Weeknotes #8 (2/04/10)
Post categories: Prototyping,ÌýPrototyping weeknotes,ÌýWeeknotes
| 17:14 UK time, Friday, 2 April 2010
Monday: Tony joins the team today. He's a trainee research engineer and will be with us for 6 months, working on our usual prototypes as well as doing some longer-term research. We have a quick tour of Coventry, now looking and sounding lovely (Theo's finished the designs now), and the Microblogging scheduling tech spike. There's birthday cake today.
We're prepping demos of 3 major projects to people from around the ´óÏó´«Ã½ today. I've been away so I get to catch up on what the team have done over the last week or so. Thankfully, our Multi-touch table, having been out of action for the last few weeks, was repaired by R&D workshops, and delivered in time for the demo. The session goes really well - we have some good suggestions about how to take projects further and can begin working up some new research collaborations
Tuesday sees Kevin from R&D coming to take our photographs - individuals and the team. It's like school photo day (except noone gets told of for wearing "inappropriate" ear-studs.) Ant is also sitting with us for the day. We have a quick meeting to clarify initial scope and requirements for the 'Outreach' project.
We finally get the post up on Mythology, that's basically wrapped up now. Afternoon meeting about consolidating our project documentation process, it's a little ad-hoc at the moment.
Wednesday: we do some maths on our Microblogging trial. Infrastructure has processed over 40 million posts with no errors or failures - we're pretty happy with this. We have continuous deployment for the infrastructure now, which is a Good Thing. We've got problems with duplicate artists in Coventry, and we still need a name! Theo attends the weekly design meeting (for senior design people from around the ´óÏó´«Ã½) and comes back with info about the reorg happening in the wider FM&T.
Excellent feedback on the Mythology blog post, unanimously positive so far. Coventry's nearly done, just a few tweaks to go to make it solid. Typography was being talked about. We've got a plan of work for the next month; polish off Coventry, some sprints on the Microblogging project, start on an office dashboard and maybe some HTML5 prototypes.
Thursday I have a telco with my boss about an interesting new possible project, then check in with the usual unfunny April Fools on the Web. Caitlin from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Strategy comes in to see our recent work and discuss how we can help prototype strategic projects. Tris and I have a meeting to work through a paper he's written about new themes for us.
A colleague from R&D brings an academic to see us, to work up a EU pitch we might collaborate on - exciting stuff. I book train tickets for a ´óÏó´«Ã½ Manchester visit - I'll be interviewing trainees and seeing the new Lab Adrian has put together up there. We end the day in the local pub where seemingly all of our old department has turned up - great to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while and hear gossip and rumours about what's going on.
Friday is a short day involving a telco, this doc and that's it. Glad it's the weekend.
We're prepping demos of 3 major projects to people from around the ´óÏó´«Ã½ today. I've been away so I get to catch up on what the team have done over the last week or so. Thankfully, our Multi-touch table, having been out of action for the last few weeks, was repaired by R&D workshops, and delivered in time for the demo. The session goes really well - we have some good suggestions about how to take projects further and can begin working up some new research collaborations
Tuesday sees Kevin from R&D coming to take our photographs - individuals and the team. It's like school photo day (except noone gets told of for wearing "inappropriate" ear-studs.) Ant is also sitting with us for the day. We have a quick meeting to clarify initial scope and requirements for the 'Outreach' project.
We finally get the post up on Mythology, that's basically wrapped up now. Afternoon meeting about consolidating our project documentation process, it's a little ad-hoc at the moment.
Wednesday: we do some maths on our Microblogging trial. Infrastructure has processed over 40 million posts with no errors or failures - we're pretty happy with this. We have continuous deployment for the infrastructure now, which is a Good Thing. We've got problems with duplicate artists in Coventry, and we still need a name! Theo attends the weekly design meeting (for senior design people from around the ´óÏó´«Ã½) and comes back with info about the reorg happening in the wider FM&T.
Excellent feedback on the Mythology blog post, unanimously positive so far. Coventry's nearly done, just a few tweaks to go to make it solid. Typography was being talked about. We've got a plan of work for the next month; polish off Coventry, some sprints on the Microblogging project, start on an office dashboard and maybe some HTML5 prototypes.
Thursday I have a telco with my boss about an interesting new possible project, then check in with the usual unfunny April Fools on the Web. Caitlin from ´óÏó´«Ã½ Strategy comes in to see our recent work and discuss how we can help prototype strategic projects. Tris and I have a meeting to work through a paper he's written about new themes for us.
A colleague from R&D brings an academic to see us, to work up a EU pitch we might collaborate on - exciting stuff. I book train tickets for a ´óÏó´«Ã½ Manchester visit - I'll be interviewing trainees and seeing the new Lab Adrian has put together up there. We end the day in the local pub where seemingly all of our old department has turned up - great to catch up with people I haven't seen for a while and hear gossip and rumours about what's going on.
Friday is a short day involving a telco, this doc and that's it. Glad it's the weekend.
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