Caktus Blog

We are excited to announce the creation and funding of a pilot program for open source contributions here at Caktus Group. This program is inspired by the Django Software Foundation’s fellowship as well as the Two Day Manifesto. For this program, Caktus seeks to hire a part-time developer for twelve weeks this fall for the sole purpose of contributing back to open source projects. Caktus builds web applications based on open source tools and the continued growth of these projects is important to us. Open source projects such as Python and Django have given so much to this company and this is one of many ways we are trying to give back.

We’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of Django Girls RDU, a group in NC’s Triangle region that hosts free one-day Django coding workshops for women. Django Girls is part of an international movement that’s helped 1,600 (and counting!) women learn how to code.

Note: In between the time I originally wrote this post and it getting published, a ticket and pull request were opened in Django to remove allow_unsaved_instance_assignment and move validation to the model save() method, which makes much more sense anyways. It's likely this will even be backported to Django 1.8.4. So, if you're using a version of Django that doesn't require this, hopefully you'll never stumble across this post in the first place! If this is still an issue for you, here's the original post:

As proud sponsors of PyCon, we hosted a one and a half hour free workshop. We see the workshops as a wonderful opportunity to share some practical, hands-on experience in our area of expertise: building applications in Django. In addition, it’s a way to give back to the open source community.

Introduction

When I started building sites in Django, I learned the basics from the excellent Django tutorial. But I had to learn by trial and error which approaches to using Django’s building blocks worked well and which approaches tended to cause problems later on. I looked for more intermediate-level documentation, but beyond James Bennett’s Practical Django Projects and our Karen Tracey’s Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging, there wasn’t much to be found.

Last Friday marked another ShipIt Day at Caktus, a chance for our employees to set aside client work for experimentation and personal development. It’s always a wonderful chance for our developers to test new boundaries, learn new skills and sometimes even build something entirely new in a single day.

This past weekend, our wonderful Technology Support Specialist Scott Morningstar hosted a Local Area Network (LAN) party at Caktus HQ. Held twice a year since 2008, the event allows geeks, gamers, and retro technology lovers to relive the nostalgia of multiplayer gaming in the early days of dial-up internet. In other words, everyone brings their own computer, and uses the LAN to play online games in the company of others. These parties are a lot of fun and add a more personal social element to the online gaming community.

Monthly, we organize short Lightning Talks that take place during the lunch hour here at Caktus. Not only does this allow us a wonderful excuse to have lunch delivered from one of our many local foodie options, but it’s an excellent chance to expand our knowledge on a variety of topics. Past talks have included everything from an introduction to synthesizers and other forms of electronic music, to bug fixing, to the design inspiration behind our PyCon 2015 site.

We’re very pleased to announce that Caktus Group will be sponsoring up to $20,000 worth of scholarships for Astro Code School students per year. There will be twenty $1,000 scholarships. We hope that these scholarships help increase access to code schools and the wider tech industry:

At this year’s mHealth at Duke 2015 Conference, Dr. Lisa Hightow-Weidman discussed her current mHealth projects for HIV prevention. Chief among these projects is her work with Caktus Group on Epic Allies, a mobile gaming app that utilizes social media and mini-games to increase adherence to prescribed medication amongst HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM).