Sorry everyone, I have been slacking on updates lately. There has been so much work over summer! I should have known that people try to complete everything over summer to launch software on September!

Good news is that we finally launched our new website for Agile. It took half year. It’s funny how companies own website is always at last place. But its finished now and I got a lot of good reviews.

Another news – I’m now on M50 Platform Program to launch our new framework. I will be posting more news about that later.

Event page is updated again. Click here to see all events for August & September and some for October. There isn’t much happening now, but still some interesting conferences upcoming in September.

Even thought I didn’t get to any presentations (and everyone said they were great) and even if I had to stay by my stand for whole day to tell about our company, I quite enjoyed epicenter. As everything that I haven’t tried before. I’m getting more and more better at all this “sales” thing.

Vodofone presented new application store in conference (similar to iPhone app store). And a very nice thing happened – I won phone with Vodofone app store. My current phone battery ends after 2h, I was just desperate to get new one (I’m so lucky!). I will be receiving it today and might as well take some photo and put it up on my blog.

I have been very busy whole last month, delivering projects, stressing and preparing marketing materials. And I missed summer sun this year too. Maybe I gonna go for vacation in winter?

Here is some photos from epicenter. I wanted to put up more, but all other were blurry (I should win new camera too).

I’m sorry to everyone who have been checking my blog for events and hadn’t found anything new from start of July. I will try harder next time to give you events earlier. A lot of conferences are happening in August and September and there is less free events around. That’s probably because of vacations. As usual – events I’m posting is Business or IT related. Feel free to comment if you think some more should be added.

Events Jul, Aug and Sept

• 13th-16th July / ICGSE2009 / Limerick – The 4^th International Conference on Global Software Engineering will bring together researchers and practitioners interested in exploring how globally distributed teams work and how the challenges can be met (prices from $300 – $1200).
• 14th July 19:00 / The Digital Hub / Science Gallery, FREE – Join this brain storming session to discuss the creation of The Dublin Hub. The vision of the Dublin Hub group is to create a flexible, affordable, shared working environment for freelancers, small businesses, the self-employed, and home-workers looking for a desk, or a meeting space in town.
• 16th July 18:00 / Social Media Networking / Kudos Bar, Clarion Hotel IFSC – A FREE Business Networking event that will help you understand how social media can help you grow your business.
• 18th July 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Dakota Bar, FREE – informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 21st July 08:30 / Maintaining work/life balance as an Entrepreneur / Synergy centre breakfast seminar, FREE
• 22nd July 10:00 / Quickly Discovering and Understanding your Software Applications / FREE – organised by ASG software solutions
• 22nd July 18:00 / HotHouse United / School House pub – business networking event for all current and former participants of the DIT Hothouse programme.
• 23rd July 08:30 / Free NovaUCD event about security / FREE- don’t miss it as there isn’t much free events in NovaUCD
• 23rd July 18:30 / OWASP Chapter meeting – group dedicated to fighting the cause of software insecurity in Ireland
• 30th July 19:00 / Connector BBQ / The Church – connecting people around web, business and technology
• 31st July 09:00 / Podcasting training courses from Podcasting Ireland / 100 EUR
• 2nd Aug 13:00 / Geeknic / Farmleigh Park – picnic for geeks, there is also a farmers market that day
• 5th Aug 18:30 / 121 Marketing Club / Mint Bar, Westin Hotel – usually around 30+ people is attending event, includes 1h speed networking
• 5th Aug 20:00 / Ireland Girl Geek Dinner / Kennedy’s on Westland Road – meet fellow girls in IT
• 6th Aug 10:30 / Open Coffee Club / Science Galery, FREE – informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
• 14th Aug 18:00 / Free Business Networking / The Bewleys Hotel, Ballsbridge – speed networking and presentation. Great event for networking. Last time more than 60 people attended.
• 15th Aug / CupcakeCamp / Belfast – while I really thought that this was baking event rather than IT, somebody convinced me that it isn’t. So if you wanna go and try it out, let me know afterwards ^^
• 16th Aug 19:00 / Dublin ALT.NET / check website for place (probably The Vaults again), this months talk will be about “ORM with NHibernate”
• 21st Aug 09:30 / SQS Agile Workshop / 4-5 Dawson St, 100 EUR – explore the key principles of agile development with a particular focus on the quality and testing aspects.
• 24th-28th Aug / epicenter – The Irish Software Show / Trinity College, 99 EUR – 197 EUR – the biggest ever event in the software space ever held in Ireland. Should be fun.
• 27th Aug 13:00 / Simply Zesty Summer Camp / The Church, 99 EUR – earn how social media can transform your business
• 10th Sept / OWASP conference / 90-150 EUR – first Irish Application Security conference in historic Dublin University, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
• 10th Sept / Confidence in Action conference / FREE -  if you’re looking to navigate your way through the current economic climate, then Confidence in Action is the perfect place to start.
• 19th Sept / OSS BarCamp / DIT Kevin Street Dublin – open source bar camp
• 19th Sept / BizCamp – website isn’t updated yet, but I’m sure there will be more information closer to date
• 20th-24th Sept / COSAC 2009 / Killashee House Hotel, Naas, Co. Kildare – 16th International Computer Security Symposium (prices from 350 – 4000 EUR). A lot of speakers from outside Ireland. It is self organised event so don’t be afraid of website
• 24th Sept / Mobile Marketing 2009 – explore and develop the many opportunities that has and will drive this sector for the future

Some more information

One week from now on you can promote yourself on Irish Business Women forum. This event happens only once per year and you can promote yourself as much you like and how you like.

If you are just starting networking, few of the Dublin City Enterprise networking groups are quite good. I have heard lot of good things about Link! network. Usually you can attend one event for free to check them out.

If you are in web development check out The Rally Rev-up Webinar about Agile and Rally development methods happening every Thursday. As you might know our company does Agile Scrum development and we are interested in everything agile.

Other non-IT and non-business events you shouldn’t miss this summer is Festival of World Cultures and Electric Picnic at the end of August.

I have always problems explaining people what our company does. Not because I don’t know what it does, but because other people isn’t knowledgeable enough to understand the concept. If I say “eBusiness” – people don’t know the term. If I say “business process optimisation” – they think we aren’t IT company. If I say “we do web development”, they usually reply “ah, web design”. Wrong! (Of course we do web design too, but it’s not our main business…)

So I met my mentor last week and he told me that people do not care how I call it – websites are still websites. They want their project done and they don’t care how we build it. And he asked question which made me think – “Which comes first design or development?”.  By logic and all the good concepts I and probably most of you would reply “design”. But is it true in agile development?

I searched a bit over the net and found one really good article about it. And now what I think is that in agile development pilot project comes first. Pilot project is proof of concept that developed idea can work. You can argue that it should have some design anyway, but it’s just something to get ideas from for the finalised design.

Agile development is test-driven. You write tests first and only then code and then design. Have I proved my point? Any ideas about this?