Caktus Blog

[As part of the Fulbright Enrichment [From Lab to Market]{style=“font-style: italic;”} seminar, Caktus hosted 16 Fulbright students from around the world on Wednesday, May 29th. The participants were engineering and science students with an interest in Public Health and Mobile Health innovation.]{#docs-internal-guid–15dfdd3-f622-293e-da9c-340d4c5b5818}

We had our 2nd ShipIt Day at Caktus last week. ShipIt (coined by Atlassian), in case you don’t know, is an exercise that allows your team to work on alternative projects in a 24-hour hackathon. We brainstorm ideas related to Caktus, break into small groups and try to build a project by the end of the day on Friday. It’s a lot of fun and provides an opportunity to work on internal tools, try something new and collaborate together. \

We manage a number of open source Django apps here at Caktus. While many of us here are proficient in a number of programming languages, the same can’t be said for our ability to read or write in languages other than English. The Django community is global and we want our apps to support other languages. For that we’ve turned to Transifex which it the same tool Django itself uses for translations.

UNICEF clients Erica Kochi and Christopher Fabian were listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2013 for creating text-message based applications in the developing world. They spearheaded RapidSMS, the open source web framework used for applications like sending infant HIV results via text in Zambia. Caktus worked directly with Kochi and Fabian and were instrumental in the core development of RapidSMS, the creation of RapidSMS.org on behalf of UNICEF, and initial RapidSMS applications in Africa.

SwitchPoint is a one-of-a-kind conference and a unique opportunity to learn, share ideas, and hear about global and mobile health efforts around the world. We had a great time at SwitchPoint last year. I’m excited to announce that Caktus, for the second year in a row, is sponsoring [SwitchPoint 2013]{style=“color: rgb(17, 85, 204);”}.

My Django runserver shortcut script

This is a little shell script I save as rs, put on my path, and use as a shortcut to start the Django development server. It has several features that make me more productive:

Caktus had a wonderful time at this year’s PyCon conference.  We believe strongly in supporting our developers in their quest to become the best coders that they can be and think that being at PyCon is a great way for them to learn about what’s going on in the Python community.  We sent ten people to the conference to work at our booth and attend conference events.  The organizers of PyCon, headed by Jesse Noller, put on an amazing event that created a space for people to meet face to face in order to work and learn together.

PyCon is one of our favorite conferences here at Caktus. We’ve been attending for the past 4 years now and it is amazing to see how much the community has grown. This year is especially special because Jesse Noller and the Python Software Foundation (PSF) came to us to help them build Raspberry IO. The site features work from the Python community and their adventures in using Raspberry Pi with Python.

Caktus is currently hiring for a full time Web Project Manager to be a part of our awesome team. We’re a diverse team of smart, sharp developers and designers with a passion for creating customizable, content rich sites and web applications using Django. As one of the project managers at Caktus, you’ll have the opportunity to develop your professional skills and also get the chance to work with some very capable and nice people.

Caktus celebrated the end of our fifth year in business recently.  We threw ourselves a party and invited our local friends who helped us grow from our infancy through our awkward phases into a successful and sustainable small business.