The company blog

A day in the life of a Developer by Neil Kilbride

Sam (Software Developer) and I (Head of Applications Development) recently attended the University of Nottingham Jubiliee Campus, to give a talk to second year Computer Science students that were taking part in the group project module. The talk was entitled ‘What’s it like to work in an agile software development team?’.

The talk focused on how the Esendex development team tackle software development, and we presented some ideas for the planning and development aspects of their own group projects. Sam and I are Nottingham Alumni and we both did the same module as undergraduates at Nottingham. For both of us, the module stands out as the closest thing you’ll experience at university to working as part of a real software team in industry.

It was tough selecting exactly what to put in the talk, ‘agile development’ is a broad subject and means different things to different people. We could have easily talked about the Agile Manifesto for the 50 minutes we had, but in the end I think we did well cherry picking the parts that would interest the students and be relevant to their group projects. We also thought it important to run through a demo of some of the concepts we talked about and this part was especially well received.

We carried out a ‘mini retro’ at the end of the talk, asking the students to leave some feedback on their way out. We split the board in two; ‘What went well?’ and ‘What could have gone better?’, providing the students with some post-its and pens.

You can’t see the comments on the picture below, but here’s some examples…

• Content truly excellent! All highly relevant and interesting, right level of detail
• First live demo from a guest lecturer
• Great to see a live demo, putting theory into context
• Actually related to the group project
• Students might have struggled following the detail of some examples. Slow down a little. Font size and colour, for demo.

If you would like anymore information I’d love to hear from you, please email neil.kilbride@esendex.com.

Esendex announces free Business SMS Audit service

We’re offering companies in the East Midlands free access to a vital business tool aiming to help boost the region’s economy.

We are launching a New Year health check for firms to make sure that they are making the most of business texting services. SMS offers companies new ways of marketing to their customers and cutting operational costs.

Chief Commercial Officer Geoff Love said; “In the current economic climate, where budgets are being cut and companies are being asked to do more and more with less and less, smart companies are switching to SMS.

“Text messages are cheaper and quicker than phone calls or letters to customers and staff and are more widely read than emails. Whether it’s sending balance reminders, delivery notifications, appointment reminders, satisfaction surveys or system alerts – SMS ensures that messages get there fast.”

Our SMS Business Audit offers a review from one of our SMS experts who will carry out a free one hour consultation, during which our SMS expert will gain a fuller understanding of how their business communicates. Following the review, we will provide recommendations suggesting ways in which SMS could be deployed to improve business communications.

Geoff Love, said; “Just about any business can benefit from using SMS more effectively, whether you are looking for new ways of reaching your customers or making sure you get vital messages through to staff.

“We are hoping that by offering this service we can help businesses in the East Midlands to keep up with the latest developments in this field and to make the region’s economy more competitive.”

Businesses who wish to take advantage of the Business SMS Audit service should contact Hannah Giles on 0115 989 5125 or email hannah.giles@esendex.com.

Text messaging celebrates 19th Birthday this Christmas

The first text message was sent on December 3, 1992, by an engineer named Neil Papworth.  The message “MERRY CHRISTMAS” was sent to his colleagues at Vodafone.

The message, sent  in an office in Newbury signalled the beginning of a new era for communication.

Of course, Neil Papworth was not aware of its significance at the time, with text messaging not really becoming common until the following decade.

Papworth commented that he would “never have predicted that text messaging would spread into the consumer world” and explained that the system of using SMS messages was thought to be “a clever way for a company’s staff to send simple messages to one another.”

Nowadays, it seems hard to image life without SMS services and messages, with an estimated 8 trillion messages being sent this year – a figure which equates to around 15 million every minute.

This is a far different story from what was experienced earlier in the lifespan of SMS messages. In 1995, three years after the first message was sent, mobile users sent an average of just 0.4 SMS messages each month.

The turn of the millennium, however, saw text messaging become a more natural and popular form of communication for people of all ages.

The dominance of text messaging is also something which is prevalent in both the consumer and corporate world and continues to reign despite other developments in technology.

According to Portio research, the global messaging market is expected to be worth more than $300 billion (approximately £191.9 billion) by 2014 after being valued at $179.2 billion (approximately £114.6 billion) last year.

As SMS celebrates its 19th birthday this Christmas, mobile users can wish this innovative form of communication “many happy returns” for many more years to come.