It has been four weeks since our last update. The time has flown by. It has been a strange combination of both busy and not-busy at the same time. Lots of little things going on, but at the same time lots of people are on vacation. We’ve gotten pulled into filling some of that time to keep projects moving forwards with a few clients.

Week #228

This week we had a meeting with a government organisation about updating some of the software we built for them a few years ago. We had a meeting, discussed some changes, the options and sent them two bids. One for the basic changes and a second for new features and build-out existing systems. It is week #231 and we’re still waiting to hear from them. This is the fine-line everyone needs to walk with their customers. We know that, if they take the project, because they have waited so long, the deadline is now much closer. We also can’t wait forever for them to say yes or no and we need to fill some of that budgeted time with other projects incase this one doesn’t come through. Hopefully, we’ll hear from them soon so we have some closure on what is going to happen. Some companies sell their time in weeks and they are pre-paid for. If the buyer misses the window, that’s their fault. That is just one-way to take-on customers, but for us, we understand that it is summertime, nothing happens, everyone is on a tight budget and we’re all just going to have to make some compromises.

Week #229

We had a few meetings this week, one was with one of our Alumni. He’s back in San Francisco doing some interesting projects and it was good to catch-up, discuss projects and see if there is anything in the future to recommend each other for. The other meeting was with another of our existing clients. They are looking to move some of the projects we’ve worked on together in house. This the smart way of doing things. Rather than depend on us, they are using contractors to help when needed then bring that knowledge into the company for the future. We’ve been migrating and brainstorming some of the code we’ve written for the next iteration of the project. Our role is changing from writing code and making prototypes to more recommendations and documentation. We will make more deliverables which are nuggets of knowledge that can be saved, transferred and consumed within the organisation with out needing us all the time.

Week #230

This week we decided to attend the last dConstruct conference down in Brighton September 11th. We’ll be heading to London and Brighton for some meetings, the conference and some change of scenery.

Week #231

This week we delivered some mock-ups for a project in Australia. It is another interesting project that we’ll hopefully be able to talk about more once it goes live. We’ve been tapped to help out with some of the data visualisations and flows within the organisation.

Another one of the small project we’ve been working on recently is a good example of a company choosing a solution, then asking for help. Once you’ve made your mind-up which vendor to use, it makes it very hard for us as a consultant to come in, pitch some interesting and crazy ideas, but then find that they aren’t possible. It has nothing todo with our abilities, ideas or what the data has to offer, but instead a choice which was made before any of the bids went out. The best you can do in that situation is work your best with-in the constraints of the tool.

Invoices

We have just about cleared the books! We have one invoice that was sent out in week #231, which will get paid shortly, then we’ll send another out at the end of the month for work in July. Otherwise, we have managed to chase-up all the outstanding debts and turn in our two-monthly tax info.

Bric-à-brac

Disney is one of those companies you immediately associate with children’s films and theme parks, but there is a lot of technology developed in-house. For one of their early films Bambi, they created a parallax, multi-plane camera.

This video of a beautiful cabinet was passed around our office. It is a very interesting wave design were each small piece of the cabinet pull or pushes the other parts open or shut creating a new undulating wave pattern. It isn’t very practical, but interesting to see it in action.

It reminds us of another piece of furniture we’ve seen before. These are the amazing evolutionary doors by Klemens Torggler.