DevCSI 14-16th Feb 2012

Dev8D Retro

Over the last three years Dev8D has produced some fantastic and innovative projects, which have been a real benefit to both individual institutions and the sector as a whole.

Find out more about our past events as we go retrospective…

Dev8D 2009

The very first DevCSI Developer Days event took place in February 2009. Some highlights included:

  • A team from the University of Kent won £5000 in the rapid prototyping competition by creating a web 2.0-friendly reading list called List8D
  • Presentations from Microsoft, Blackboard and user-specialists
  • Introduction to Python for newbies
  • Creation of a JSON plugin for the EPrints repository software platform which allowed users to preview the contents of a research article by simply hovering over a link
  • Development of the ‘happiness meter’ to measure how happy the event made attendees

Visit the Dev8D 2009 website to find out more.

Dev8D 2010

The 2010 Dev8D was loosely based around various types of activity: Expert Sessions, Workshops, Coding Labs, Project Zones and Construction Challenge.

The Expert Sessions were a mixture of lightning talks, debates and discussions on subjects ranging from APIs to frameworks. Some talks will be given by guest speakers, others were led by Dev8D attendees.

The Programming Zones were the spaces to learn new programming skills. Some of the training was structured – such as the ‘programming dojo’, set up to help delegates learn the art of new programming languages with guidance from a programming sensei and based on principles of pair programming. Around these structured sessions were also space to allow more spontaneous training with other Dev8D attendees. The Arduino sessions were particularly well received.

The Project Zones were the places to take what delegates learnt so far at Dev8D and use their creativity and imagination to complete short challenges. The exact nature of the activities was decided by a group of expert developers before the start of Dev8D, challenges were based around hardware devices, software capabilities and team building.

Dev8D 2010 didn’t end when the sun went down, there were more challenges, games and the chance to win some big tech prizes!

Visit the Dev8D 2010 website to find out more.

Dev8D 2011

Dev8D 2011 was loosely based around various types of activity: Expert Sessions, Workshops, Coding Labs, Project Zones and Construction Challenge.

The Expert Sessions were a mixture of lightning talks, debates and discussions on subjects ranging from APIs to frameworks. Some talks will be given by guest speakers, others were led by Dev8D attendees.

The Programming Zones were the spaces to learn new programming skills. Some of the training was structured – such as the ‘programming dojo’, set up to help delegates learn the art of new programming languages with guidance from a programming sensei and based on principles of pair programming. Around these structured sessions were also space to allow more spontaneous training with other Dev8D attendees. The Arduino sessions were particularly well received.

The Project Zones were the places to take what delegates learnt so far at Dev8D and use their creativity and imagination to complete short challenges. The exact nature of the activities was decided by a group of expert developers before the start of Dev8D, challenges were based around hardware devices, software capabilities and team building.
Visit the Dev8D 2011 website to find out more.