been debating consolidating that list and dropping leads or trying to expand that list. If you are only ever going to get 20% of leads to convert, then we need more leads. But not just any lead, we can easily pick-up projects, but we want them to be projects we are proud of and want to work on, and that’s not easy. So we just have to keep hustling.

Invoices

Things are looking good on the financial front, we have two outstanding invoices. One that is now 6 months old, to which we never get email replies. The other was from the end of May and is usually paid very promptly. It is good to keep all the books in order and stay on top of what is outstanding. We have a system, but it could always be better.

Bric-à-brac

A little about food this week!

An interesting BlueTooth keyboard that is so cheap it is disposable with a fast-food meal.

This recent project by Ryan Dewey caught our eye. He is taking mineral water and salt from two vastly different places and recombining them into fictitious sources of salts, such as the Hawai’ian Icelandic sea salt. It is interesting to think that we assume regional products are a place you could visit. These combinations are unique, but not geographically achievable. You can read more about the project at http://www.ediblegeography.com/supply-chain-seasoning/

This week Burger King have announced a follow-up to their all Black Burger with an all Red one! This one is a Samurai Beef or Chicken Burger with red cheese and red bun colored with tomato powder, and red hot sauce. What’s next green?

Finally, in our previous weeknote 221-222-223, we talked about our friends at Field Work and their custom flight case. They have written a bit more about the process and the product. It is a brilliant product and I hope to see it grow and improve with time.