Midnight update
The CodeBlacks is quiet. Everyone hunched over their laptop, some with headphones on. Concentration. Coding.
Team Australia are noisy. There’s beer on the table and there’s blood on their hands. From opening the beer!
Archive for the ‘New Zealand’ Category
Half Way There
We’ve just gone over the half-way mark and some strange things are happening in the judges room. Discussions about penguins not eating polar bears, accessibility being ’so old hat’ and plenty of the hard stuff and now Fiona is singing Advance Australia Fair. Someone shoot me, shoot me now. Not to mention the fatigue setting in for our two champion teams. Poor kids, they’re in there killing themselves for this comp and we’re turning into a veritable bunch of loonies. Many more hours to go…meanwhile, the Code Blacks are starting to worry about their designer’s sense of colour.
CodeBlacks at the 9hr mark
I asked Thomas Scovell, NZ project manager if they’re on track. The answer, “Yes, surprisingly!” The CodeBlacks are working to a timeline they’d drawn up earlier, and althought they knew it would change some, what’s pleasing is how little it actually has.
The team has found the client “awesome” to deal with. They’ve had a lot time with them and found them willing to come back and work through ideas, but also “go away” for a while so the CodeBlacks can work through the next iteration. What’s been especially pleasing is how amenable they’ve been to ideas, and how quickly they’ve picked up a lot of web concepts and made decisions on how those concepts would suit their audience.
Thomas sounded a little disappointed when he had to admit there really hasn’t been any tense discussions among the team on direction! I think he would have enjoyed the opportunity to have everyone put their point of view and then lead through a process of resolution. So, whilst team members do have final say in their area of speciality, because everyone has such a rounded knowledge of the web process, no one’s pushing the boundaries too far.
I asked about the challenges ahead. Key is going to be pulling all the pieces together. A lot of work’s been done in parrallel to date, but always looming has been how and when it’s integrated. Thomas thinks around midnight is going to be a crunch-time, when the HTML/CSS templates are started to be integrated to the back-end functionality.
And will there be any time left over at the end? The CodeBlacks hope there’s an opportunity to sit down a few hours before the end and make a decision about what polish they can add to the site, or if there’s any new features they can quickly add. But they know they’ve got to get the basics nailed first.
Listen’ Up Ya’ll - Sabotage!
This just in: the Australian client is busted waltzing into the Code Blacks room to ask if they wanted to “go to the pub”. Shocking!
Renae (off to do some serious work now)
A touch of light reading anyone?
The good folk over at Site Point have been kind enough to donate their engaging reference books for both teams so they now have pride of place in the lock-ins. It begs the question though, are our experts too advanced to actually make use of these rockin’ gifts?
Renae (in pr mode)
Hot New Videos
I’m inflicting the judges room with the Theme From S-Express, “I’ve got the hots for you!” “ba, bu dam, bababa doo dum” and attempting to blog through the silliness. Here’s some great new videos to keep you amused (because we all know my dorky antics won’t)…
The Aussie Team Get Started
Interviews With The Aussie Team
Introducing The Kiwis
Renae (karaoke queen)
Trash-talking
We can’t imagine who the CodeBlacks are referring to!
Still, dissing the judges might be a bad tactical move.
How websites evolve
See how the websites evolve over the 24hrs. We’re taking screenshots of the sites every hour.
Lies, Lies & Statistics?
This just in from Kym, who is monitoring the stats for both sites. So far there have been 150 visitors from around the planet looking at the two sites, including 25 from America and a further 20 from Asia.
“Considering there is nothing there to look at I think we are going very well” says Kym.Renae (trying not to eat too much mochi on the job)
Are you eating and drinking enough?
That was what Debbie Verdon the NZ team’s client was just asking. We should all be so lucky to work with such thoughtful clients. Debbie is across everything happening regarding her upcoming website. She was just getting a walk through from Thomas Scovell about where they are upto with the design. Seems there will be some enhancement of the existing logo, but not too far removed from what it is currently. The site will encompass jobs that may be of interest to people with a disability and links to services such as Centrelink. Debbie pointed out the need to keep this information current for the users and to have relevant news posted on the site. The mood there is intense. I think eating or drinking is the last thing on Thomas’s mind. It’s all very serious.
Amira