Most of us are onboard with the fact that humans have been overconsuming the earth's resources at an unsustainable rate. Action from a global, government, and local government level is still unsatisfactory. Everyone needs to start doing their bit, and hopefully each little bit adds up and makes a big difference.

At Resolve, we work with businesses and organisations to create innovative and practical management solutions to exceptional and high performing teams and streamlined systems. Our business, growth and legal experience will add value, increase effectiveness, improve profit, increase team engagement and customer/client experiences for any organisation. With a sub-specialist interest in property and its management, Resolve assists its clients whether not for profits or private businesses to ensure its property portfolio is managed exceptionally well to deliver its purpose.

Design and development are sometimes thought of as two very opposite disciplines — one is creative and one is logical. Developers can get stuck in this trap, avoiding design because they ‘aren’t creative’ and getting paralysed when they inevitably have to make a minor design decision.

Our team had a fantastic day with Tania Te Whenua who tailored a Tū Tangata training workshop for us. She included Māori language and customary concepts as they form part of NZ’s shared cultural heritage and identity.

Our dev team recently sat down to share our favourite tips, tricks and tools. This resulted in great conversations and everyone went away with more tools, and productivity or workflow tips & tricks, on their tool-belt. We would like to share these here so you can benefit too.

Two important weeks are marked this week. Deaf Aotearoa marks NZ Sign Language. The Mental Health Foundation of NZ marks Mental Health Awareness.

Māori Language Week helps us all remember that te reo is a cornerstone of New Zealand culture, and an important part of our country’s heritage. Te reo Māori is an official language of NZ. It’s a great time to be part of the broader language revival and raise public awareness and usage. Our participation links with our #TeamValues.

At Abletech we’re proud of our team’s culture. This week we identified exactly what our team values are. It was great! The workshop was facilitated by our GM Michelle. Everyone had a chance to speak and we collaborated to agree on four team values.

We’ve been working from home, or working remotely, for a few years now. Are you moving into a work from home phase? Here are some things we’ve learnt.

At Abletech we have embarked on the process of seeking advice and following recommendations. Read about some of our efforts below.

The Ruby community holds conferences all over the globe, using local and international speakers, for Rubyists of all levels. The latest conference was a single day of talks held at Te Papa in Wellington which is two blocks from Abletech’s headquarters.

Locate your nearest AED free here:

We’re proud to be using renewable and carboNZero certified electricity, supplied by Ecotricity, at our Abletech headquarters.

We’re excited to see Kendall’s been recognised for growing her idea into Banqer: a successful revenue generating financial education app.

Where do you start? The New Zealand Sustainable Business Network has lots of great advice. It has published a very good paper on how to calculate your carbon emissions. Following their advice and using the recommended ACE Carbon Calculator, which is an independently developed New Zealand specific tool, NZ is now starting to understand our companies’ contributions to CO2 emissions.

Matt purpose-built the appliction for Planit Software Testing for his Honours project towards his Software Engineering degree at Victoria University of Wellington. He recently showcased his work to industry professionals and academics from the School of Engineering and Computer Science.

You can Restart A Heart anytime anywhere. Find your nearest defibrillator using aedlocations.co.nz or the AED app.

Crazy fun and good conversations at the Summer of Tech session last night. A big thank you to all the students who came and chatted with us. You all have exciting careers ahead of you!

Our Rapid Projects team developed this mobile app in three months. We used React Native and found it fast and efficient. Watch a demo of SmartInspect. Hear what Naiki Pearl and Kate Norquay found as they developed using React Native.

JSConf-goers enjoying the complimentary coffee on the first day of the event (and some cheery Abletechers on the right!)

Following on from The Abletech story — part 1 we pick up the narrative at the point where Marcus and Nigel had begun hand-picking developers.

Launched in 2006, Abletech was borne out of a keen desire to boost business systems using cloud technology. Its founders worked, played and studied computing. They understood enterprise strategy and best practice. They became discerning. Discernment is a quality that continues to serve Abletech well.

The latest petra ramsomware virus (which is currently doing a global sweep disabling unpatched windows systems) is a good reminder of the anti-patterns that are prevalent within IT across many large enterprises whom take a risk adverse approach to software development and deployment. It is a result of many bad smells including a slow release cycle, and lack of sandboxing separating the applications from underlying technologies. This cascades into the infrastructure team creating dependency hell and a lack of timely security updates.

This talk will be an introduction to Elixir in the form of a walk-through of a real-world application (Addressfinder).