September 2011 Archives

This month, credativ is pleased to welcome two new members of staff to the team in Rugby; as a leading specialist in Linux and Free Software, we are expanding in order to accommodate the growing demand for our services.

At credativ we invest in our employees - their growth and development is important to us and, by working for a dynamic company which is constantly evolving, our employees gain exposure to a diverse range of opportunities which may not be available so readily in larger, more traditional organizations.

Current Opportunities
credativ UK is looking for competent open source developers and assistant free software engineers to join our development team permanently. We have a small development team in the UK, so you need to learn quickly and be the kind of person who gets things done and cares about your coding and craftmanship. Current customer projects using Python and Ruby include:

What do we do?
We develop and support business software solutions using free software; our key business areas are consulting, development, support and training. credativ supports a diverse range of clients and has a long history of contributing to free software projects.

Our technical team is actively involved with software projects such as Debian, PostgreSQL and OpenERP, among others. Over the last decade, credativ has expanded from Germany to the UK, US, Canada and India, and worked to maintain excellent relationships with other free software organisations, companies and upstream projects. This means we have extensive links with the wider free software community and a vast pool of resources we can tap in to for the benefit of our customers.

What do we use?
Our platforms run on Linux and are all built using open source technologies. We use Python, Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL, Django, Apache, C++, Git, and whatever is the best tool for the job. We use lightweight agile development processes, with a strong emphasis on test driven development; we like to get involved in user groups and open source community initiatives.

Skills and Requirements
Solid development skills, a hunger for learning new things and enthusiasm are the most important things. We are using some interesting technologies to solve some interesting problems, so a good approach to problem-solving is a must.
Our platforms use a few core technologies, the more you are familiar with the better. Here is a sublist; for detailed job descriptions please see the careers pages on our website.

How to get in touch
Please send your CV, a covering letter, and links to your blog, github or any open source project contributions to careers@credativ.co.uk

Saturday 17th September - credativ employees were among the volunteers of Rugby Linux Users Group (LUG) who held an open day at The Benn Partnership Centre in Rugby to promote Free Software to the local community.

Software Freedom Day is celebrated in over 100 countries worldwide; Linux User Groups in cities all over the UK organise their own initiatives, but this is the first year that the Rugby LUG has held the event.

"The idea of Software Freedom Day is to educate the public about the many benefits of using high-quality, free open source software that is available. Many people may be using Free Software already, without even realising it." says Nick Morrott, from the group. "By increasing awareness of Free Software, our vision is to empower everybody to be able to freely connect, create and share in a digital world that is participatory, transparent, and sustainable."

At the free event, there were representatives from the Free and Open Source software community, as well as from local ICT companies who specialise in FOSS for the home, education and business.

A specialised session for members of the education sector took place prior to the main event, where they could discuss their needs on a one-to-one basis with the specialists.

Volunteers had set up a range of PCs, laptops and projectors so that visitors could experience first-hand the huge range of free software available. A wide range of software suitable for the home, education and business were on-hand, suitable for common tasks such as photo and video editing, multimedia, office and productivity, and games. Visitors could try out these free and open applications on both Microsoft and Linux platforms and benefit from informal and free advice, with the opportunity to arrange further follow-up sessions if required. Many took away information on the solutions as well as "Software Freedom Day" T-shirts, free CD's and memory sticks loaded with software.

The event was a great success, bringing in over 100 visitors, from individuals wanting to know how FOSS can be applied to their home computers, to representatives from larger organisations, charities and local government.

Rugby LUG hopes to organise a similar event next year. For more details, please see the group's website: http://www.rugby.lug.org.uk. or contact us at info@credativ.co.uk