Inspiration, community, tips, tutorials and sharing. This is #posobota. Last Saturdayis, in the words of the organizers, a regular gathering of all fans, beginners and seasoned programmers of web applications. It takes place in several cities and online spaces, which brings with it a number of challenges. The whole organization lies solely on the shoulders of Honza Černý and his colleague Igor aka Srigi. Fortunately, they reached for Freelo to make their mainly routine tasks easier. Honza Černý tells us how it all went from the selection of the tool to the implementation to the plans for the future.
"I used to carry the whole agenda in my head - it was unsustainable. Now I have everything in Freelo. We continuously comment and check off tasks directly in the app."
At the beginning there were Prague meetings of people who programmed in Nette. They were organized by David Grudl, who has authored not only this popular tool for creating web applications in PHP.
Approximately 8 years ago, I (Honza Černý) took over the organizing baton and started to regularly change the venues between Prague and Brno. Later, other cities such as České Budějovice, Pardubice, Hradec Králové and Ostrava joined in. The main aim was to meet and share contacts.
The pandemic has thrown a pitchfork into our live meetings. But sharing was lacking, so we started online streams. Conveniently, the streams remain available on the @NetteFramework YouTube channel.
After Covid, we did not return to the original schedule. In my opinion, the participants started to value their free time more and they don't want to sacrifice Saturdays „to“ work matters anymore. The programming itself has also shifted. Developers are slowly moving from Nette to FullStack.
But that didn't deter us. We are experiencing a hybrid evolution, i.e. we are moving to a combination of online and offline events. For 2023 we are planning 3 meetings in Prague, České Budějovice and Brno. And we will publish more interviews in the form of a podcast.
The implementation of Freelo was not complicated. There are only two of us in the permanent organizing team (Honza Černý and Srigi, author's note) and I just chose Freelo. 😅 Current speakers and local organizers then have no choice but to join Freelo as well. They all learn with it in no time. To be able to stand by my decision, I took the selection responsibly.
"Templates are a deal breaker for us. We have one project as a repository of ideas and in others we deal with specific actions. With a process template, we can create a new project in no time."
I tried the competition. The game was mainly Asana, but also „the ordinary“ Excel. After all, we are a small team and I hesitated whether it made sense to invest in a project tool at all.
All of Honza's favourite features are available to every Freelo user, including the Free Plan. But from April 2023, we'll be catering to smaller teams. We're making the Business Plan more affordable for them, with advanced features like the Timeline.
"Then I tried to click a few things in Freelo and I was satisfied. Freelo is clear and intuitive."
In the less than 5 years they have had Freelo in Posobota, they have managed 46 projects.
Occasionally, I'll get stung by a keyboard shortcut that throws me somewhere other than I'd expect. Overall, however, I like Freelo.
"I plan to lean into Freelo even more in the future. I'll use the API and try to customize something through my CSS. But before that, I'll send it to the Freelo team, because they like to stay ahead of the field. There's a good chance they'll improve it directly."