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Takeaways from WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2022

My takeaways from WeAreDevelopers

AI development helpers

GitHub announced copilot, a plug-in to your IDE which will predict and write code for you. They predict this could save a developer unto 40% on common code problems, and in the next 5 years could effectively write 80%.

The other speakers didn’t really align with this but its an interesting concept, if we’re all resolving the same types of issues, it doesn’t take long before there is a design pattern or best practise to develop the solution – the complexity is making those design patterns work with our codebase.

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How to get an urgent uk passport appointment

At present UK passports are taking longer than normal to process, my daughters recent passport renewal (child) took approx 7 weeks (3 weeks shorter than the 10-week current estimate).

Due to an upcoming business trip to India (and the fact that India has temporarily suspended e-visas for uk citizens), I find myself needing to apply for a paper visa. Paper visas require you to have 2 consecutive pages free, and I only have 1.

My passport is valid for another 5 years so its good for a while, but the lack of pages leaves me with an issue. I need a new passport for the visa, but I can’t risk a 10 week wait as I have a holiday in August. So I find myself needing to request an urgent 1-week passport appointment which wasn’t quite as straight forward as I expected.

To book an appointment you visit the following webpage;
https://www.gov.uk/get-a-passport-urgently/1-week-fast-track-service

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Is it me or has Apple missed some key use cases for their continuity camera feature in OS Ventura and ios16?

Apple presented yesterday at WWDC22 their new continuity feature, which allows you to use an iPhone as a wireless webcam.

Image source: Apple.

We all know MacBook’s dont have the best front facing camera (2MP), they’re fine but not ground breaking – they may be good for light balance but they’re easily overshadowed by the iPhone rear facing cameras. This looks nice, but I can’t see myself strapping my phone to my MacBook just to increase quality any time soon. Although their top down desk view (for desktops was quite neat though)

What apple missed.

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With increasing airline costs, will charter flights in 2023 be a luxury tour operators may not be able to afford?

Background;

When a tour operator starts up, they will usually rely on ad-hoc flight seat purchase, but with variable pricing this soon introduces costs outside of their control which could limit the sale of their products. To overcome this a tour operator usually negotiates group rates with an airline to agree an amount of seats for a given price.

As demand increases further, a tour operator may schedule planes exclusively for their customers (a charter flight). They buy the entire plane for a fixed cost. A chartered flight isn’t published by the airline, and is exclusively sold by the tour operator (operated by the airline).

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Onboarding materials

When a new member starts, I find it good to provide some 3rd party training material so we can ensure we’re all at the same level. Udemy provides a great cost effective source for video led materials.I use this in addition to our own LMS materials (confidential!) to ensure there’ s a common business understanding.

Here’s a link to some of the videos I use;

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With travel disruption on the rise, travel agents are more essential than ever.

Free Independent travellers like to make their own plans, build and book their own itineraries.

With lots of offers available its tempting to book that AirBNB, some flights, transfers and excursions (all on separate bookings)

Since covid, tourism is restarting but with staff issues, IT challenges, and increasing inflation globally, the risks of holiday disasters are higher than ever.

How can you protect yourself ?

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