A couple of months ago, ThoughtWorks set the challenge of an Android competition. Anyone from the Australian office could participate and write an Android app which would be presented and judged at the TeamHug. People should self organise in groups and each person from the winner group would receive an Android Phone as a prize.

At that time, Romain Prieto and I were flatmates in Brisbane and we decided to accept the challenge. So we worked on an app called ThoughtFerret. Why Ferret? Hummm… Because ferrets look happy and they are cute and… That’s pretty much it :) The objective of the application is to collect information of how happy a thoughtworker is at some point in time, using keywords and GPS location and... Well, let's make use of the "show don't tell concept"... Watch the video.

Everyone present at the TeamHug voted and the winning criteria for the competition was equally divided in 5 topics:

• Impact - Ability to credentialize ThoughtWorks with clients in the mobile app space or make a lasting impression.
• Originality - Innovation, revolutionary, have you seen this before?
• Presentation - Was it delivered well? Did they send the message across effectively? Engaging? Visually appealing?
• Usability and Usefulness - Can we use it now or is it still just a concept? Will it make your life easier, more enjoyable or speed up a process?
• Testing - As Android development is still new, QA processes are still rather immature, how did you test your app?

Romain and I presented this app at the TeamHug and we won!!! Congratulations to the other teams, they were amazing!!! Here are the slides from our presentation:

The prize chosen by us was the HTC Desire HD. Mine arrived 2 days ago… I can’t stop playing with it.

It’s been a pleasure working with Romain. He is such a talented person! He deserves the prize much more than I do… If this were a movie, he would have been the actor in a leading role and I would have been the supporting actor… :)