Looking Back on 2007
January 3rd, 2008
2007 was an exciting year for Inuda Innovations – it was our first full calendar year in business and we’ve done more Exploring, Delivering and Enjoying than we could ever have hoped.
For us, the best thing about 2007 has been being in Brighton. The technology community here has really flourished over the last 12 months and it has been an incredible thing to be a part of. The range of events we’ve been involved in on a weekly basis are too numerous to do justice to here, but you can find out about most of them at SussexDigital.com.
The following are just some of our highlights of the year:
January
We worked with the University of Cambridge to deliver entrepreneurship training to Economic and Social Research Council funded PhD students and employees from Microsoft Research and American Express Technologies.
We worked with the Univeristy of Sussex to support the entrepreneurial development of secondary school students from around the Sussex area by supporting a team in the Entrepreneurs for Tomorrow programme.
February
We attended our first ‘unconference’ at BT’s London headquarters and were blown away by how much we learnt and how many great connections we made over one weekend.
We took on two University of Sussex informatics students through the Shell Step programme to work as web developer interns.
We attended the Future of Web Apps, which among other insightful presentations included a high profile panel discussion entitled “European start-up culture: playing catch-up to the US”.
Saul Klein started the movement that continues to create excellent opportunities for start-ups, helping them grow from casual conversations between business people and technology people.
March
We moved into offices at the Sussex Innovation Centre, joining over 70 other start-up businesses working alongside the University of Sussex on their wonderful campus in the South Downs.
Art Exhibitions 2.0
We started working with a bootstrapped start-up, developing a web application that will provide a more social experience to people visiting art exhibitions and museums.
We supported the annual IET Egg Race, challenging A Level students to build an electro-mechanical device in just a few hours that could safely deliver an egg into a particular position.
April
We delivered our first large-scale project, a web-based collaboration system used by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society to edit an electronic version of the British National Formulary – a publication used by every doctor in the UK and many more around the world.
Healthcare 2.0
We began working with an angel funded start-up, developing a social networking system exclusively for doctors.
We attended Carsonified’s first web design focused event and brought back a host of new ideas and techniques
May
We spoke at the University of Sussex’s Enterprise Thursday Celebration Evening 2006/2007 and shared our experience of starting a business after University.
We launched The Inuda Network as a community of people with a passion for making a difference through technology innovation. The aim of the community is to create an environment which helps more people explore, deliver and enjoy while working in technology development.
Facebook launched their internet changing platform; recognising the opportunity we immediately made it a focus area for us to become proficient in developing applications for.
We worked again with the University of Cambridge to deliver entrepreneurship training, this time exclusively to 32 Microsoft employees.
June
We launched a Sussex version of the Open Coffee Club which continues to run every fortnight on Thursday mornings in the Café at the Sussex Innovation Centre.
Higher Education Entrepreneurship Group
We spoke at this conference held at the University of Reading, which was backed by the South East England Development Agency, sharing our perspective on enterprise and entrepreneurship training with educators.
Apple released the iPhone with web applications as the primary way by which to develop 3rd party tools and services.
SeedCamp was announced, inspired by the excellent Y Combinator, as a way for web start ups to get early stage funding and high profile support.
July
1 Year of Inuda
We celebrated one year of Inuda by buying a Nabaztag Rabbit, giving us a fun and physical web presence in our office.
Employee #4
Rob Watson joined us as an employee after completing his Shell Step internship with us.
We spoke at the midterm event for the Shell Step summer programme, sharing with participants how our ideas for going into business had started with a Shell Step placement.
August
SeedCamp
We applied to SeedCamp with a rather radical idea; too radical for us to get funding this time around, but we continue to work on it between client projects.
Enjoyed the Sun
We enjoyed another summer in Brighton, even doing a little work on the beach with the free Pier-to-Pier WiFi.
September
We sponsored and participated in Brighton’s first BarCamp, which brought together over 100 people interested in technology from around Europe.
Employee #5
Kevin Edwards joined the team as a full-time developer, enabling us to expand the number of client projects we take on.
We attended d.Construct, the original grass roots event for web developers in the UK – in Brighton, of course.
We were covered in Brighton and Hove’s local paper, The Argus, giving insight into our approach to business.
October
We developed a Facebook application to support the Make Your Mark campaign and Enterprise Week 2007. It quickly gained momentum, helping hundreds of people makes their ideas happen.
The Online Opportunity
We were invited by the National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship to attend this event at Microsoft’s London headquarters. We took the opportunity to ask CEO, Steve Ballmer, if some of their powerful new web development tools would be coming to other platforms. Despite at least 60% of the developers at conferences we’ve been to this year having Macs rather than PCs, Steve made it clear that Microsoft are not yet ready to stop locking people into Windows.
With a great deal more success than Microsoft’s launch of Vista, Apple launched a fantastic new version of OS X and it’s purred along nicely for us.
We popped along to to the Future of Web Apps Expo and said hello to number of exciting new web start-ups.
November
Version numbers aren’t everything, but our development platform of choice, Ruby on Rails, reached version 2.0, bringing in features that instantly made us more productive.
Brighton enjoyed its annual Digital Festival, and we particularly enjoyed sharing our thoughts on the latest developments in social media at the Five Pound App Day event.
Facebook launched Social Ads, creating a new way for advertisers to precisely target their messages. Some people found aspects of this a little creepy, causing Facebook to back-peddle on certain features.
Google released Open Social as a way for to social networks to compete directly against Facebook’s highly successful applications platform. Unfortunately, it still has a long way to go before it will be as useful and usable as Facebook’s.
We shared our approach to a career in technology with Brighton and Sussex University students.
We spent the weekend at Google’s London HQ to participate in BarCampLondon3. Among many other things, we found out first hand how amazingly well Googlers are fed by their employer.
December
We worked with Oxfam to launch a Facebook application that would tie into their high profile campaign against rubbish presents. The application helped hundreds of people tell their friends they wanted decent presents for Christmas while raising money to support the campaign against against poverty around the world.
We were the first company to take a place at The Werks, Brighton & Hove’s newest co-working environment for creative businesses.
We attended Europe’s first conference dedicated to exploring the Widgetisation of the web and heard a wide range of approaches being taken by agencies and platform providers.
We got early access to Amazon’s exciting new web service for safely storing structured information across their world class infrastructure at low cost.
Many Christmas Celebrations
We got involved in a host of Brighton’s ‘geek’ community Christmas celebrations, bringing an excellent end to a fantastic year.
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