Caktus Blog

The Caktus team attends a number of conferences each year to learn about the latest tips and tools. Several of us also go to events to share knowledge as speakers or sprint leaders. Using our varied experiences, we’ve put together a list of the events we’re looking forward to next year.

As a certified Amazon Web Services (AWS) Consulting Partner, Caktus sent a member of the team to AWS re:invent this year to meet other solution providers, discuss with AWS representatives how to leverage our partnership to best serve our clients, and of course, get hands-on experience with both existing and newly-revealed AWS services.

Did you know Django 2.0 is out? The development team at Caktus knows and we’re excited! You should be excited too if you work with or depend on Django. Here’s what our Cakti have been saying about the recently-released 2.0 beta.

Before an app can be built, the development team needs to know what they are supposed to be building. How do they establish that? With requirements gathering.

Our internship program sustains Caktus’ growth, challenges and reinvigorates our development practices, builds our relations with the local tech and wider Django communities, and hones our operational practices as a company. This post shares our guiding principles for how we structure our developer internship to achieve these goals, while providing a meaningful and edifying experience for the interns we hire.

In researching outsourced web development, you may have come across a few different ways to get your project built and have some questions as a result. How well defined do the project requirements need to be prior to starting development? Will Waterfall or Agile methods deliver the best results? Should you look for a consultancy offering team augmentation or in-house Agile-based work? What are the ramifications for your project of picking one or the other?

Our quarterly ShipIt Day has come and gone, with many new ideas and experiments from the team. As we do every quarter, Caktus staff stepped away from client work to try new technology, read up on the latest documentation, update internal processes, or otherwise find inspiring ways to improve themselves and Caktus as a whole. Keep reading to see what we worked on.

Have you ever heard anyone sing opera during a tech-focused conference? Neither had I, until now.

Red Hat Agile Day, held in downtown Raleigh, recently provided this unique opportunity. The theme of the 2017 Red Hat Agile Day was “Agile: brokering innovation; bringing together great ideas.” The conference certainly lived up to that theme with a diverse line-up of speakers, including a former professional opera singer who bookended his presentation with songs. One was a creative, original ballad about being an Agile product manager (see the lyrics here), which he delivered at full blast, because how else can you sing opera?

What White Space Is

In the context of web design, white space (or negative space) is the space around and between elements on a page. To non-designers, it may seem unnecessary or an expression of a particular aesthetic (and therefore non-essential to a web page). To designers, it is an essential tool to increase the comprehension of a composition and guide a viewer’s attention and focus.

Fixed headers are a common design pattern that keeps navigation essentials in easy reach as users meander down a page. Keeping a header fixed as the user scrolls can free up horizontal space for smaller devices by avoiding sidebars, and keeps your branding visible.