How we got here.
•Download as PPT, PDF•
1 like•802 views
Tells the story of how Neontribe - an 8-person web development micro got to be on the UK government's G-Cloud framework. Built for a slot at the North Norfolk Public Sector Procurement Conference, Feb 24th 2012. Best followed by reading the speaker's notes...
Recommended
More Related Content
More from Harry Harrold
More from Harry Harrold (15)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
How we got here.
- 7. Some folk we know...
- 12. How we met'em...
- 15. And where it got us...
- 17. ...4 days...
- 23. South Walsham broad CC-BY http://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/
- 25. Thank you...
Editor's Notes
- This is us. Neontribe. Web developers. I've told the person with control to click “next slide” every ten seconds so we finish on time. I'll try and keep up.
- This is where we've ended up. The government's Cloudstore – offering Agile software development and Interface design and prototyping as Specialist Cloud Services under the G-Cloud framework.
- We're builders. Web developers Other people tell us how to make things look, we make things work.
- We like to start projects with prototyping in paper. It's the best tool we've found for getting non-technical folk and developers collaborating on how something might work.
- Then we start developing, testing at every stage.
- When we're sure something works, we work with graphic designers to make it look beautiful.
- I think key to us getting to the point where we thought we could tender for the G-Cloud framework was confidence.
- We're proud to have worked with the multi-award-winners at Channel 4 Education. Getting commissioned by people like Matt Locke and Alice Taylor does your confidence the world of good.
- We've been to a load of Rewired State hack days. Difficult to over-estimate the value of the opening up of government data to small companies like ourselves.
- We ran a hack day ourselves – thanks to Rewired State, all the devs, all the people who showed up to the show-and-tell and our sponsors.
- More open data – this time about public toilets in London. Another example of the open data niche small companies seem to find more comfortable than larger organisations.
- Like many companies, we find we're most successful when we get out and meet people.
- Twitter means we can meet people that we'd simply not have the chance to at big-name conferences.
- Govcamp has been keen to us too. It's a home for like-minded individuals to argue out what the web might do for government. It's free, very egalitarian, and we've learned an enormous amount there. It's about the conversation, rather than who you work for. (We love it so much we sponsored it in 2010. And thanks to Dave Briggs, Steph Gray and Jeremy Gould for making it happen.)
- All that got us to the point where we'd heard of G-Cloud and knew roughly what it was – mid-November last year. We didn't at that time think it was for us. We'd seen IAAS, PAAS, SAAS, but we'd not read as far as Specialist Cloud Services until we caught a tweet that mentioned what that was all about.
- That got us to the - surprisingly pain-free – GPS portal. And what was, I'll grant you, a fair amount of reading.
- 4 days to read and reply.
- Like I said, quite a lot of reading... We were lucky that I had some spare time in between projects, while everyone else was busy.
- But I was really surprised how easy it was to respond to the Tender – that service description is on what passes for our letterhead, most of the rest was one pretty compact webform.
- And absolutely delighted to find ourselves here.
- Offering agile software development services. Early days yet, it only launched last week. But for a 8-person micro like us, being on that list is a real opportunity.
- (I admit I added this slide in after the first presentation – it's the other service we offer on govstore.)
- Here we are now, head in the clouds, dreaming of what this might mean. (And I owe Steph Gray - @lesteph - for this metaphor...)
- And this is where we need to be. Feet on the ground, with a lot of work to do before we see any business from G-Cloud.
- Thank you very much. We're just on a list, we know that, but it's great to be there and it wasn't as hard as I'd feared to get there.