We all know that the end of the financial year is approaching, and for some of us that brings deadlines and challenges. For Gaia Resources it’s time for staff reviews and an all hands meeting, all part of good communication.

Can you summarise what you’ve done in the last few months into a 2 minute slot? Especially after having a huge, lovely hamburger? We tried. We updated each other with the work we’ve been doing, and while there was a wide variety there were noticeable similarities. We are all dealing with information or data of a type, and customers. Some projects sounded very similar (e.g. ALA and DEHWA), but had different deliverables. The deliverables were obviously determined by the customer’s requirements. As developers we should not second guess customer requirements, or their relative importance. There is only one way you know what to develop, and that is by engaging your customer. We are going to practise what we preach by running some user engagement exercises with the results of our staff reviews. Everyone is going to tell Piers what is the most valuable thing that can be changed about their job. Will it be: more burgers, bigger monitors, bean-bags or something else?

Continuing the theme of good communication, Mel gave us a brown-paper bag session on her investigations into the Google mapping API. I was not aware of the functions available, no longer is Google maps just about putting your company’s location on the map.

So as the financial year draws in, it’s time to look back to look forward.

Don’t know what a brown-paper bag session is email me and I’ll tell you!