Our First Face to Face Meeting!
Saturday 26th March. The weather was wet and windy as we arrived in the leafy suburb of Upminster in Essex. We held a day-long workshop at our founder’s house, Peter. This was Lucas and my first workshop since joining InfinAI back in early January. We had a productive day learning more about the early days of InfinAI and all the materials created and accumulated in building a start-up using a BootStrap approach (no investors and limited cash)
Lucas and I were surprised to learn how much time and effort Peter had invested into the project over the past few years, which had seen InfinAI grow from a paper-based solution to a MS Access solution to the web solution it presently is today. We were amazed at how many resources Peter had gathered from various sources such as newspapers, books, magazines and the web. As Peter always says, “Why do you look so surprised, I’m your Uncle Peter!”
After a sizeable lunch of garlic bread and pizza, which Lucas particularly enjoyed, the day continued with some individual work, just like our Monday and Thursday Skype meetings, but this time in person. It triggered a number of good discussions where we brainstormed some core ideas, concepts and design. It was nice to do this in person, which encouraged us to want to do these type of workshop more often.
Sneak peek: Peter also showed us a Star Jar which is a physical representation of the user’s level in each category as well as their Master level.
Each star is a different colour according to the web based application’s category colour code. His daughter enjoyed making paper stars which inspired Peter to make these. He showed the many prototypes and steps that we involved to get it to a final state. It’s so colourful and beautiful you’ll love it!
Reflecting back on the day I can say I found it to be a very productive day. So much so we didn’t want to go home. Not long after a good dinner we had to wrap up and call it a day. 9:30 pm that night, with motivation and inspiration in mind, Peter dropped us back at the station so that we could catch the train back home. Stay tuned for our next update!
