IncentiBook: Rounding the Final Corner

The last month has been a mix of ups and downs, and it’s difficult to know where to start.

Let’s begin with life. I didn’t get the Data Scientist job that I interviewed for. In reality, the pay was lower than I would have wanted, especially considering my upcoming financial burdens. Apart from this, I did a poor job at the interview. The lesson learnt was to map skills directly against the job role and be extremely focussed about making sure they are conveyed during the interview process.

At my current job I have applied for a more senior position which I am already working at. It does gnaw at me day-to-day that I am being paid less than I am given the responsibility for, but that’s another reason for pressing ahead with this project.

Work is currently quite stressful and student feedback has made this already unpleasant environment, worse. As it happens, I was directly singled out with extremely positive feedback for one of the modules I teach on, but I suppose I just feel bad for colleagues who were slated.

My home is now sold subject to contract and my partner and I have had an offer accepted on a new property. We have also bought a car. It has been an interesting month.

I will continue to look for positions in other companies, but my experience in web development and data analytics seems to limit potential earnings to rates which I cannot take.

As for IncentiBook I believe the project is rounding the final corner before going into beta. It still does really excite me, that something I have built could be a part of peoples’ day-to-day lives.

The explainer video is now complete and live on the site. It is a great start but could definitely be improved in the future, once I really know what I want to say.

As development has continued, so has my learning. I discovered the world of session variables, and have sorted a login system for the site. I was always curious how people logged into the same web page but got shown different things. You learn something new…

The settings page is underway and should be completed before the end of the week. It was an interesting job putting tick box responses into a form submission but it’s yet another thing I’ve learnt.

I now have a few days of annual leave so will try to make some more headway on IncentiBook over Easter. Just being very conscious that the next few months are going to be beyond intense and will conclude with the birth of my child. I’m all for success, but not at the expense of family and health.

Tasks

Over the next few weeks I’d like to:

• Finalise the database management. It currently seems to be a bit scattered. This is probably more for me than for the functionality of the site.
• Begin speaking to customers. Always quite daunting and vomit inducing, but it just needs to be done.
• Continue blogging on customer-related topics.
• Get some rest.

Thanks for reading. You can now follow IncentiBook on Twitter or Facebook.