Quantcast
Channel: Eduserv Blog » givecamp
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

The Start of Something Big – GiveCampUK

0
0
Photo of devs at GiveCampUK

Developers take to their laptops for GiveCampUK

On Friday 21st October, some fellow Eduserv devs and I headed to UCL Bloomsbury campus to participate in the first GiveCamp event to take place in the UK. And what an event it was!

After an introduction from Rachel Hawley, everyone gathered in the main hall to talk to project leads and decide which project they were working on.

We had already discussed prior to arrival that we would work on the requirements from The Prison Phoenix Trust, a charity that encourages prisoners in their spiritual lives through meditation and yoga, working with silence and the breath.

The project brief:

We’d like a new database to replace our three current partly-linked ones; integrating the data, and presenting a more usable and friendly interface. We’ve seen and used sites like Ebay and Kayak, and would like to get information out of our database as easily, or as near to it as our data will let us.

By 22:00 that evening we had a team of twelve discussing the key points of the system;

  • a new database schema with a much more robust/normalised design,
  • a core application for data entry and modifications,
  • and a reporting system that allowed custom reports to be created and viewed.

It was clear that the changes to the database schema were paramount and part of the team (Jon and Mike) began development on this straight away. Naeem Sarfraz developed a cracking data scrambling tool due to the sensitive nature of the data. Liam Westley provided some excellent information on the pros and cons of SQL Reporting Services and began investigating how much functionality that would provide. Later on Ellie would begin working on how we would take current reports from the Access databases and reproduce them in the new reporting tool.

We needed to bake (tenuous cake link) the client's existing data model into the solution

One of the more difficult aspects was deciding on the tools to use for data entry and modification. Since taking on his role as Consultant Systems Supervisor at PPT, David Kennedy has made several changes to the data model and we didn’t want to remove this capability from him. We wanted to provide a solution that would be flexible to his requirements now and in the future.

We discussed an Umbraco solution, using the back-end to structure a loose schema which David could modify by simply adding in new items as needed. We also discussed a simple MVC 3 application and finally the use of LightSwitch. All three had their problems; we felt Umbraco would take too long to develop a working result in the tight time frame, the MVC3 application would be too restrictive on future data model changes, and no one had developed in LightSwitch before.

Early Saturday after a quick stand-up meeting and a LightSwitch overview from David Whitney, we decided to run with Lightswitch. Even though we hadn’t coded in it before, it provided the key pieces to David’s future PPT requirements. LightSwitch provides the ability to add new columns and tables to the data schema as well as create new input and search screens for that data – all with minimum development effort.

Photo of sleeping area at GiveCampUK

No sleep till check in

The front end guys (David Whitney, Sam Salisbury, Naeem Sarfraz, Adam Christie, Craig Stevens, Jason Mitch and our own David Peel) got their heads down and hammered on. The Saturday development consisted of a lot of highs and lows, delving into the inner workings of LightSwitch, issues with broken builds (which in hindsight weren’t the fault of LightSwitch itself, rather trying to use LightSwitch with a version control system), and further database work.

By Sunday morning  we had the key parts of the system in place. Some areas of the LightSwitch app still needed work and some parts of the data migration needed finalising but the reporting system looked robust and a process for tying all the components together needed to be completed. Liam knocked up an extensive deployment document for the reporting services, Naeem, David Peel, Jason and the other front-end guys managed the LightSwitch documentation.

Photo of PPT  team including Eduserv developers

Eduserv developers among the PPT dev team at GiveCampUK Credit: Bert Craven

At 12:00 on Sunday, with the data migration tool just about finished, it was down tools. We joined the other attendees outside for some fresh air and a hog roast!  We all took a few hours to relax, chat and talk with other teams about their projects. take a few pictures and take stock of the weekend.

It was hard to miss the smiles on everyone’s faces. Sure, everyone looked tired, but there was a real sense of accomplishment and excitement over what had been achieved in the last few days. At 15:00 the accomplishments of each team were confirmed as we gathered for some brief demonstrations and talks. The work completed was fantastic and every team had come up with something to help their charities move forward.

I think it’s safe to say that the inaugural GiveCampUK event was one of the most stressful, tiring, but exciting events I’ve ever been to. Paul Stack deserves a huge amount of credit for bringing the event to the UK and Rachel Hawley no less for being his right hand throughout.  The pair of them pulled it off spectacularly!

Also a huge thank you to Eduserv and all the sponsors who delivered swag and kept us fed and watered.  An even bigger thanks to UCL London for providing the venue completely free.  To get such a high level of support from so many, the event is in good standing for the future.

Finally a big thanks to all the guys that we worked with over the weekend, we wouldn’t have made it through without you:


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 2

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images