Engage 2018 - not long now!

There is much scurrying around in LDC towers as we prep for moving to Rotterdam en masse for Engage next week.

This year will be a rarity for us because we are hoping to actually spend some time appreciating the conference itself and talking to people, as there are no sessions to present or production go-lives to handle.

We do have a giveaway prepared, as anyone who has been watching our tweets will know, but you will have to wait a few more days to see what it is!

If you want one, you will have to come to the stall and talk to us — and we hope you do! The whole team has been heads-down for the past year, with some of us not attending any community conferences or even seeing daylight in that time.

So drop by and let’s have a chin-wag and a beer!

The first delivery for the @ldcvia @engageug giveaway has arrived... pic.twitter.com/CTLNanHedw

— Mark Myers (@stickfight) April 16, 2018

The second set of bits for the @ldcvia give away for @engageug (Tiny Tiny bits) pic.twitter.com/qPjEndzd3w

— Mark Myers (@stickfight) April 16, 2018

more parts of the @ldcvia give away for @engageug pic.twitter.com/t0YNX3BKIt

— Mark Myers (@stickfight) April 26, 2018

On the @ldcvia give always for @engageug I prefer the type on the right Vers the type on the left pic.twitter.com/tNDbZZOMfo

— Mark Myers (@stickfight) May 14, 2018

For shame madam, one of your connections is showing!! @ldcvia @engageug pic.twitter.com/4j3pA3qNqu

— Mark Myers (@stickfight) May 14, 2018

Engage 2018!

In just a few weeks we’ll be at this year’s Engage event in Rotterdam: we’re so looking forward to it. Every year Theo, Hilde and team put together an excellent event in the most amazing venues. This year is no different: Engage takes place on water — the SS Rotterdam to be specific.

We love sponsoring Engage — in recent years it’s become our main conference — and as ever we’d be delighted to talk to you. Do pop by and see us: we’ll be near the the entrance to the product showcase, at stand #3. We also have some rather nifty give-aways this year, so keep an eye on our Twitter feed.

GDPR: one month to go

The European General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, comes into force in a month’s time. The GDPR is a massive overhaul and extension of existing data protection and privacy laws in the EU, the first in over twenty years.

We talk about the GDPR, naturally, in the context of Europe and the European Union. However, the GDPR has a far wider impact, although the reaction from some organisations and individuals to date would have you believe otherwise. Any organisation that has dealings, directly or indirectly, with EU citizens needs to consider the following questions:

• Can you search across all relevant applications in your IT landscape?
• Can you structure, save, and refer to, these search queries?
• Do you know what sort of data you hold on individuals?
• Do you know what constitues “personally identifiable” information?
• Who is your nominated data controller?
• Are you in a position to process “forget me” requests, and information requests from data subjects?
• What are your data disposal policies, and how are they managed?
• Do you understand how that data is being used?
• Have you got agreement from those individuals to hold their data?
• What security measures do you have in place for data, personal and otherwise?
• Data about a subject has to be portable: is it relatively straightforward for you to move such data from your current systems?

If you are concerned about any of these issues, or worry about vendor support for GDPR and related data protection legislation, contact us.

Stack Overflow developer survey 2018

The annual Stack Overflow developer survey is in, and the results aren’t all that surprising: funnily enough, artificial intelligence and machine learning are hot topics, as are “coding ethics” — only a small proportion of respondents would engage in “unethical” coding practices. Software has moved on from being the odd app on a phone, the odd wide-ranging enterprise web app: it’s a big deal, and has a massive impact on us all.

Similarly interesting is the language trend: Python surpassed PHP in the survey last year, and this year it’s cruised past C# in the popularity stakes. Get learning!

So far so good, but then we get in to demographics, and things are far more depressing. A massive 92.7% of respondents were male, 6.8% female, 0.7% transgender, and 0.9% identified as non-binary, genderqueer or otherwise gender non-confirming. Almost three-quarters of those surveyed are also white / European in descent. There’s a lot of work to do.

Read more: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2018.

Welcome to 2018

Hello 2018! A couple of weeks back we at LDC Via had our first board meeting of the year, and we’re thinking about what we’re going to do in 2018, what we’re going to concentrate on, and how we’re going to deliver our work.

The platform, together with our consulting base, had a pretty decent year in 2017 and as a result we are due some timely upgrades, both for LDC Via itself, and for the MongoDB layer that underpins it. Busy busy busy!

The consultancy side of our work is growing far more than expected: to the point where we’re having to turn away work, which as any freelancer knows, is anathema. This growth in our consultancy practice has given us a couple of advantages:

1. Every migration we run increases our knowledge and gives us new ideas to improve the LDC platform and associated migration utility.
2. We get to see all the different stresses and strains that every company out there works with.

You might think that after a few migrations we would have seen them all, but no, every organisation brings its own story (and motivation) to the table. What is more, whilst we have a platform and a migration “story” to sell, a considerable amount of our work is focussed on bringing Domino-based data and knowledge into other platforms entirely: G Suite, Office 365, custom CMS and more… it’s never dull.

All work and no play make for a dull Via. Whilst of course it’s a conference, and it’s “work”, we do love to attend Engage every year. Come May, we shall be there in Rotterdam, as you will have seen from previous posts and tweets, and we look forward to seeing you!