June 18th, 2010, by Adam
The past two weeks have seen me travelling around the state of Western Australia and the Northern Territory as part of the Achieve More Online program. This has been a great experience both on a professional and personal level.
Travelling as far south as Albany, and soon to be as far north as Darwin, our team has experienced first hand, just how much value the program is bringing to the small business owners we reach.
Some of my favourite feedback so far:
“Best investment of time & money. Tell your friends – these sessions will be booked out when people realise the quality of the material & presenters. Tell your best friends but NOT your competitors!”
– Keith MacAulay, 2 Oceans Adventures (June 2010 Margaret River event)
“A friendly, knowledgeable team. Loved Matt’s unbridled enthusiasm, Adam’s quirky sense of humour and the whole team’s willingness to help in any way. Go to it! A worthwhile investment of time!”
– Kylie Byfield, Illuminaire Pty Ltd (June 2010 Margaret River event)
See more of the action at the Achieve More Online Facebook Page
We are a Perth web design and web development company and this is our blog. We specialize in building web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. Jump to the Ruby on Rails category or contact us.
Posted in Speaking Engagements | No Comments »
May 19th, 2010, by Adam
During June & July I will be travelling around WA & NT participating in a series of web workshops as part of the Federal Government’s Small Business Online program. A summary of the workshop is below.
In just 1 day ($49), you’ll learn the 8 fundamental building blocks of a successful online marketing and website strategy and have a complete action plan to help you put that knowledge to use.
The 7 small business owners and specialists in their field will show you how to use the Internet to promote your business and create a website that works to deliver real dollars to your bottom line.
From business planning through to optimising your site for search engines and simple online marketing tools, everything you need to know about developing a better online business will be delivered to you in an interactive workshop and 1-to-1 mentoring sessions where we will help you solve your business’ specific problems.
At the end of the 1 day workshop, you’ll understand the 8 building blocks of a well balanced, effective online marketing plan:
- business plan, target market & purpose
- website design
- content building & copywriting
- graphic design & layout
- website imagery & photos
- website traffic generating tools such as pay per click advertising (PPC) & search engine optimisation (SEO)
- website promotion & relationship building tools such as Twitter, Facebook & other social media
- and the often underutilised and powerful email marketing tools you have at your disposal
You can find more information about the workshops and how to register here: Achieve More Online
We are a Perth web design and web development company and this is our blog. We specialize in building web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. Jump to the Ruby on Rails category or contact us.
Posted in Inside TFG, Speaking Engagements | 1 Comment »
April 5th, 2010, by Adam
At The Frontier Group, we have been hosting the Perth Ruby on Rails Meetup since August 2009. This meetup has brought together many individuals and businesses from the Perth Ruby on Rails community each month and has had great success in helping distribute knowledge through interesting presentations, as well as connecting developers to project work. It’s also a great social event if you’re even remotely interested in hearing about Ruby or Ruby on Rails.
After a few discussions with the Brisbane Agile Academy, we’ve decided to start a second meetup group. Our organisation has a strong focus on Agile methodologies and we’re really interested in sharing and developing this knowledge with the local community. You don’t even have to be a developer for this one! Agile techniques appeal to a range of professionals, companies and roles. If you’re interested we’re looking to run our first session in a few months time, once we’ve generated some noise.
Dwayne Read from Strategic Systems is the co-organiser for this group, an Agile coach with over 15 years applied Agile development experience (20 years software development experience). He will also facilitate our first meetup with the following interactive session:
Come to the inaugural Perth Agile Meetup to participate in an Agile ‘Release Planning’ session and two ‘Sprints’. You are the Customer/Product Owner (or one of anyway) and the project objective is to ‘discuss the agile techniques of interest’. We will run a JAD session to list the techniques/features, prioritise and then discuss/exemplify two Sprints worth (albeit timeboxed to 1 hr in total – now there’s a tight delivery schedule!).
Show your interest by signing up (for free) at the official Meetup page, and when the first date is announced, you’ll be notified and can RSVP. Head there now!
Of course you can always follow us on Twitter to find out any updates.
Want to learn more about Agile? Check out the Agile Academy website.
We are a Perth web design and web development company and this is our blog. We specialize in building web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. Jump to the Ruby on Rails category or contact us.
Posted in Industry Trends, Inside TFG, Lifestyle | 2 Comments »
March 26th, 2010, by Adam
Today, The Frontier Group are proud sponsors of the Ruby Summer of Code.
“To continue Google’s great tradition of sponsoring Open Source Development via summer student interns, several Ruby companies, organizations and community members are getting together to fund Ruby Summer of Code. The project will work much the same way Google Summer of Code does — mentors and student interns, with mentors voting on which student projects get slots. Students will be paid a stipend of $5000, and we’ll raise the number of student slots as contributions come in.” – Ruby Summer of Code
Frequently Asked Questions
-
What is Ruby Summer of Code?
Ruby Summer of Code is a student internship program, modeled after Google’s Summer of Code, designed to help fund student development of Ruby coding projects in Summer 2010.
-
What are the goals of this program?
The goals of the program are to help get students engaged in Ruby development and the Ruby community, and to continue the tradition of great student Ruby projects completed in past summers as part of GSoC.
-
How many mentoring organizations and students are expected to take part in the program?
The number of mentoring organizations depends on the number of sponsors the program receives; all funding will go towards adding more mentors and students to the program. If you or your company would be interested in helping out, contact us.
-
When can I apply?
The mentor application window is March 24th to April 2nd. The student application window is April 5th to April 23rd.
-
How does the program work?
The Ruby Summer of Code program is designed to help fund student development of Ruby and/or Rails projects in the summer of 2010. Accepted students will be matched up with accepted mentors and will have two months to complete their summer projects. Students will undergo a project evaluation midway through the summer (dates to be announced), and those showing suitable progress will receive 50% of their student stipend. At the close of the work window, projects will undergo final evaluations, and students who successfully completed their projects will receive the remaining 50% of their stipend.
-
How do evaluations work?
Projects will be evaluated by each student’s mentor, and then reviewed by the larger mentor pool. Evaluations will be individually tailored based on the pre-determined agreed upon objectives and deliverables of each project.
More information can be found at the Ruby Summer of Code website.
We are a Perth web design and web development company and this is our blog. We specialize in building web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. Jump to the Ruby on Rails category or contact us.
Posted in Inside TFG, Ruby on Rails | 2 Comments »
February 2nd, 2010, by Adam
Lately I have been left feeling slightly bemused, possibly even despondent. What about you may ask? The reaction this week to the iPad for one.
The instant it was announced, the concept of jumping on the nearest spaceship and leaving this planet behind was not far from my mind. I mean, who doesn’t love a good argument on the Internet right? But the sheer magnitude of negativity and lack of foresight was astounding. I guess there was a lot of disappointed people who expected the iPad to be something that it was never intended to be, but are we really living in an “all about me” society? More importantly, is that where we want to be?
I would never expect everyone to like such a device and nearly everyone I talk to that doesn’t use an Apple product, hates Apple products. I used to be one of those people too. I grew up with MS-DOS, Windows 2, 3, 95, 98, 2000, XP, then shifted to Linux for the next few years. Maybe a solid Apple product came along at the right time for me, just as all the other competitors were struggling. They’ve since moved on and regained their following again, but I’ll most likely continue down the path which has seen me the most productive in business and life.
But back to my original point. I spent 10 minutes thinking about potential uses for the iPad that I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere, and it wasn’t hard to come up with some amazing out of the box solutions. I contemplated writing a post, to join the other millions of bloggers out there but I held back for a while. Eventually Venessa Miemis wrote exactly what I was thinking, but she’s done the hard work citing resources and everything!
If you have a spare ten minutes it’s definitely worth a read, regardless of how you feel about the device. It may turn out to be a game-changer or it may disappear into insignificance 12 months after it launches. But if like me, people want to read some objectivity on a topic, then this is for you.
iPad: Overhyped Flop or a case of Great Design Thinking?
We are a Perth web design and web development company and this is our blog. We specialize in building web applications with the Ruby on Rails framework. Jump to the Ruby on Rails category or contact us.
Posted in Industry Trends, Lifestyle | No Comments »
Follow Us