Week 232

If a blog post is published to the internet and Google Reader isn’t around to show it, will it ever be read? I guess that’s something we’ll all soon find out.

When to stop offering things you’ve offered before is one of the things we talked about on Wednesday. As you may know, we’ve been selling ready-made versions of our printer. On Wednesday we stopped. Not because we no longer want people to use printer - we’d love it if more people did, and following these detailed instructions they still can. Nor are we giving up on it - there’s something interesting there we want to find. However, building these kits ourselves no longer feels like the best way to discover it. Besides, with James A moving to Austin (more of which below), the quality of the printers would surely go down. A solderer I am not.

James moves to Austin

As I mentioned last week and above, James A is moving to Austin and this was his last week in the office. On Wednesday evening we all headed down to the dovetail to toast him on his way, joined many of his and GFR’s friends, and even my new son. There was a lot of warmth and friendship in the room - it’s clear GFR won’t be the only people to miss his presence in London. Not surprising when you consider the work he’s put into printer, Ruby Manor and much much more. I hope he still considers himself a London developer in exile, rather than a permanent Austinite.

Any other business

Finally, the bulk of our week has been spent once more working on FutureLearn. We’ve reached the end of the MVP build (though I see in Pivotal there are still a couple of stories above the MVP milestone). This means we can very soon expect real live users (and not a moment too soon)! Real educators will be writing courses, and real learners will be taking them. For now, only a select few specially chosen friends will be invited, but even with such a limited audience we can expect to learn loads. I for one can’t wait.

Until next time,

Tom