Cape Town SPIN

The Kanban principles are nothing new, but applying them in software projects is a relatively recent phenomenon. Jaco van der Merwe, from Electromagnetic Software and Systems, will introduce us to the Kanban principles and explain how they fit into the world of the many software processes around.

Slides: Kanban for Software Engineering in a Nutshell (Part 1)

Wednesday, 18th August 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

More and more organisations realise the importance of enlisting user experience professionals early in the product lifecycle to improve usability and user satisfaction. Phil Barrett, a director at Flow Interactive, will provide us with valuable insights into user experience design. More specifically, he will discuss how to combine agile development and user-centred design to produce better products.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

MeerKAT (www.ska.ac.za) is a mega-science project to develop a world-class radio telescope in the Karoo, funded through the Department of Science and Technology, and is in support of South Africa's bid to host the international SKA project (www.skatelescope.org). The MeerKAT system will have in the order of 80 dishes of 12m diameter. The project presents numerous software challenges, including high data rate real-time signal processing, facility and signal monitoring, and remote real-time control.

Wednesday, 19 May 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Sponsored by

Martin Wright was unfortunately not able to present the talk and kindly arranged Dan Leech to stand in.

Dan joined Cape Venture Partners in 2008 and has since helped a number of technology businesses to raise capital from VC’s and angel investors. At this month’s event Dan will examine why Venture Capitalists are more impressed with a rapidly developed prototype than a 100 page business plan. We’ll take a look at real examples of what impresses a VC and what doesn’t and why it’s so important to adopt Agile if you’re going to be successful in attracting funding.

Slides:Agile Venture Creation.pdf

Snacks kindly sponsored by ScrumSense.

Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Sponsored by

Steve van der Merwe, Technical Director at MagmaTec, will introduce Domain Specific Languages languages (DSLs) at this month's event. A DSL is a special purpose programming language that is designed specifically for a particular problem domain. When used correctly, they offer a more convenient and effective approach to create solutions for the targeted domain.

Snacks kindly sponsored by Factor10.

Wednesday, 17 March 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Sponsored by

Why only apply agile principles and practices when developing software? Why not be agile in life and in business as well? We have heard from a number of startups that do apply agile concepts in business. One of these companies is FireID. Malan Joubert, co-founder and CTO, will speak about the ways in which they have been able to iterate rapidly in the business domain, decrease the cost of learning and provide an agile roadmap for business development.

• Presentation slides

Snacks kindly sponsored by Factor10.

Wednesday, 17 February 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Sponsored by

Hey, it's 2010 already and to ease everyone into the year, we will try something a little bit different this month. Aslam Khan will host an OpenSpaces workshop for about an hour and a half followed by snacks and networking. The snacks are kindly sponsored by Intec.

• OpenSpaces Workshop - Aslam Khan

Wednesday, 20 January 2010, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Gert-Jan van Rooyen will introduce us to the research activities of the MIH Electronic Media Lab at the University of Stellenbosch. Their research focuses on using next-generation technologies to influence how we interact with computers, each other and reality.

• New Media for Interactions - Gert-Jan van Rooyen

Wednesday, 18 November 2009, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Sponsored by

Cloud computing receives a lot of attention these days. With prominent players such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Sun providing platforms, it is technology to take note of. Brian Silberbauer will introduce us to the cloud and share his experience using this growing technology.

Please also note that the yearly steering committee election will be held beforehand.

• Getting Your Head Around the Cloud - Brian Silberbauer
  presentation slides

Wednesday, 21 October 2009, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

Some people's code are easier to read and understand than other's. Style, structure, variable names, comments and many more factors contribute to the differences. Marius de Beer will introduce us to Clean Code and share practical guidelines to make your code more understandable and look great.

• Clean Code - The Software Professional's imperative - Marius de Beer
  presentation slides

Wednesday, 16 September, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town