Week #678
It is the start of February, so that means several things kick into gear. We started two large parent surveys which run for this month. That means emails, SMSes, robocalls, more emails, flip to the other guardian and repeat. So far, things have been going smoothly. Now we prepare for the March staff surveys and another large customer survey which should start soon too.
Last week, one project stalled. The air has been cleared and things are still on, but now the lawyers are involved to make sure everything’s in good shape. Because they had such a tight deadline, we just started in good faith without any NDAs or contracts, just lots of discussion and trust. Since some of the wheels came off (internal issues, not us), everything got slower and we need things signed before proceeding. So we’re doing small things that we can, but have also moved to other projects.
On Friday, we had our fortnightly PETALS sync. The system is in a good place that we can turn it over to early alpha testers. We went through the whole flow from start-to-end on the sign-up process. A few small tweaks, but generally in a great place.
We had a meeting with a company in Australia about a potential API project. They need help getting their order data out of one system and sent to the fulfillment center in a slightly different format. The project isn’t huge or difficult, but is certainly a time-saver for them. The issue now is that neither system have an open API – you have to contact sales to get more info. So we wait…
Week #679
On Monday, some of the team went to Tæknisetrið. This is a technology and manufacturing hub in Reykjavik. We met with some of the companies there and got feedback on one of our projects. More visits will certainly follow.
On Tuesday, we sent out our ⪮ Good Morning s03e02 newsletter. This one was all about Dragons, interference to this weeks lunar new year. We have also recently added an RSS feed for the newsletters.
Some weeks it rains, others it pours!
Four new projects surfaced this week and one proposal. The first is an update to an existing client. After revisiting the existing code, it is probably just a day’s worth of work. After sign-off we jumped on the changes just to not have it lingering. The second project is to connect two different systems via their APIs. We managed to get access to the API key, documentation & sample code. It seems to work just fine so we’re not worried about the first leg of this project. Now we need to regroup with the client to iron out some of requirements, what data they need and where this web service will be hosted. The third project is looking into some 3D architectural files and how to record high quality 3D videos. The fourth is to look into getting WebRTC working across the internet and iOS and android for new prototype. The fifth is a proposal we sent in awhile ago, they are going to review it and we’ll see what comes out of that.
On Thursday, we managed to meet some old co-workers from a previous job for lunch. We talked about old times, gossip, what people are up too and started making some plans for a new project.
To get a little ahead of the crowd, we finished-up all our accounting tasks and sent them off to the accounting company. They review, certify and send in the company annual report to the government. During their audit, they usually find a few issues where we mis-categorized line-items. We make notes about how to better track various transactions with the correct accounting codes so things calculate correctly. It is a long and boring iterative process to improve our financial management, but atleast we’re always taking one-step forward.
Fluxcapacitor
In 02011, we wrote about the Big Mac Index. This was idea that was used to estimate the buying power in different markets. Find something ubiquitous and see how the price varies compared to location to estimate affluence. The idea started in 01986, almost 40 years ago!
Being passionate for your work, was written in 02012, after attending a Creative Mornings talk by Jeffery Veen at the TypeKit offices a few months prior.
Nine years ago, in 02015, the company was just turning 4. That was week #208. It’s always interesting to go back and see what we were up to then.