OpenUK Awards: A great night in and a wonderful trophy!

Last week I had the pleasure of being invited to the OpenUK awards ceremony. It was originally planned as a big night out in London where like-minded open source advocates and community members could get together, chat about the latest tech or trends and meet new friends. Due to the current pandemic situation, however, they moved it online. Initially I was a little apprehensive as … Continue reading OpenUK Awards: A great night in and a wonderful trophy!

Looking toward a Fyne 2020

Today I posted a reflection on 2019 for the Fyne project – it’s been a very busy year indeed. We are celebrating 9 releases (3 major), 37 contributors, 7300 stargazers on GitHub and a conference live streamed on YouTube – to read more head to the Fyne blog. It clearly would not be possible without the fantastic contributions of the community – developers, designers, testers … Continue reading Looking toward a Fyne 2020

Accepted to GitHub Sponsors

Have you heard about the new GitHub Sponsors programme? The great people at GitHub have built a platform to help get open source developers paid for the great work they do. Yup, it’s a great idea – one that I had considered exploring before but clearly they have the resources and expertise to do it better – and thankfully they have done. The really exciting … Continue reading Accepted to GitHub Sponsors

Back home at CodeBase

Although it feels like only yesterday I realised this week that I moved out of CodeBase pretty much a year ago. In that time I have missed the community spirit and light-hearted competitiveness of the various individuals and teams working to build the next big thing. Whilst I have enjoyed my time working on various coding contracts and technical leadership consultancy placements (most recently through … Continue reading Back home at CodeBase

The wrong company can seriously damage your health

One of my favourite topics is startups – discussions about the benefits of young companies and how innovative workspaces can be a boon to productivity and healthy work life balance. It would be remiss of me, however, to imply that it is always great. There is a lot of hard work involved of course but it is also possible to have negative workplaces amongst all … Continue reading The wrong company can seriously damage your health

Tackle the big problems

At the ScotlandISDeveloper Conference and Business Forum this year we were treated to a fantastic after dinner close by Sir Frank Dick. As well as amusing and thought provoking anecdotes he had a lot of motivational points that rallied the room to be confident and make the change we want to see in the world. As I think about my next Business potentially being global … Continue reading Tackle the big problems

One final achievement for Kotikan

It’s been over a year since we sold Kotikan to FanDuel – it was an emotional journey to move on from what we had spent so many years building. And working in a team with so many great people too. I’m glad that most of my colleagues are still working at FanDuel – they even won another Webby Award this year! But life moves on. Even after leaving FanDuel … Continue reading One final achievement for Kotikan

Why do companies revert to hierarchy?

A question that I’ve asked myself many times over the last couple of years has resurfaced in light of the recent GitHub restructuring. Why do companies resort to hierarchy? So many set out with the grand ambition of keeping a flat structure – and many manage for a long time. People are happy, they are respected, communication is good and everyone can contribute to the future … Continue reading Why do companies revert to hierarchy?

2016, a whole different year

I think this year is going to be an exciting one for me – first and foremost it’s going to mean finding a whole new bunch of fantastic people to work with. I’ve made the difficult decision to move on from FanDuel and I will be leaving behind the amazing people I’ve spent the last 5 years getting to know. Since we sold Kotikan to FanDuel last year … Continue reading 2016, a whole different year