Letting the Robot Rewrite the Past

There’s a particular kind of vertigo that comes from watching an AI agent read eight years of your own writing back to you. Not summarise it — reconstitute it, line by line, into a new home, complete with the typos you’d forgotten you made.

I didn’t plan this. Someone mentioned the old EndGame Medium posts still existed somewhere, half-remembered, the way old projects do — and the next thing I knew I’d pointed an agent at a Medium export and asked it to bring them back to life. Which it did. All 18 of them. Including one where the entire body text is nine words long (turns out I once published a Medium post that was, verbatim, just “Thanks for this, the book was a great read!” — we quietly agreed to retire that one).

EndGame's 2024 Waza Event: Embracing Curiosity and Innovation

EndGame’s 2024 Waza Event: Embracing Curiosity and Innovation

We recently held our latest Waza, our periodic research and development day focused on learning, collaboration, and innovation. Each year, we choose a different theme for our Waza events, and this year’s theme was born out of one of our core values: Be curious.

The Power of Curiosity

One of our guiding principles at EndGame is to “Listen, explore, ask why, and challenge the status quo. We go beyond what is obvious while staying true to our mission.” This year’s Waza theme, “🔎 Be curious - Take an itch of an idea and build to help yourself or others,” embodies this value perfectly.

Our journey from scripts to Octopus Deploy - why it's better to separate build from deploy

Our journey from scripts to Octopus Deploy - why it’s better to separate build from deploy

Our journey

Here at EndGame we have been using Octopus Deploy since 2015 and we think that it’s an amazing tool. So much so that we have partnered with Octopus to become their New Zealand implementation and licensing partner! Given this exciting news I have been roused to write about something dear to my heart. The art of deploying, or why your build pipeline isn’t the place for deployments.

And you can call me AL - 2023 Waza

And you can call me AL - 2023 Waza

At EndGame we are always keeping one eye on the future, and currently can there be anything more futuristic than AI?  So much so that we have built our own product, called Hoist, that looks to solve the problems that raw LLMs cause for a services business. We call ours Wintermute (in a wink to the futurist William Gibson).

In order to fully dog food Wintermute with the team, it was decided that we should do a Waza that would embrace the creativity that LLMs bring to the workplace.

Make Hybrid Working Smoother Waza

Make Hybrid Working Smoother Waza

This year’s Waza was “Make Hybrid Working Smoother”.  Like all businesses we have moved from an office based workforce to a blended one.  With more people working remotely on a regular basis, we asked ourselves how we could make the experience smoother between those who are working from home and those who are in the office.

Remind me what’s a Waza?

Waza is a Japanese word meaning technique. We use this phrase to emphasise that our Waza is about exploring good techniques — in code, in delivery and in collaboration and ideation.

ISO 27001: It's About Growing Up

ISO 27001: It’s About Growing Up

Growing up. It happens to all of us at some stage, and part of growing up means doing the things you’ve been putting off for some time.

For EndGame, one well-intentioned, but never achieved, task was to reach ISO27001 compliance.

We’ve made it, and we’ve learnt a fair bit through the process. Some of it we expected going into it, while some of it surprised us. For those putting it off, we wanted to share our experiences in the hope they provide some value to you. So here goes - our top tips when exploring ways of reaching ISO27001 compliance.

What's A Waza Anyway?

What’s A Waza Anyway?

Storytelling: Directly from Wikipedia, it’s the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values.

It was also the theme for our latest Waza that wrapped up just before lock down.

What’s a Waza anyway?

Waza is a Japanese word meaning technique. We use this phrase to emphasise that our Waza is about exploring good techniques — in code, in delivery and in collaboration and ideation.

Belated Ask Why Waza Blog

Belated Ask Why Waza Blog

Better late than never

In finishing off the “Tech’ing up the office” Waza writings for this year, I was reminded that I had a half finished blog about last years “Ask Why” Waza.

So before it goes cold again here it is.

Asking Why in front of Wellingtons Te Papa

At the end of August 2019, EndGame had a Waza. We wanted to try something different from our previous Wazas, instead of having a theme “question” and have people answer it, we started with the why!

Tech’ing up the office Waza Wrap Up

Tech’ing up the office Waza Wrap Up

At 4pm on Thursday a chant of WAZA WAZA WAZA, could be heard as I rallied the teams to start.

With this Waza (see Ideas, and Team Forming for the lead up) over I can once again say that I am amazed at what the team can achieve, and so proud of the spirit and ingenuity of EndGamers. So proud that this post may have more ! than really necessary.

Tech’ing up the office — Team Forming

Tech’ing up the office — Team Forming

GO TEAM!

In the lead up to the Waza itself we give the teams Friday’s with free lunch, some time to discuss how and what they are going to do on Waza day.

Of the ideas mentioned in the last post the following ideas have had teams forming around them:

• A Deploy Button
• ChurBrew
• Schrodinger Box
• Emoji jukebox
• Everything in its place
• New office router

Because pictures say 1000 words, I took some photos over the last two weeks of the teams.