Blog posts tagged as 'weeknotes'

351 is a Harshad number, sum of five consecutive primes and also the designation of an extremely-loud V8 engine by Ford from the 1960s.

Here’s what’s revving at BERG this week, as recounted around our big red table on Tuesday morning…

Simon as per usual is running all our projects in the studio and also making sure Little Printer and BERG Cloud gets delivered on time. This week we’re finishing up a few client projects, so he’s helping wrap them up and deliver them to their respective homes. He’s also working on documentation for Little Printer, and helping with our ongoing sales process.

Timo’s working with Oran O’Reilly on editing some films for Chaco, and planning some Uinta filming with me. He’s also been doing some design research with Nick that hopefully we can show very soon. He’s the lead on one of the new client projects coming into the studio, codenamed ‘Silverton’, so he’s starting some research on that.

Andy’s working hard on Little Printer – paying particularly attention to assembly, diagnostics, testing samples, and certification. He’s also been investigating manufacturing options for Ojito – an invention of ours that we may revisit shortly.

Alice’s week is full of Little Printer dev work and Guardian Cryptic Crossword wrangling at lunchtime around our big red table, with our visiting cryptic expert, Phil Wright.

Nick’s working on Little Printer hardware and software with Phil and James Darling – and as I mentioned doing a spot of design research and filming with Timo.

James is helping NL with all of the LP work to get us to the next milestone, which is a list on a whiteboard with words on it I am not clever enough to understand. Luckily for me, James, Nick, Phil and Alice are more than clever enough.

Joe’s working pretty much full-time on the final presentation for Uinta’s Kletting project, making storyboards and images with Alex to communicate new service concepts.

The graphic style of the deliverable that they’ve come up with is lovely – halfway between storyboards, comic books, system diagrams and arresting montages of images that communicate some quite complex things really clearly.

Alex has been heads down on Kletting final deliverable work with Joe, teaching at the LCC for a day today, finalising our online shop designs for BERG Cloud, packaging design for Little Printer and starting to do some really brilliant product graphic experiments for the BERG Cloud ‘Bridge’ unit.

Denise has been supporting Joe and Alex as the creative director on the Kletting work, applying her service-design expertise to Little Printer stuff. In her non-copious spare time thinking about some iPad experiments with typography and doing a little bit of character design for an animated sequence Timo and myself are planning for a Uinta film.

MW’s been really pushing on our sales process to make sure it’s bringing in the right sort of work for the studio and in tandem with that thinking about project planning for the different shapes of new projects that are coming in, which will stretch us in new and interesting ways we hope. He’s also dealing with our finances along with Helen, and getting used to using a Windows Mobile phone after years of iOS…

Helen’s deep into spreadsheets, running the studio, replying to people getting in touch with us with various requests and helping MW with the finances.

I’ve been helping with the finishing stages of our current projects for Uinta, all of which I’m pleased as punch with – and concentrating on sales with MW to line up what we’re doing for clients through the spring and into summer.

---

AOB: I’m pleased to report the lights in the loo work, there’s a good deal on Innocent veg pots at the local supermarket which have pretty much dominated lunch for 50% of the studio, and we had a cracking return for BERG Drinks last night at The Reliance, where much amber fluid was drunk and Yahtzee was played by our friends from MakieLab.

We had a visit from our friend Einar of Voy, and we’re expecting some students from his university AHO in Oslo later this afternoon.

^ Daff Photo by BERG Alumni Paul Mison

Other than that – Happy St. Davids Day, and happy week 351!

This week saw us filming the prototypes for one of our clients, Chaco, that meant two days with a studio full of people, cameras, lights, product models and as it turns out, a huge amount of extra radio waves.

(click for larger image)

This is a visualisation by Phil Wright who is working with us. It shows the usual BERG wifi network versus the monstrous chunk of the spectrum taken up by the ‘CHACONET’. That’s what happens when you have experience prototypes that use four wifi phones, two wireless baby monitors and eight bluetooth connections.

Week 350 from BERG on Vimeo.

A prime, the sum of 3 consecutive primes, and the number of seats in the Swedish Parliament it would seem.

Retrospective (and rather list-like) week notes this week, and what a week! Not least, there have been 3 babies born, safely and I’m sure soundly. Hooray!

In the studio it’s been busy as usual. Simon’s been out and about wrapping up a project for Uinta. Matthew’s been juggling a mix of sales and interviews around Little Printer.

Nick has been doing a marvellous job traversing the full height of the Little Printer/Berg Cloud stack, and moving house, to top it all.

Joe, Alex and Denise have also been working on a part of the Uinta wrap up (called LaMotte) while cracking on apace with the comms surrounding another project (called Kletting).

James and Alice have been licking the cloud-side bits of Berg Cloud into shape. Some significant heavy lifting going on.

Denise is continuing to refine information architectures and feeding into Kletting, whilst joining Alex, Simon and myself for some Little Printer packaging design. Good stuff.

Timo was away for the start of the week, but back in time to launch our next BERG event at St. Bride’s on March the 21st, and in time to see it sell out!

We’ve just had another cracking Friday demos, with a special guest appearance from Matt Biddulph, who’s here for 2 weeks. Lovely.

Things are moving apace. We’ve just had cake to celebrate Matthew’s birthday. It’s drive-time.

That was week 349.

It’s week 348 and it’s really cold outside. There’s nothing very poetic to write about this week. It’s that time of year where everyone just works. We work and we do our chores. A quiet, sombre, productive time. I may be boring, but my bedroom is tidy. These are the things we are working on.

Webb, Jones and Timo are working on some sales. There is a Uinta project which doesn’t have a name yet, which Joe, Alex and Denise are working on. Me, Alice and Nick and working on Berg Cloud’s cloud. Andy is celebrating the end of Chinese New Year by talking power supplies. Timo and Jack are working on filming something.

There is temporarily no Simon, and Kari is away on Maternity leave now. Helen is therefore now in full time mode. There has been no hiccough in the transfer.

Everyone is working on many more things than mentioned here. You probably have a list like it. This is what the first week of February feels like.

I think this is roughly who’s working with who.

This week is mainly: a Uinta workshop, Little Printer progressing, Kari’s final day before maternity leave and Helen’s first full day, sales sales sales.

The new studio is bigger,

and (I noticed when I got back from travelling in the US for most of January) weirdly quiet. It’s as if people don’t know what to do in all the space. Then when one person goes into the kitchen – the kitchen is teeny weeny, the size of a broom cupboard – two or three more people pile in and there’s a kitchen party. In the last couple of weeks it’s been getting gradually noisier as we settle in. A welcome improvement.

Nick’s gone out to get a few coffees. Good-o. Caffeine please!

Friday links for week 346, a few things that have been zipping around our mailing list for the last 5 days. I’m keeping it image heavy this week.

Jones sent around the slightly terrifying ‘math blind AI that teaches itself basic number sense’. He also pointed out this article from Don Norman on AI:

The point is that AI is now powerful enough to be commonplace. Not only does it assist in such mundane tasks as restaurant selection, but it helps out in critical safety situations such as military applications, the control of industrial equipment, and driving.

Timo found this discussion on the ethnography of robots.

After reading the Steve Jobs biography this came as no shock, but this post on Apple’s attention to detail with packaging is a good read, and something we’re going to be obsessing over as a studio in the coming months.

There was also a lot of discussion over Ubuntu’s new interface, dismissing menu bars for a launcher style UI:

In our continuing quest to invent a reason to buy a quadcopter to fly around the beams of our new office ceiling all day, Alice sent around this clip of an autonomous flying tracking robot:

We’ve had a lot of incredible pictures of the solar storm flying around. This is a good one:

This is another good one:

And on a similar note this timelapse video of the Yosemite National Park is worth a watch.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Via Tom Armitage we found this knitted waveform scarf of the amen break by Andrew Salomone:

Which also revealed the ‘Recursive Cosby Jumper‘:

And the ‘Bitmap balaclava‘:

That’s it for this week. Here’s a picture of a tiny smiling pig. Enjoy your weekends.

A good plane based number this week. The DFS 346 was a German rocket powered swept wing aeroplane, completed and flown in the Soviet Union after World War II. The Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master is a military transonic trainer aircraft, based on the Yak-130. I’ll pretend you all knew that anyway though.

Our fearless leader Matt Webb has returned from 3 weeks in the US, with considerable jetlag, and tales from CES. He’s been taking Little Printer on a whistlestop tour all over the country, so will be unpacking meetings this week when his head is back on UK time.

Simon’s doing his usual incredible balancing act between making sure our client work is running smoothly, keeping all aspects of Little Printer and BERG Cloud on track, and managing the last few bits of new office sorting out. He’s also sorting through job applications (there’s still time to apply if you’re interested, we’re closing applications this coming Friday the 27th). It’s Kari’s last full week in the studio before she heads off on maternity leave, so she’s training Helen up on the last handful of bits. We’ll miss her!

The majority of the office are still pressing ahead with all aspects of Little Printer and BERG Cloud. Andy and Jack are working on the hardware and the industrial design. I’ve been doing a bit of design work for the shell, and working on the sales and out of box experience for when we launch. Andy’s sitting at his new soldering desk with a load of new circuit boards. Alice did tell me what she was working on, but all I wrote down next to her name was ‘moving’. Based on what she’s shown us at Friday demos for the last couple of weeks though, it’s pretty mind boggling and very exciting. James is similarly working on different but again very exciting backend stuff for Little Printer, as well as working on the IA for the mobile website with Denise, who displayed an impressively vast Illustrator document on Friday covered in wireframes. She’s also manning the BERG Cloud CS desk with Simon and Kari. Nick and Phil are as always working on the real backbone of the entire system, with a lot of brief writing and organisation of meetings.

Joe is putting the final touches to his Uinta work which is looking and sounding brilliant. Both him and Jones were in the recording studio yesterday.

Jack is mostly on the industrial design and manufacturing of Little Printer, but is also having a few catchups with Webb and Jones, and working with Timo on the final stretch of a bit of Uinta work. Timo’s doing a little bit of filming, a little bit of editing, and is also talking at the Design of Understanding this Friday. Matt Jones is on some Uinta project work, a few sales meetings, and is getting his hair cut tomorrow.

That’s pretty much it for week 346, fuelled by the 1.125kg of Haribo we’ve consumed as an office in under 2 days, and with the soundtrack of Pinch’s Fabriclive 61 mix, which I entirely recommend.

Week 345 is upon us, and progressing nicely. In number theory, ’345′ is a sphenic number, but I would imagine you know that already. On to things you might not know; what’s going on in the studio.

We’re almost fully settled into the new space. There’s a bit more painting to be done, some insulation to be pumped into the roof and a large delivery of teabags on order. We’ve worked out most of the major issues – like where to go for lunch, but it has to be said, certain BERGians are missing the coffee hut. I’ve yet to see anyone come back with coffee and look happy about it.

Matthew is still in the USA, where he’s been since the beginning of the year, he should be back soon. Jack is not 100% well, and so has been in and out of the office, trying not to infect us all. When he’s not in quarantine he’s working on the physical aspects of Little Printer with Andy. This involves mechanics and graphics, a mix we’re rather enjoying.

James is back in the office for the first time this year. He’s working on some behind the scenes Little Printer tech with Alice. Nick and Phil are working on a bit of refactoring too, but both of them seem rather cheerful about it. Alex and I are also working on Little Printer – a mix of things from packaging ideas, to IA. I’m also trying to keep on top of the feedback we’ve been receiving (there’s been a lot of it, and people have been lovely, thank you).

Joe and Timo have both been working on two separate projects for Uinta.. The end is in sight for the work Joe has been doing – and it’s looking beautiful. It requires some voice over work from Jones, which should be entertaining. Timo is working on editing, directing and interviewing for the film he’s making. We saw some work in progress last week and it’s everything we were hoping for – magic included.

Kari has been helping to get Helen all settled in. She’s also been battling with studio and finance admin. Simon has been here there and every where, organising the last bits of the studio, getting the timesheets in for last year (no, pressure, Nick) and sorting through job applications.

And I think that’s it.

Factoid of the week: the year 344 was a leap year starting on a Sunday. As is 2012. How about that.

Week 344 in the BERG studio has a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. Joe rejoined the studio (back from the US trip with Jones & Webb) on Tuesday. Jones stayed in the US for a couple of extra days but has just arrived back in the studio, straight from the airport. What can I say, he is hardcore. Webb was at CES in Las Vegas yesterday (we can’t wait to get his report) and continues his US mini-tour in San Francisco today. James Darling is still on a tropical beach somewhere. Other BERG folk have been out to see GPs and osteos, track down packages, run various errands, etc. At the same time, we’ve had a number of visits from clients/partners and also have several contractors spending time in the studio this week. So it’s still felt like the busy, buzzing hub that it usually is.

Let me say a quick word about two people who have been mentioned in passing in previous weeknotes without much other explanation as to who they are. Phil Wright is a contractor who has been helping us out with the development of Little Printer since April of last year. He spends most days in the studio and has his own desk and everything, so although he remains on contract status, he feels like part of the regular BERG team. Helen Rogers joined us for two afternoons a week at the beginning of December to start training to take over for me as our Studio Manager when I go on maternity leave at the beginning of February. From this week she’s up to four afternoons a week, and from the start of February, she’ll be four full days a week. It’s been a treat to work with her thus far as she is super clever and catches onto everything so quickly. It’s nice knowing that the studio will be in very competent hands when I step away in a few weeks. Watch for more info about her to show up in the Studio section of the website soon!

As for the rest of the BERGians, this week Simon is doing some rounding off of project costs for 2011 and looking at capacity planning for 2012, leading some workshops on the continued development and future of Little Printer, coordinating various bits of Uinta projects that we have on the go, and working through the final issues that still need to be resolved in the new studio. In case you missed it, he also posted adverts for two new positions that we’re looking to hire for. If you’re interested in working for BERG, please do have a look to see if either of those describes you!

Nick has been working on the technical architecture for BERG Cloud, thinking about chips and font rendering for Little Printer and doing some work on the Suwappu app.

Joe has been catching up on what he missed being out for a week and getting his feet back under him. He’s mainly working on integrating animation in a couple of Uinta projects.

Denise is still very generously handling most of the enquiries that come in about BERG Cloud and Little Printer. She’s also continuing work on the UI and IA for the internet side of Little Printer.

Alex has the fun job of developing the brief for the Little Printer packaging and unboxing experience. He’s still doing some work on Uinta this week and is also helping to make the new studio a happier, more accommodating place with a functional doorbell and signage.

Alice is also involved in the font rendering work for Little Printer and is doing some early stage investigative work into dev tools for people who want to create their own publications for Little Printer.

Timo is working on a Uinta animation brief and is also doing some shooting for a 90 second test pilot. I’m sure more will be revealed about that in good time, but it’s potentially pretty exciting.

Andy is making good use of our CitySpring courier account, sending various components hither and yon. He’s also having conversations about what should be printed on the back of Little Printer. I suppose most people don’t really think too much about the copy on the back of their electronics, but it turns out it’s pretty important.

As for me, I have been doing all the usual financial admin, trying to wrap up some last bits of business around moving studio, ordering office supplies, handling all the general (i.e. non-Little Printer or BERG Cloud) enquiries that come in to the studio, etc. Today I get to teach Helen how to run the quarterly VAT return. (Exciting stuff, eh?) And I’ve been getting kicked in the ribs (from the inside) pretty much the whole time I’ve been typing this. Maybe that second cup of tea wasn’t such a great idea after all…