Week 263

Last week was simultaneously our first week in the plush new FutureLearn office inside the British Library and our last week working on the FutureLearn project. The new office is so much nicer than the basement in Camden and we’re very jealous of the new space which is in such great surroundings.

Thanks @britishlibrary for welcoming us to our new office in this amazing building. Past/present/Future Learning -> pic.twitter.com/n0C6xJql85

— FutureLearn (@FutureLearn) January 27, 2014

A few of us went to a nearby pub on Monday after work to celebrate arriving in the new office. Towards the end of the evening we had an interesting conversation with Matt Walton, the FutureLearn product owner, about his time at Unthinkable. It sounds as if they have faced some of the same challenges as us in figuring out how best to engage with clients e.g. a few bigger projects or lots of smaller projects.

An exciting 1st day at our new base in @britishlibrary having outgrown our super hosts at @OpenUniversity pic.twitter.com/erHt4U7t6U

— FutureLearn (@FutureLearn) January 27, 2014

On Wednesday evening we had our GFR monthly drinks at the Reliance - we had fun catching up with some of our friends in the Ruby world. Chris’ attempt at fixing his sore throat by applying Honey Dew turned out not to work so well, so he spent Thursday, our last official day at FutureLearn, working from home. We both tried hard to finish up all our work-in-progress and hopefully we didn’t leave too many loose ends. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our time at FutureLearn and we wish the team all the best for the future; it’s a thoroughly worthwhile venture with loads of potential.

On Friday both Chris and I attended the The First International Conference on Software Archaeology which was held at the Museum of London. We weren’t quite sure what to expect and the conference talks certainly covered a wide range of topics. Quite a lot of the talks looked at mining metrics from git repositories, but while these were conceptually interesting, I found it difficult to see how these project-wide summary statistics would help me in my day-to-day work at the software coal face.

Anyway it’s been nice to write these notes while back at the ranch in Shoreditch.

Until next time.

– James