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Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

SuperMondays – Test Driven Development

This month Alex Kavanagh and Philip Poots talk about Test-driven development (TDD), a software development process where the developer first writes an automated test that defines the desired functionality of the final code.

Alex Kavanagh talks about his love of Test Driven Development, explain the process, and show us why it is a good process to follow.

Philip Poots will talak about the “The Death and Birth of TDD”.

The creator of Ruby on Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson kicked up a storm when he pronounced Test Driven Development (TDD) dead in his RailsConf 2014 keynote. The ripples spread far and wide, provoking a series of conversations between him, Kent Beck, the “father” of TDD, and Martin Fowler, one of Britain’s most famous software engineering exports.

We’ll use this conversation as a starting point to get a handle on TDD, where it came from, what it is, and why there is such strong feeling over its (ab)use. Reference will be made to key persons and literature, with examples in Ruby being general enough to be understood by all. Come and see what all the fuss is about, find out why you ought to be testing your code, and consider why you should be writing tests first.

Eventbrite - SuperMondays - Test Driven Development

Super Mondays – Makers

In 2012 Super Mondays had it’s most popular event when the team from Maker Space told us about the exciting world of 3D printing, Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. Two years later on March 31st they are back.

Eventbrite - SuperMondays - Makers

Ian Simmons, Makers and the Maker Faire

Ian is the Science Communication Director at The Centre for Life, home of the UK Maker Faire. After traveling the world to attend many Maker Faires and hack spaces Ian will give an insight to the Maker community by telling us about some of the amazing maker projects he has seen from around the world.

Cay Green, 3D Update

Cay has embarked in a PhD at Loughborough University Design School researching further in to 3D printing. She will be giving us an update on the progress made 3D printing in the last 2 years and will take a look at some of the work that allow non-skilled users to make/modify objects.

Glen will also be bringing it his working 3D printer so we can see it is action.

Ed Bisdee, From Arduino to PIC

When we last met Ed at Super Mondays he was an “hit things with hammers” engineer playing with Arduinos for fun. Since then he has changed career and microelectronics is now the day job. This time he is back and will tell us what he learnt moving from the amature to the profesional and give some insights to those wanting to move beyond the Arduino.

Chris Burn, Lots and lots of LEDs

If you pass Maker Space’s window you can not have avoided being mesmerised by Chris’s LED cube. Chris, often referred to as “LED Chris” in Maker Space, has made many LED signs in his life and it is quite possible you have read one of them. He will show off the cube and give an introduction to the magic that makes it work.

Dan Nixon, Custombuild Quadcopter

Dan is building a Quadcopter with full video that will fly itself. The projects, that includes both Arduino and Raspberry Pi, is an ongoing learning experience pushing open technology to it’s limits.

Eventbrite - SuperMondays - Makers

SuperMondays – CMSs

This month we are talking about Content Management systems and have the following amazing speakers…

Eventbrite - SuperMondays - CMSs

 PyroCMS – Built for Developers

Jamie Hurst
http://www.hurstdev.co.uk/
@jamieFDHurst
Most other CMS’s concentrate on giving a solid and easy experience for users, rather than the chaps who are actually building it. PyroCMS combines a solid framework, CodeIgniter, with HMVC principles and a nice and easy administration dashboard to offer a slightly different package. I’ll explain how you can use and extend PyroCMS to give your users the best functionality AND experience all at the same time.

 

WordPress: WTF!?

Adam Onishi
@onishiweb

After you’ve spent many years working with something, you start to get to that point where you feel competent, that you can do anything and every problem has a solution. However, with this understanding you also get to a point where as well as seeing how something works, you can also see how badly it does it. This is the point Adam has come to with WordPress.

In this talk, you’ll take a look over some weaknesses with WordPress, exploring downsides of the architecture, the theming and some more general problems around the platform. But also you’ll see how to avoid these problems and write better themes, plugins, and websites with WordPress.

 

CMS Horror stories and how stop them

Pete Duncanson
http://offroadcode.com
@offroadcode

You’ve build the site to the clients brief, you launch it then the phone calls start. Slowly be surely you stop telling your friends about the cool new site you built as the client adds Pink Comic Sans EVERYWHERE! Skip forward 3 months and its no longer on your portfolio page yet the phone calls still keep coming…”how do I do this”, “I want to make it do that but 5pm tonight, I know it is 4:40 on a Friday but a press release has gone out”! Its rare a website is built without a CMS these days let how to build them well and with the editor in mind is still a journey most designer/developers are just beginning to take. Join Pete Duncanson he escorts you through a short talk on the pitfalls and horrors of building with a CMS and how to avoid them (silver bullets, garlic and wooden crosses are optional) so both you and client are happy. Feel free to heckle or scream.

Pete Duncanson is the Founder and MD of Offroadcode Ltd, a focused team of problem solving digital folk who love the web. With over 20 years experience of working with CMS’s in one shape or another you’re in good hands.

 

Drupal: Myths and Legends

Adam Hill
http://www.consultanddesign.com
@adshill

Its true that Drupal could be smaller, leaner, produce nicer HTML and be more “user” friendly but a lot of the reasons given for avoiding one of the most powerful php applications come from the world of myth and legend. The aim of this short talk is to provide a frank and engaging overview of some of the most believed myths that are associated to Drupal when choosing a CMS for a project and uncover some of the truths that are often overlooked.

Co-Founder of the Drupal North East user group and actively involved in the global Drupal Community, Adam will explain the weaknesses of this open source project, while dispelling the myths that still circulate the developer community and ways to get the most out of this often misunderstood platform.

 

The Emperor CMS Has No Clothes

Philip Poots
http://crossingtheruby.com
CTO at Givey Ltd. (https://www.givey.com)
@pootsbook

The time has come to end the insanity. The largest employers of pen-pushers (keyboard-tappers?) in the world are starting to wake up to the reality of content management. Come and learn what President Obama, The US and UK governments and a collection of North East startups and big companies alike have in common when it comes to managing and publishing content.

 

Eventbrite - SuperMondays - CMSs

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