Intohand

Last week Intohand attended and presented at OpenMIC8 in Brighton. This was a lively event with a lot of debate in the morning about the relative merits of native versus mobile web applications – and the hybrids in between. Stuart gave a presentation on the topic and Kieran followed up with a seat on the Developer panel. The afternoon barcamp sessions included an opportunity to get hands on with Windows Phone 7 devices, kindly brought by Mike Ormond as well as a Samsung Galaxy Tab from Rich Spence‘s device armoury.

The debate raged on regarding the relative merits of techniques to put material on mobile, spilling over into a bar discussion and latterly a trip to the pub. Good OpenMIC once again, well done to the Bookmeister and the support of DCKTN and University of Bath – looking forward to OpenMIC9 in Oxford!

I went down last Friday to Exeter for openMIC#16 which this time took place in coordination with the South West regional competition of the Microsoft Imagine Cup . There were some interesting talks. I especially enjoyed Robert Lo Bue’s talk on the ideal team member archetypes based on the characters of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! I gave a talk as well, something i’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, namely Porting iOS apps to Android . Admittedly it was probably not the ideal topic for a Microsoft sponsored event, but it seemed to be well received all the same.

It was also interesting listening to Ben from Saberr . They’ve devised a way to ask 37 specific questions of potential hackathon team members, and based on the resulting profiles and the teams they’ve formed, can adequately predict the winners. They’d already guessed 2 other hackathons successfully, and their results this time were spot on as well! Very interesting stuff, and i wonder if the same techniques could be used in the other direction, namely to formulate the perfect teams for hackathon events beforehand? Ben and Chris both like the idea, so maybe we can put something like that together – stay tuned!

I also have to say that Exeter University looked absolutely stunning! And it gave me a chance to make use of Android Jelly Bean’s PhotoSphere camera feature on my Galaxy Nexus. Here’s the university’s Great Hall, Exterior and Interior