trendpreneur

Ah, the Big Red Button. Days of hard work, testing, re-testing, bug-fixing, last-minute changes, and telling your mum that no, it wouldn’t look better if that part of the screen was green.

We hit the Big Red Button on FestBuzz last Friday.

It’s by no means the first website launch I’ve done, but it’s the one I’ve put the most personal crunch time into (thank the powers that be for caffeine), and certainly the one I’ve felt most nervous about recently – what if it fell over during the weekend? On the plus side, it’s also been by far the most satisfying red button I’ve pushed in recent memory.

Of course, I’m a wuss, so the really tricksy oh-god-it-might-all-break bits are being rolled in slowly over the next couple of weeks, holding its hand every way, baby steps, etc. Clearly the best way to do it than to set some more-or-less-untested code to ‘go’ (untested, because it’s reliant on tweets which haven’t been written yet). So if you visited the gratuitous plug and had a “so what” moment, bookmark it (or wait until the next plug) and come back later.

Things I’ve learnt (or re-learnt) recently:

• Sometimes you just gotta make tough decisions, and throw all the ‘nice to haves’ in a pile somewhere, never to be touched again.
• The later you work, the later you eat, the later you sleep, the later you get up, the later you work.
• Having both virtual and real watercoolers to keep you grounded helps.
• People are very understanding when you say “no, sorry, this is more important than you”.
• When you’re pushed for free time, not spending much time at home, and unable to devote significant effort to cooking, having a kitchen full of unwashed, smelly, meaty dishes is even less likely to make you want to put a proper meal together.

Sorry. Personal rant creeping in. At any rate, I’ve definitely come to really appreciate having a dedicated office – I’d probably have gone mad if I was working at home. Thanks to being housed in the University, I’m also surrounded by people and — right now — bang in the middle of Fringe Central, which is particularly handy for this product.

My final point is that I also really, really love Django now. Don’t worry, Rails, I’ll learn you one day. But not now…