Saturday saw the first Code Retreat to take place in Aberdeen. A Code Retreat is a day-long, intensive practice event for programmers, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. 

I was delighted when Fifth Ring became one of the lead sponsors of the event. Since deciding to organise it back in January, I'd been keen to run a high quality, free to attend event which is only possible with the support of local businesses who care about code. 

Code is at the heart of much of the work we do at Fifth Ring. As attention increasingly moves to screens, so the messages we drive for our clients must be delivered digitally. While modern drag and drop style tools can allow the underlying code to be largely ignored, at Fifth Ring we believe a deeper understanding of code is critical.  

The attraction of Code Retreat to those with a passion for code is that it gives a framework to focus on technique rather than delivering results. It is similar to practicing an instrument. As a musician you spend most of your time practicing, and 5-10% (likely less) performing. As a coder these numbers are reversed, and the focus is often on delivering working code quickly rather than improving your own technique. 

An interesting technique used during code retreat is pair programming. Using this technique two people work around a single keyboard - one driving, one observing. The observer analyses and questions every line of code as it is typed. For many attendees this was disorienting, as they saw coding as a solitary activity. The communication approaches within pairs were fascinating to observe.

It was an intense day, and everyone left on Saturday enthusing about new techniques or approaches that had been unveiled by the process. 

You can find out more about code retreat at http://coderetreat.org and about Code Retreat Aberdeen at http://refreshaberdeen.com/coderetreat.

For the past three Tuesdays, the Aberdeen FR team has been Brain Juiced - “You what?” - I hear you cry, that’s right, we’ve been Brain Juiced and it was fun.

When we first got the invite, there were a few comments along the lines of “I don’t know that my brain has any juice to give!” - that didn’t last long and we soon learnt that we had gallons to offer. Gordon Brown, (no, not that one but a Glaswegian with barrels of interesting stories and the creator of Brain Juice), travelled up to the Granite City to provide us with some inspirational creativity training and a great insight in to the mechanisms of typical ‘brain storming’ sessions.

At a conference room in the Bauhaus, we had a picturesque view of the rooftops of Aberdeen spanning across to Union Plaza and a new environment to continue our learning in. Surrounded by some of the most creative minds in the North East, I wondered just how much they had to learn about being creative and how Gordon would manage to provide everyone with a fresh perspective on the creative process. 

As a wise Fifth Ringer once told me, a few times, ‘every day’s a school day’ and it’s true – if you’re not learning or believe you’ve reached your intellectual peak then you’re not going to maximise your potential. 

The biggest lesson we learnt - sometimes you get stuck in a rut. It sounds simple and perhaps a little obvious but it’s hard to recognise and because of that, it maybe happens more than you think. Ever thought of an idea or a solution to a problem, tried to think of something else and kept coming back to the same conclusion? You maybe don’t know it my friend, but that’s where you were stuck in the river.

The river is that part of a brain storming session where you think you’ve come up with the best solution to the problem and you don’t want to, or you simply can’t, get past it to a better thought. Gordon taught us that it’s easy to get stuck in the river and not so easy to notice when it happens. Take this as a challenge – over the next week count how many times you get stuck on one idea when you’re trying to solve a problem.

Having successfully gotten through the three stages of the Brain Juice training, with a heap of laughter and team work along the way, the Fifth Ring team is now readier than ever and waiting to throw a lifeline to anyone stuck in the creative river. Big thanks to Gordon Brown and his Brain Juice training.