It feels like there is a growing gap between people who are deep in technology/AI space (like myself) and everyone else about whether AI is good or bad. Take, for example, this study [1] done in the US on whether people think AI will have a positive or negative effect on the US over the next 20 years.

Once upon a time—well, in a land of myth and melodrama—a young chap named Icarus got the ultimate upgrade: wings. Handcrafted by his ever-wise (and occasionally overly ambitious) father, Daedalus, these wings were a marvel of ancient engineering, crafted from feathers and wax. Icarus, thrilled by his newfound ability to defy gravity, soared into the sky with the enthusiasm of a kid on a sugar rush.

It's an incredibly exciting time to be creating software. Never before has it been faster to produce mockups or cheaper to build prototypes. If you have software you want to build, there's no better time than now. The accessibility of development tools and resources has lowered barriers, empowering both newcomers and seasoned entrepreneurs to bring innovative ideas to life swiftly.

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!

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.

The purpose of Kalo’s app is to control external hardware synthesizers or samplers. WebStep should work fine with any MIDI enabled synthesizer or sampler that’s visible to your operating system.

To me Rails Girls is a really good way to help people find programming and gain a support network. Dawn Richardson.

Nigel Ramsay and Tracey Norrish have been using Elixir, instead of Ruby, for an Addressfinder project. Watch a video or read the summary:

In 2006 Abletecher Michael Koziarski gave a popular overview of Ruby on Rails at a Wellington Webstock conference. That same year he also spoke at RailsConf Europe in London. Ruby on Rails has continued to grow and Abletechers, keen on the efficient technology, have grown in their knowledge and practical implementation of it.