Earlier in August, members of HMA attended Hey! a regular event organised by Josh Nesbitt of Stac (http://wearestac.com) , a Leeds-based consultancy specialising in software engineering.
It’s an informal event for people working in the development and digital industries to share their knowledge through talks, lectures and interviews. The informal setting is perfect for awkward free networking and some serious knowledge-learning.
The August event was held at the Belgrave, a great venue in Leeds city centre, and was the debut of the new interview-style event format. There were 2 talks:
Digital Marketing for the Music Industry by Rabbit Hole – click here for more info.
It was very interesting to learn how Rabbit Hole, a music-niche creative agency, collaborates with Rising Digital (a music industry social media agency), and how they have a familiar creative and pre pitching process to larger less-niche based-agencies. Their antidotes of working with some really big names (re: Kylie, Lily Allen, Dead Mau5) were also great, and an insight on how to manage clients of that calibre and industry.
The Business Value of Open Source by James Hall of Parallax – click here for more info.
Great beginner’s level interview on open source, which got us inspired! James highlights the pros and cons of open source (a few are below).
Pros:
Great community for project feedback and contributions
Altruistic (more on this below)
Cons
Lack of support compared to Microsoft software for example.
Licensing (more on this below)
James Hall goes on to discuss the software licensing behind open source, and why it may be scaring agencies away; can an agency use all open-source codes for project and still make money? Yes you can, and you can even use a mixture of open source and proprietary software! You can read more about the software licensing of open sourcing here
One of my favourite discussion topics that the interview went on to make was how even non-programming companies should be adopting open-source as a way of business; which was very timely with Sky Sports and FIFA perusing legal action on people vining goals! The premise is that once businesses stop being afraid of someone stealing their ideas, then more innovation can be created; this has been seen with TESLA releasing all their patents on the internet “in the spirit of the Open-Source Movement”. James also mentions a great project where a group of architects released their designs for sustainable living quarters for the 3rd world to the public, which had over 3,100 architects contributed to the project.
It may sound obvious, but it was clear from both interviews that passion in your work and industry is really the key to day-to-day success; motivating employees to create and innovate.
We are definitely looking forward to the next Hey! event!