PRWD

After just over 2 years working alongside me at PRWD, in March this year Rob decided it was time for him to move on and pursue consultancy opportunities, starting in June 2010 with contracting for Capgemini in London on one of the largest Drupal platform developments in Europe. Rob’s Linked-in profile explains more…

Along with thanking Rob in person for his significant contribution to the development and sales growth of my business during his time with me, I’d like to take this online opportunity to thank Rob for all his hard work.

Being a micro business working through a recession, with a proposition which as yet isn’t in too much demand, especially in the North West of England, has meant we certainly experienced a rollercoaster ride over the past 2 years. Thankfully, as our December 2009 newsletter demonstrated, last year was actually more successful than we dared to imagine at the time.

Amongst Rob’s many technical achievements, including BenchmarkingApp, our user-centered design Adobe AIR application and the Drupal website for our client ResPublica, the Conservative Party Think-tank run by David Cameron’s philispher king Phillip Blond, I was very proud to see Rob presenting at a variety of events to showcase his technical and commercial skills. Prior to joining me I think Rob would be one of the first to say that speaking in front of large audiences wasn’t somthing he was looking to start doing! One such presentation was at an Adobe AIR event, where Rob spoke about designing business systems with Adobe AIR.

I wish all the very best in his new Drupal consultant role and if you are looking for a Drupal expert in London then Rob is your man! I’m sure our paths will cross in the future too…

Onwards and Upwards

Having replaced Rob, we are looking forward to continuing with Rob’s fine work by developing more user-centered websites using both Drupal and Magento E-commerce.

Last night I gave a presentation to Manchester Digital’s Developing with Adobe AIR event, speaking alongside Andrew Shorten of Adobe, John Knott of InterDirect and Paul Kinlan, lead developer of FriendDeck and a couple of other very interesting projects.

Despite a last-minute change to the running order which saw me speaking first, ahead of Andrew’s introduction to the Flash and AIR platform, it all went smoothly and it was great to speak to people after the event, answering questions from people who were obviously interested in developing on AIR themselves. Even better, a quick show of hands at the end of the presentation suggested that a significant number of people were interested in further events about the AIR platform.

There was also particular interest in the possibility of Flash/AIR as a mobile platform. Whilst the iPhone is a great device, there’s still plenty of room for competition, and Andrew’s presentation contained many tantalising suggestions about future developments from Adobe, in collaboration with hardware providers, that could make the Flash/AIR platform a viable cross-platform mobile environment.

Below, you can see my slides, and I’ll post a link to the other speakers’ slides when I have them.

Ahead of tonight’s event, Developing with Adobe AIR, at which I’ll be speaking, we’re releasing a brief case study of our use of Adobe AIR technology in developing business systems for use by manufacturers. This case study details why we chose to use Adobe AIR, and the benefits we’ve gained from using the technology.

Some of the key points include:

• Ability to use existing web technologies to deliver offline and desktop functionality
• Rapid development and prototyping
• Cross-platform development and deployment
• Benefits to our clients resulting from the combination of this technology with a user-centred design approach

Below, you can view the case study or download the full PDF document.

Next week, on Tuesday 30th of June, we will be presenting at Developing with Adobe AIR, a Manchester Digital event sponsored by Adobe. Registration is free for Manchester Digital members, and £10 for non-members.

What’s it about?

The event will be about the Adobe AIR framework, a cross-platform (Windows, MacOS and Linux) system that can be used to speed up development and deployment of applications, especially those based on web technologies. We’ve used it to power the development of internal business systems, mixing together our expertise in developing web applications with the tools that AIR offers for turning those into desktop applications.

Who will be speaking?

The event’s main speaker will be Adobe’s Andrew Shorten, who will be showcasing some of the most innovative uses of Adobe’s technology in delivering both consumer and enterprise applications. There will also be three presentations from people who have used Adobe AIR to create applications:

• Myself, talking about how we’ve used AIR in the creation of an internal business system for manufacturers
• John Knott of Interdirect, who have created an integrated content management system for kiosk terminals in public spaces
• Paul Kinlan, who has created FriendDeck, an open source tool for interacting with the FriendFeed service

What will my talk cover?

My talk will be explaining how and why we decided to use Adobe AIR, the technical challenges we faced and how our solution was ultimately implemented. We used AIR specifically to enable us to use our existing web technology background, so much of the talk will focus on AIR from a web development perspective.

I look forward to seeing you there!