As an introduction to the GOTO Conference in June, we organize a monthly meetup to introduce you to the topics of the conference. These meetups are called GOTO Nights and are totally free to attend and food and drinks are included.
At the start of the GOTO season we gather together to decide which topics are interesting for developers to learn more about. For these topics we try to find the best speakers for the conference and for the GOTO Nights.
Docker training courses now available in Eindhoven! The first training will be held on the 29 & 30 April 2015. A special VIP discount code of 10% is given to attendees of the GOTO Eindhoven Docker Night on the 16 April 2015. We are filling up the room so register today you don’t want to miss this .
Quite a few people have asked me over the years why I, as an interaction designer, do not use some of all the sketching and prototyping software that is out there, and why I still draw by hand despite the availability of all of these really smart and practical tools. Here’s why:
Screenshot of Balsamic
When I sketch a first prototype of a piece of software for a customer, then despite having done my homework well exploring the customer’s wants, and researching the users’ needs, I usually never get it right the first time. Understanding a new domain of expertise is a process that takes time and effort, and I always learn new things about a domain when I present a first prototype sketch to the customer and/or the users. There were things they forgot to tell me the first time, things I did not fully grasp the importance of initially. These new pieces of information usually causes the interaction design to change, as it should. But….
Monday, the 17th of November GOTO organizes a new GOTO night in Amsterdam and what a session this will be!
The evening starts with a lot of pizza to satisfy the hunger. Beware though, food for thought might come from the other great minds you can share dinner with. It’s all about meeting new people and sharing your passion!
After the pizza we have 2 speakers who are able to blow you away. First we have Eelco Visser who will explain the principles and techniques for designing and implementing software languages. He will show how Spoofax helps us in creating our own languages.
Our second speaker is Neal Ford. He will explain the paradigm shift to get from an imperative programmer to a functional programmer. He will give examples in Java, Clojure and Scala. Expect to be amazed.
Be quick!
Boarding is almost finished and the room is already packed. Who will fill the last few seats for a full house? Register now using this link and see you on monday!
Take a look at the upcoming trainings schedule at GOTO Academy.
We will also have FREE evening events on the topics iBeacon, AngularJS. Stay tuned!
FREE EVENTS
Tablets inside the classroom
For years now, PC/Desktops have been present in the classroom providing children and students digital learning environments. These learning environments are helping the teachers by providing interactive learning aids where children and students can independently work and learn. In primary schools, classrooms are filled with just a couple of PCs in order to allow children to learn how to use a computer. Many of these PCs include special software written specifically for kids, where they can learn to practice basic mathematics, writing, language, etc. Most of the time these PCs are not even connected to the Internet, because of the nature of the applications and run on local machines. Read the rest of this entry »
We hope you can make it to our next GOTO Amsterdam (June 18th-20th).
90% of the conference schedule is now final and live. The next early discount to save €200 ends May 14th. Get your seat now!
We encourage you to take a look at the training courses, that take place on June 18th. Leading industry experts will provide a day of hands-on tutorials on a wide range of topics.
See the complete training overview here.
Over the last year we have been working very hard on our new and improved QTI Assessment Delivery Engine; version 3. With the previous versions we were more or less stuck to the QTI rendering and implemented a lot of custom developed code around it to get it working. Many of these features have been rewritten and implemented into the product’s core of version 3, of course taking into account the IMS QTI conformance.
Trifork is currently busy implementing the Overstapservice Onderwijs (OSO) Traffic Center, a system that mediates the transfer of student files between schools. The Traffic Center standardizes the exchange of student files between primary- and secondary schools. The OSO project is a continuation of the Electronisch Leerling Dossier (ELD) project. It enables the digital transfer of student related documents between the individual student administration systems (LAS) of schools, regional initiatives and other stakeholders. A major challenge for the Traffic Center is that by law it is not allowed to store the student files, but it is purely facilitating the exchange.
In this blog entry I provide some insights into how the exchange is eventually facilitated and some of the challenges we had with it.
Congratulations to our client the University of Amsterdam who today launched their new website. With a new look & feel and a complete update of all the existing content it’s a showcase of how educational institutions can really provide relevant information to varied target audiences. The site built by us, Orange11, with the use of Hippo CMS now makes it not only easier and simpler for individual departments to update web content, it also enables the University of Amsterdam (UvA) to increasingly engage, inform and empower its students and teachers.
The CMS is not only the foundation for the main UvA website, it also supports around 100 other subsites within the university. These can be sites for different faculties but also for initiatives like Spui 25, which is a project website that is affiliated to the UvA. The total repository contains around 25.000 documents. Each is a different document type and now with this solution in place these documents can be in the shared as not only part of the repository but also in a sub-site specific section. This makes the content model very flexible especially for the numerous content editors.
Furthermore, the content in the repository is not only generated by editors, but also from content from LDAP and SAP. Besides importing content it can now also export content. This large amount of content it is all kept in sync with our advanced Solr based search solution. Solr is also what we have integrated within the site for searching the content. The search database also shows content from other sources like the StudieGids for example.
A blog on the complete search solution will hopefully follow sometime soon…but for now, take a look around the new UvA website for yourself and let us know if you have any questions.
