How to make Smart421′s customised cocktails

Smart421 Custom Cocktails
Photo by Templeton-Cross.com

By popular demand we’ve decided to publish today the receipes from the customised cocktails we served last week at the Gartner AADI Summit in London.

Our guests absolutely loved the choice of 4 alcoholic and 2 non-alcoholic custom cocktails.

These were created specially for us by leading mixologist and bartender David Hurst and expert flair bartender David Oliveira at UK’s leading mobile bar company, Cocktailmaker ( @CocktailmakerUK ).

Handle with care… I mean flair.
Ok, both maybe!

Tip: depending on which you try, all these recipes will come out either red or purple (our company colours).

Any other colours you might obtain will be a total fluke and you should probably try again (in case you needed a good excuse…)

Cloud DR Breeze: Vodka, Grapefruit Juice, Cranberry Juice

Put plenty of ice in a highball glass, add a large shot of vodka and fill with equal measures of cranberry and grapefruit juice.

IaaS Cooler: Crème de Cassis, Crème de Fraise, Cranberry Juice, Lime Juice

Put one measure of each of the cassis, strawberry liqueur and cranberry juice into a shaker tin full of ice, add a squeeze of lime, shake well and strain in to a martini glass.

API Factory Collins: Vodka, Lemon Juice, Gomme, Strawberry, Soda Water

Put a large shot of vodka, a single shot of fresh lemon and half a shot of sugar syrup into an ice-filled shaker tin, shake well and strain into an ice-filled highball glass. Top with soda water, garnish with a lemon wedge and serve.

Integration Martini: Coconut Rum, Cranberry Juice, Grapefruit Juice

Put a good scoop of ice in a highball glass, add a large shot of coconut rum and fill with equal measures of cranberry and grapefruit juice.

Service Factory Fizz: Strawberry, Orange Juice, Lime, Lemonade

Add a measure of strawberry puree to a shaker with 150ml of orange juice, squeeze and drop in a wedge of lime, fill with ice, shake well and strain into a highball glass half full of fresh ice. Top with lemonade.
(Non-alcoholic)

SOA Water: Passion Fruit Juice, Orange Juice, Grenadine, Soda Water

Equal measures of passion fruit juice and orange juice are shaken in a tin with ice, the mix is poured into a highball glass and topped with soda. Pour grenadine carefully down the side of the glass.
(Non-alcoholic)

Enjoy.

Please Rate and Like this blog. Leave a Comment to tell us about your favourite. Come back later and Comment about the fun you had mixing these cocktails.

 

What happens when people who keep systems running get running themselves

Woodbridge 10K finish line at Market Hill
Photo by A Mayston

As a perfect antedote to the day job at Smart421, many of us techies enjoy running. And what better way than to raise money for charity as you go. So this year, as most years, Anthony Mayston helped to corordinate and organise parts of the Woodbridge 10K, held last Sunday (19 May).

For one weekend every year, this quiet Suffolk town takes on the hussle and bussle of a busy sports hub.

This year was no exception, attracting hundreds of runners and thousands of spectators who came out to enjoy the sunshine and to cheer on their teams.

Smart421 fielded a strong team including Neil Miles, Mark Stancombe-Duhm,  Jon Dodman, Robin Meehan and Toby Milne and finished a credible 18th out of 66 teams.

Unlike last year, we don’t have any photo evidence of Smarties hitting the pain barrier but we do have a rather nice photo of our Smart421 branded sponsor flags out in Market Hill.

Look closely at the the crowd photo… Can you spot yourself, or someone you know? Take a screen shot and let us know by email (marketing@smart421.com) and you could win some free chocolate (therapeutic purposes only, of course).

The good news is that this year’s Woodbridge 10K raised over £7,000 which will be distributed across half a dozen charities all doing really great work in our neck of the woods.

STOP PRESS
In related news, Smarties Andrea Dix and Zoe Moldram also did their fair share of running the same weekend. They took part on the St Elizabeth Hospice Midnight Run last Saturday (18 May) and raised over £1,100. Well done girls.

Please rate and Like this blog. If you can, please leave a Comment.

 

Survival quip delivers powerful lesson on technological change

Photo © Ciprian.d Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

As you already know from the blog 5 Dec 2012, as we were preparing to tell  the world about our Big Data capabilities, our CTO Robin Meehan coined a cracking one-liner:

“It’s not about survival of the fittest – it’s about survival of the best informed”

We liked it so much we decided to include it on our go-to-market materials.

Since then, we’ve witnessed some upsides such as how our customers have decided to deliberately ’think outside of the box’ to better understand their portfolio of brands and be better equipped to attract customers without canabalisation of other lines of business.

A great case in point would have to be Quotemehappy.com which is already taking advantage of the analytical power in cloud computing with Big Data on AWS to understand its brand and build its business.

Aviva launched Quotemehappy.com in August 2011. With a national reputation and strong brand in the general insurance sector at stake, they wanted to know how their multi-touchpoint cross marketing activities impacted each brand in their enterprise portfolio.

Smart421 was invited to assist.  Smart421 architected the Cloud instances using Amazon Web Services (AWS) and developed the algorithms needed to maximise the power of the customer’s own data and the Big Data analytical environment. This gave the business a level of insight not previously possible with traditional on-premise business intelligence tools and techniques.

And the customer was kind enough to go on record about what we had been able to do.

“Smart421’s Cloud architects gave us a head start on making Big Data real for us, including how business insights are really delivered, what the costs really are, and how the technology really works in our context. Their output contributes to how we differentiate ourselves in a crowded market.”

Keith Misson, Operations Director at Quotemehappy.com (an Aviva company).

Naturally, we asked if we could feature this on our website because it evidences the transformation effect of what a well architected IT strategy can deliver for a business.

(Why not share this case study with your colleagues and friends using short URL http://bit.ly/Wby5Y6 )

Big Data is a good example of how technologies developed for one use have been deployed for an altogether different use. I think that Robin’s original quip on survival has actually gone on to deliver a powerful lesson on technological exaptation.

 

Please Rate and Like this post, If you can, please leave a Comment.

 

Season’s Greetings and Best Wishes for the New Year from Smart421

Our Christmas message is simple.

We’d like to say a big thank you to all our customers, suppliers and staff for a great 2012. We look forward to working with you to make 2013 another successful year.

Children of our employees were encouraged to submit designs for our Christmas e-card and our employees voted for their favourite. This year, 2012, the winning entry was created from a creative montage of hand and footprints by Sebastian Ball, aged 3.

If you would like to view an animated version, please click here.

Don’t forget to show your support for our Group’s fantastic charity, Sparks.

Registered charity number 1003825 (England and Wales) and SC039482 (Scotland)

 

If 6 months is all it took for 5 co-founders to ramp SyncNorwich from a standing start to 400 people, what does that tell you about the UK IT sector?

Top of the City Room

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and other petrol-heads are obsessed with figures about performance from 0 – 60 mph in n seconds. For those who don’t understand why, the figures celebrate engineering design and manufacturing achievement.

So here is another performance figure for you…  from 0 – 400 members in 6 months.

Ignite talk presenters take questions and answers

This milestone number is significant and also deserves to be marked.

You cannot fail to be impressed with the achievement made by the the five co-founders of SyncNorwich, the geek-friendly interest group which was only launched 5th July this year and which has already proven to be a big hit with start-ups, developers and technologists from many tribes..

Last week’s meetup in the Top of the City Room at Carrow Road (home of Norwich City Football Club) showcased all that is good about this particular group. For example:

• The hospitality was warm and welcoming
• The venue was courtesy of a great Norwich company, Aviva
  
• The beer was free
• The geek factor was limitless (and almost off the scale – no names, won’t tell)
• The raft of presentations were varied and inspiring in the main, and humorous in all the right places
• The standard was high
• The networking was quality and relevant
• The entertainment was… er, well, entertaining (table-top ‘robot wars’ went down well)
• The spirit of collaboration and enterprise was genuine and strong

146 people made it. The place was buzzing. 

When it comes to numbers, it was the best turnout to date. And probably indicative of the interest levels surrounding this group.

Yes, of course the core members were there in force. I spoke to many of them on their way in. But I also spoke with people who had travelled in from some distance to find out for themselves because, some way or another, they had heard about SyncNorwich.

For a recap on the evening, I can’t find a better the account than the one on Paul Grenyer’s blog so recommend you visit…  after you’ve finished reading this post.

Mark Page at Aviva deserves a medal for his part in helping to bring together so many people from Aviva. They have a big contribution to bring to a group like SyncNorwich and it would be tremendous to see more of them joining in as much as possible.

And so…

The future looks very bright for SyncNorwich and for the tech community in Norwich as a whole.

Rob Houghton of Aviva

Already with a packed future calendar in place, starting 02 January 2013 with the January lunch and  24 January 2013 with the monthly meetup, and a full day conference lined up for 15 February 2013 (see SyncConf.com ) SyncNorwich has filled a gap that has been vacant and needed for too long.

All we know is that it’s been our pleasure to support SyncNorwich with sponsorship from its launch in July. Supporting the initiative and the co-founders in the early stages has been the ‘right thing to do’. Getting support in the early stages is never easy but when it comes it means so much.  We know – once upon a time, we were a tech start-up (read our company history).

And we have been pleased to see how SyncNorwich’s magnetic personality has attracted a host of others. The roll call of sponsors is growing. Room for more too.

But the final word belongs to the people. It has to belong with the people because that where it all starts.

SyncNorwich, perhaps above all else, is a tech /dev group “for the people, by the people”.  The members are front and centre of everything. And that’s what makes it great.

And as “one of the people” we’re pleased to be a small part of it.

If 6 months is all it took for 5 founders to ramp SyncNorwich from a standing start to 400 people, what does that tell you about the UK IT sector?

What this tells us about the UK IT sector is that it is bristling with talent and entrepreneurial ambition. It tells us that in the East of England there are concentrations of outstanding professionals. We work for some of them (not enough of them!). Some of them work for us  - and we’re still hiring).

Perhaps the SyncCity concept will be the shape of things to come for all tech start-up / developer groups? It certainly seems like a good model. We’ll find out soon enough.

Have you heard? – there’s talk of SyncIpswich coming in March 2013.

And on that bombshell… 

Related Links Twitter:  @SyncNorwich
Read the feed:  #SyncNorwich

All photos by kind permission of James Neale Photography

Please remember to Rate and Like this post. If you can, please leave a Comment.

 

If the world is going Big Data crazy then you need to know what it is, what it isn’t and what it means to your enterprise

The subcategory called Big Data is emerging out of the shadows and into the mainstream.

From left: Matt Wood, Chief Data Scientist at Amazon Web Services (AWS) with Robin Meehan, CTO at Smart421
Photo by Jim Templeton-Cross

What it is.

Definitions abound (who would have thought it? – quite usual in the technology market). For Big Data, we quite like the definition that originated with Doug Laney (@doug_laney), formerly META Group, now a Gartner analyst. It goes something like this:

 ” … increasing volume (amount of data), velocity (speed of data in and out), and variety (range of data types and sources)”

Gartner continue to use this “3Vs” model for describing Big Data.

Unsurprisingly, others are claiming Gartner’s construct for Big Data (see Doug’s blog post, 14 Jan 2012).

Still confused?

Put another way, Big Data is commonly understood to be:

“… a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools. The challenges include capture, curation, storage,search, sharing, analysis,and visualization. The trend to larger data sets is due to the additional information derivable from analysis of a single large set of related data, as compared to separate smaller sets with the same total amount of data, allowing correlations to be found to “spot business trends, determine quality of research, prevent diseases, link legal citations, combat crime, and determine real-time roadway traffic conditions.” read more on Wikipedia.

Big Data could be executed on-premise if you have sufficient compute and storage in your corporate data centre. And some do, especially some large banks, and with good success. Several solutions are already out there on the market;  Oracle’s Big Data Appliance is just one example.  But it does also beg the question “why would you” ?

If you don’t want the CapEx of purchasing more tin, or don’t want to gobble up capacity in your own data centre, then there are alternatives. For example, a cost model now exists with cloud-based compute and cloud-based storage (for example, think of Amazon’s announcement of 25 percent reductions in the price of Amazon S3, it’s storage solution) that puts Big Data in the Cloud well within the reach of all UK enterprises. A cost model like that islikely to win friends in procurement and in corporate governance as well as in IT.

Hinging on technologies including Apache Hadoop clusters, Amazon Elastic Map Reduce (Amazon EMR) and others, Big Data is delivering a degree of analytics and visualisation not previously possible at affordable levels.

Don’t just take our word for it, ask around. We could point you to other experts in Big Data, such Matt Wood ( @mza ), Chief Data Scientist at AWS.

What it isn’t.

Big Data isn’t business intelligence (BI). What I mean is that Big Data isn’t BI in any traditional sense of the term. It is altogether another level on from that. Granted that some tooling enterprises may own may be recycled for use in Big Data analytics. But it isn’t another species, it’s another race.

Big Data isn’t a lame attempt at reviving a management information system (MIS); those should be left to rest in peace.

What it means for you.

By now, if you’ve read this far, something should be niggling away at you that you could be missing a trick. I trust it won’t be those voices in your head again. But it might be your instincts telling you how Big Data could answer those tough business questions – y’know, those “I can’t be asked” questions that existing systems just cannot deliver.

Now, you would not necessarily get our CTO to come right out and say that Big Data is the next big thing. But evidence we are assembling so far does seem to point to a new capability to deliver. For those with an appetite to understand their business in new ways, Big Data is delivering tangible intelligence that lets them see new dimensions, new possibilities and new revenue streams.

I did get a full radar lock on something our CTO said in the summer. It was a throw away line at the time but it stuck with me and with others. So, when the time came to consider an appropriate go-to-market message for our quarter three (Q3) focus, we decided to wheel out his one-liner as part of our messaging.

“It’s not about survival of the fittest -
it’s about survival of the best informed”
Robin Meehan, CTO, Smart421 Ltd.

Making no apologies to Charles Darwin or evolutionists, the statement is resonating with decision makers in the enterprise space, not least those in the Insurance sector. Why?  Well, we think it is because a lot of the big insurers operate under many names in their brand portfolios.

The capability to see and understand impacts of brand activities, such as Insurance Quotes, delivered using Big Data analytics in the AWS Cloud, is illuminating new gains that would otherwise have remained out of reach.

Don’t forget – brand analysis is only one use case for Big Data in the Cloud.

If the world is going Big Data crazy then you need to know what it is, what it isn’t and what it means to your enterprise.

Agree?  Disagree?

UPDATE 05 Dec 2012 – Our economist friend Tim Harford  (@TimHarford) sent this hilarious tweet: The data do not lie. OR DO THEY? Muah huah huah! http://dlvr.it/2b2NS1

UPDATE 06 Dec 2012 – Robin and colleague Ben Baumguertel (@bbaumguertel) are attending the Big Data Analytics event in London today (organised by @WhitehallMedia ).

Please Rate this post and Like this post below. If you can, please leave a Comment.

 

Never mind the X factor – Cloud Computing showed it has the WOW factor at the UK IT Industry Awards

After all, there was really no need for our MD or our guests to become dispondent.

Having been named as a Finalist in the ‘Best Use of Cloud Services’ category, Smart421 may have been a tad surprised that the judges went for another Finalist at the UK IT Industry Awards.

In fact we were rather impressed with, and pleased for, The Met Office and PA Consulting who together saw off some pretty stiff competition to get the gong at the Awards Dinner in Battersea, London last Wednesday night (14 November).

And I was surprised that there actually wasn’t more gloating by the victors. You know how some marketing types can behave when tanked up on too much champers.

The UK IT Industry Awards did a great job to properly recognise the role of Cloud Computing for the first time when they selected the Weather Observations Website (WOW) which is currently available online as beta. See http://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/

And we think that this actually bodes well for the entire IT industry in the near and long term. It means that Cloud has proven that it has learned to crawl, walk and run. In other words, it means that Cloud Computing is winning its place as a resilient and credible alternative to on-premise-only lock in. And at an enterprise level, we think that must be a good thing.

As our customer Haven Power will tell you, being selected as Finalist at all was very encouraging. Their Disaster Recovery system architected by Smart421 and built in the AWS Cloud drew some significant attention from the press when it was first announced and, most likely, gave The Met Office a fair run for its money in front of the judging panel.

But putting the industry high jinks aside, the real winners are our customers who have fully functioning Cloud DR in place today as part of their business continuity planning strategy. Stuff like this is the sharp end of the Cloud revolution.

It has to be said, attendees were also impressed with our colleagues at Kcom (neighbour brand in the KCOM Group stable) who sponsored the on-site Twitter Wall. It turned out to be the unexpected big hit of the night and Kcom ranked top for tweets.

Never mind the X factor – Cloud Computing showed it has the WOW factor at the UK IT Industry Awards.

 

SyncNorwich November meetup will be remembered for its eclectic mix of presentations and good networking

The Blurtit office was crowded again with members of the tech community SyncNorwich in search of inspiration, information and …  Mr John Fagan’s (@johnbfagan) now infamous barbeques.

The cream leather chairs were back. Around 70 people huddled in to hear Andy Parker (@AndyParker_6) and Lauren Hine (@LaurenHine564) deliver a compelling talk highlighting their transition from being students at UEA Norwich Business School to becoming co-founders of tech startup Incredibli.com a new crowdfunding platform. I had a good chat with these two and their vision and determination was astonishing. Ones to watch, I think.

Quick beer break then straight into a talk by Juliana Meyer (@JulianaMeyer), co-founder of  SyncNorwich and founder of mBaSo.com a new platform positioned as a VIP backstage pass for superfans and for the musicians and artists they follow. If you get the chance check out the short video on YouTube.

A final potty break then the last talk of the evening was given by veteran property investor-turned-author Mark Alexander (@iAmALandord). At first, his talk seemed a bit tangental to the stuff we get at SyncNorwich. But quickly, his humourous delivery won everybody over and we excused the unashamed sales pitch for the £97 book – well most did anyway.

The evening was topped and tailed by developer and DJ Pete Roome (@zoltarSpeaks), who did a brilliant job on the decks. Pete’s mix seemed to cheer everybody up and thankfully was just loud enough that we could enjoy the music and still get some great networking done. Nice going Pete.

For example, I was pleased to get an introduction to Anders Fisher (@atleastimtrying), founder of Front End Suffolk (@FESuffolk) the browser based user group that brings together techs for regular meetups in Ipswich. I had heard plenty of good things before about this group and so it was particularly timely that our paths should cross. Anders certainly came across with instant credibility, approachability and real savvy.

Regulars to SyncNorwich will know that whenever a monthly meetup is held at Blurtit then it is invariably concluded with a stroll down the road to The Woolie for a swift half and some extended conversations and networking.

SyncNorwich November meetup will be remembered for its eclectic mix of presentations and good networking.

NEW: the SyncNorwich organisers have put together a new 1-day conference. This is scheduled to take place at the Open Venue  in Norwich on 15 February 2013. In case the word hasn’t got throught yet, an early bid price applies, so do make a point of visiting  the website http://syncconf.com/

The lineup of speakers is very impressive and the event comprises a Tech track and an Agile track.

 

Can anyone tell me what 421 is in binary, please? Real programmers code in binary

I hadn’t expected quite what would happen next.

Just imagine, It was late on a raining Wednesday afternoon… there was I - a tech sector marketer - wanting to verify a simple problem.

Can anyone tell me what 421 is in binary, please?    Is it 110100101   ?

Now, you need to know that I work on the principle that if you want to know something, always ask a specialist. One thing we’re not short of here is specialists. So I took a punt and put a question out to members of our Java practice and Microsoft practice.

A veritable tsunami of replies came in. Here’s an abbreviated list for us all to enjoy (no names have been changed, they are really not that innocent)

Thread

^JS:   Quick question: Can anyone tell me what 421 is in binary, please?    Is it 110100101   ?

^BN: Yes: 110100101  Used http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~gurwitz/core5/nav2tool.html

^DT: The OS X calculator application has a ‘programmer’ interface, which confirms the below: I was surprised. I just thought I’d look and see if it did binary conversion like my old scientific calculator used to …

Screenshot so you can see the other neat features.

Yes that funny ‘ƥ’ character is what the decimal code 421 in unicode is. In ascii it looks like a Yen symbol (‘¥’). base 16 ’421′ (1057 in base 10) in ascii Is ‘!’, and ‘C’ in unicode:  now I’m gonna write ‘fanboi’ before anyone else does…

^MW: 421 in octal is 100010001 in binary, which has a nice symmetry about it!

^SS: Well it’s a step up from microsofts unix kernel effort of x0B16B00B5 I suppose

^JN:  Have to include the fact that this isn’t just in OSX there is a programmer interface on the calc in Windows 7      [see screenshot]

^MA: 421 (decimal) is indeed 110100101 (binary). On the other hand it’s much easier to represent the same using the BCD (Binary Coded Decimal) way, as: 0100 0010 0001

^SS: Joseph, are you going to start advertising in the pure Matrix now then? I heard a rumour that Morpheus Robin required the new PCs to take a red pill to join, so that would explain everything…also Robin – when can I stop taking these blue pills you gave me ? it is getting quite embarrassing in the office when I have to get up and walk around…

^AC: So if the 1 is NEO (an anagram of ONE ) from the matrix, then the 42 must be the answer =D

^RM: I’m really glad you started that Joseph.  You’ve set Stuart off now

^AC: Isn’t it the number 4 and the number 21? Which should be represented differently? Or is it now ‘Smart four hundred and twenty one’

^AS: My binary watch tells me that 4:21 is 100:10101 (what pills are these – obviously must be “smarties”?)

^DA: Joseph – I think you need some practice with this http://forums.cisco.com/CertCom/game/binary_game_page.htm

Robin – If there are pills going spare we need more in Leeds.

^JS: Stu – Our marketing takes place in several paradigms – you know that! I know of no pills red, blue or otherwise, are you sure it’s not just a tube of Smarties left over from one of our Gartner events ?

Robin – It was a basic question, er no, not basic, binary, errr.. ascii, octal, unicode, base 16, base 10, fibonacci,  - whatever!

^PI:  AC and AS are correct. Smart Solutions 100₂ the 10101₂^st Century

^AS (a different one): Speaking of pills, this thread makes me want another Soma.

^CF:  Ouch…

^JS: A big thank you to all who inputted. I have what I needed (and more than expected – Stu, we’re looking at you). Thread now closed.

 

Kanban: What is it good for?

Benjamin Mitchell
Photo by James Neale

No doubt about it, Benjamin Mitchell’s (Twitter @benjaminm ) presentation at SyncNorwich last night certainly resonated with attendees.

Kanban: What is it good for? An introduction illustrated with war stories

Approaching a hundred people packed into The King’s Centre in Norwich for the monthly meetup of SyncNorwich, the geek-friendly interest group which was only launched 5th June this year and which has already proven to be a big hit with start-ups, developers and technologists from many tribes.

Mitchell, a Lean/Agile consultant and coach with experience in financial trading systems, delivered a proficient and well-grounded 45-minute keynote using nothing more than Post-It Notes and a powerpoint featuring index cards and even more Post-It Notes, clearly the stock-in-trade of a busy Agile Scrum master.

Networking at SyncNorwich
Photo by James Neale

Repeatedly extolling the virtues of keeping things simple and avoiding the pitfalls of planning systems like Jira, he impressed on the audience the art of the possible with a few ‘basic’ techniques from Kanban – the manufacturing process democratised by Toyota – which, when applied to the world of application development, promises to transform lurching or limping projects into lean projects with little (or less and less) wasted time.

“Monitors in daily stand ups suck the energy,” cautioned Mitchell. There spoke the voice of sometimes bitter experience, which came across loud and clear. I did notice several people in the audience stratching away on backs of envelopes, a ‘note to self’ for action next Monday perhaps. No shame in that. We were all here to learn something. My note to self: ‘buy more masking tape’

Note to self
Photo by James Neale

His witty anecdotes and on-the-fly Questions and Answers engaged everyone and enlivened what could so easily have been a mundane or routine subject area for those without deep expertise. This meant that he connected with attendees at all levels, including those new to kanban with no prior knowledge of direct experience. Skillful stuff indeed.

Recounting tales of holding agile scrums in fire escapes (to avoid the attention of an enemy CTO) and Agile-sceptic managers who “won’t blame you – yet”, Mitchell performed like a one-man comedy store, blending hard facts and soft skills which, to me anyway, came across as persuasive and surprisingly compelling.

Mitchell recalled an Agile development project when he wore a t-shirt sporting the message “Our ambitions outstrip our capabilities” causing uproarious laughter amongst the developers and testers in the audience and a few wry smiles from secretly-embarrased managers. No names no packdrill here, mate, you’re safe.

In all, it was a well-tuned and cleverly-crafted slot. Mitchell’s delivery was as good as the content. It was hard to know how the organisers might top the Lightning Talks at the August meetup. We need not have worried.

As well as intros from Paul Grenyer, and cold beers, I think this is exacty the kind of quality that SyncNorwich will become known for.

Twitter:  @SyncNorwich
Read the feed:  #SyncNorwich

All photos by kind permission of James Neale Photography

RELATED LINKS
Benjamin Mitchell’s blog  http://blog.benjaminm.net
IT Kanban Podcast http://itkanban.com/podcast/