I did a quick presentation explaining the concept of the SHiFT movement, the power of networking and also the challenges envolved on organizing such a conference.

The presentation is available on Slideshare:

The good news is there’s some great projects lined up for the next months, I can’t say much about it now (it’s my nature, sorry) but it’s going to be awesome.

In the mean time, SHiFT is gearing up for the 16th/17th of April and it’s going to be a fantastic event. As you can see from the schedule, lot’s of interesting talks, international speakers and lot’s of room for ideas, inspiration, networking and food for your brain. Don’t miss it, really.

At Think Orange we’re are preparing something special for all the early birds to take home. Let’s hope it’s ready on time.

I’ve been very busy since the start of the new year with all the work happening at Think Orange and participating in the SHiFT organization (more on that later).

Last week the Think Orange website received some very good buzz and appreciation, which is very nice. I love sites that follow a minimal style and I’m happy it served as inspiration and got recognized. I wish some clients would realize cramming more stuff into a site doesn’t necessarily make it better.

Also, we’ve got our projects planned for the upcoming months, setup goals for this year and moved to a new working space.

The COWORK Lisboa, located inside the LX Factory will be our home for the next season and is a cool place to work. Lisbon needed more coworking offers and this is one solid one. The location is very good with a public transportation interface nearby and lot’s of local commerce around.

Best of all, we’re in a room full of interesting, creative and entrepreneur people. I hope in the coming weeks we get to know them better and share some interesting stories/knowledge over some coffee. If you’re in the area feel free to visit us and have a chat.

On the subject of SHiFT, if you didn’t already know, it’s an international conference happening on the 16-17th of April in Lisbon on the subject this year of  Do It Yourself.

SHiFT 2010 will bring together the leaders and newbies of the communities which have serviced in the past 2 editions, with a single purpose: to empower you, so that you can empower others.
It’s a fantastic event where leaders and participants from all walks of life discuss on how technology impacts and changes our life, this year there’s already these great speakers enrolled:

The venue will be the Teatro Aberto, a great theater and inspiring space to be.

The theme this year is Do It Yourself, divided in 4 main tracks (business, web, design, ux). We will bring together the leaders and newbies of the communities we have serviced in the past 2 editions, with a single purpose: to empower you, so that you can empower others. DIY? Read why.

First confirmed speakers include: Cennydd Bowles, David Weinberger,  Kushtrim Xhakli, Lane Becker, Ryan Opaz and more will come. There’s also slots for proposed talks, why not submit your own?

The website is powered by the same platform from 2008, it’s using Ruby on Rails with a custom backend that we use to manage all the information from the current and past editions (speakers, talks, discounts, tickets, prices, new, whatever).

Thanks to this we can have a ecosystem on the website where participants can get information on who’s attending, vote on talks, comment, view videos, download presentations and more. On the coming month we’ll be adding a trick or two to this system (send me your sugestions too).

So get your ticket and let’s get inspired and amazed for 2 days this year.

We’ve decided to try something diferent and create a proof-of-concept remake of the MBNet platform to show how it can be improved and adapted for todays time.

MBNet is a portuguese service where you can create temporary virtual VISA cards with any amount of money you want. Yes, it’s very useful and important but the service isn’t updated since 2005.

So our objectives were:

• KISS!
• Adapt design for todays needs
• Better organization of information
• Make use of stored data about your payments.

We took care in simplifying some steps (like the payments pop-up) and improving the usefulness of the data that exists in the platform.

So now, you should be able to sort, filter and browse your data and use different visualization statistics.

Project is done in Ruby on Rails, Mysql and jQuery. HTML/CSS is done using the 960gs. All in 24 hours. Some things are not completely functional. It’s a proof-of-concept.

You can view the project online at mbnet.heroku.com.

Here’s some screenshots:

There’s a post sumarizing the topics with links to respective sites at Ruby-pt, go there if you want to know more.

There’s also a Ruby dinner being prepared in oPorto this month so check the google groups topic if you’re interested.