Python

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. \

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.

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.

I'm delighted to write that last Friday, we announced we'll be trying our first "ShipIt Day" at Caktus in October. ShipIt Days, also known as FedEx Days, provide a time for the team to set aside what occupies us most days—building fantastic web applications using Python and Django for our wonderful clients—and pick up something new or scratch an itch that's been bugging us for awhile. We got the idea from the book Drive by Daniel Pink, and it was also suggested independently by a number of team members.

This past July, I had the pleasure of attending the UNICEF Rwanda Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. The conferences focus was on developing a comprehensive eHealth suite for numerous nations to implement.

Caktus is proud to announce that we are now offering Django training services. This new service includes both off and on-site training for you and your team to become a Djangonaut.

I am very proud to announce that Karen Tracey, Lead Developer at Caktus and Django Core Developer, will be delivering a keynote address at DjangoCon Europe next week. This will be Karen's first speech to the Django community, of which she has been an exemplary member since 2006.

Diversity is important in a workplace environment. Having different points of view from people with different life experiences brings creative new ideas and innovative solutions to the software development process. As a team of web developers that designs and builds custom web applications, creativity and gender diversity, I would argue, are closely tied and both crucial to the success of our projects.

I'm excited to announce that Caktus is looking for a developer to join our team on a contract basis!

We're looking for a strong software developer who enjoys working on a team and is excited to learn and experiment with new technologies. We do have a preference for local candidates, but will consider all submissions. Initial work will focus on maintaining small Django-powered websites. This position will involve managing existing Django projects, data modeling complex business ideas and deploying Django sites.

Caktus is sponsoring Pycon 2012 in Santa Clara, CA this coming weekend! Nearly the entire office will be attending this year's event, which means Mark, Caleb, Calvin, David, Karen, Dan, Tobias, Colin, Julia, Nicole and I will be on site contributing and learning with the rest of the Python community. Nicole and I will be in charge of manning the booth, and so if you managed to wrangle tickets to the sold-out event, we invite you to stop by our booth #213 and say hello! Also Karen, Mark and Calvin will be sprinting after the talks, working on Django and Python3 tickets.