Digibury: Responsive design, charity apps and game dev process

Last night had all the right ingredients to make a memorable Digibury. The sun was shining. The Gulbenkian was packed. And we had three great speakers ready to wow the crowd...

We also had a lot of new faces, including a large group of students from Mid Kent College. It was an especially good evening for them as Mark Linott from Sony Games spent a considerable length of time after the talks answering their questions about the gaming industry. It was a fantastic, reinforcing what Digibury is all about: sharing, learning and inspiring.

The talks

#1 Getting your web presence mobile ready

Getting your web presence mobile ready is a must for anyone involved with web development. Juggling the HTML5, CSS and Javascript to get there can be a challenge in a technological landscape where traditional designer and developer roles are changing. In his talk, David Walker, Principal Technologist Web & Mobile Development at qa.com, explored open source ZURB Foundation - a rapid prototyping and industrial scalable CSS framework that makes responsive design a simpler affair. Oh, and it had unicorns.

#2 The gamification of charity

In 2011, inspired by other charitable ventures into the world of apps, homeless charity Porchlight decided to build a smartphone game to raise awareness of the physical and emotional issues faced by rough sleepers. They knew why they wanted an app and they knew what thay wanted it to achieve, but they didn’t know how it would look or how they would do it... with absolutely no budget. Almost three years later, in April 2014, the ‘Don’t Just Walk Past’ game went live in the App store. In his talk, Porchlight PR Manager Mark Parry shared his journey on how they did it, and the wider impact 'gamification' has on charities.

#3 Game development process

Game developer Mark Linott took us through the entire gaming development process at Sony, from initial 'I've got an idea' to shipping... and what a journey! A fascinating and educating insight into a multi-million pound industry.

Been inspired? Got something to talk about? Submit your idea here and you too can be a Digibury speaker!

Next Digibury event: June 11 at The Gulbenkian.