Q. Hi Jey. Congratulations on winning the Grand Prize in our Eco Contest, with your application ‘The Lost Leaf’! Please introduce yourself to the community at SilverlightShow – your country, job, experience with Silverlight, anything you think might be interesting to our community.
A. I am Jey, natively from India, but currently residing & working in the UK. I hold a Master’s in Information Systems & a Bachelor’s in Engineering. After finishing my post-graduation in 2009 & until recently, I worked as a Software Developer with specific interest on UI for a renowned Telematics firm. Currently, I work as a Senior Software Engineer for a major software solutions provider (Microsoft Platform).
My experience with Silverlight only dates about 1.5 years old. I am a quick learner & learnt a lot of Silverlight development out of my own interest, before which I was more an avid developer for open-source platform & flash. Off late though, I am more focused on Silverlight & other Microsoft platform based solutions.
Though my daily job delves around all phases from back-end to front-end development, I have cultivated a keen eye for design & also write a blog here (Jeyz Experiments - http://jeyz.virturealz.com/) with more interest on UI. I have also begun to contribute to the community at (http://forums.silverlight.net/). I am young and new to most of these but what I have learnt is - hard work always pays off. I certainly feel that I am on the right path towards my profession. I also freelance as a web-developer for many SME’s during my free-time. I have several interesting hobby projects going on, a few of which will be released on my blog soon, so kindly stay tuned at Jeyz Experiments.
Q. Our 5 judges selected your application as the best one among 26 entries! Quite a competition! And some of the entries were very good. What do you think was the key advantage of your application, what do you think impressed the judges most?
A. The whole idea of winning the contest was not in me, until it actually dawned upon me that I won it. After submitting for the contest, I had a play through the gallery & felt, almost every participant has put a lot of effort into each of their applications. In my personal opinion, my application was a simple day-today idea, of DEMAND versus SUPPLY chain depiction, with no fancy out of world mathematical logics or numbers. I chose to depict what we all already knew but weren’t taking any steps to stop it.
What I think made my application stand out are the following:
1) Name of the app – The Lost Leaf, as in gave a direct feeling of us, having done something brutal to Mother Nature.
2) Design – As said before, I love doing creative UI. I spent quite some doing, designing the home-page, the others were fairly quick to put together.
& lastly, the music was an add-on
I guess when all these came together, with the simple game concept, the app ended up being Elegant, attractive & engaging.
Q. How did you come up with the idea of your contest entry?
A. I came across the contest only around mid-February, so that didn’t give me a lot of time to come up with a great idea. The whole concept of developing a game over a simple idea struck me when I was playing TOSS PAPER on my phone. It was a typical time killer, game, where we throw waste paper in the bins. So I started thinking where paper comes from and it led to deforestation due to human being needs, which helped me think of a bigger picture of DEMAND versus SUPPLY picture. Also, as we human’s always have needs & are dependent largely on nature, this idea of the game was at its best to portray a Sustainable Forest Management cycle.
With only about a week or two left before the contest concluded, I quickly got to mock-up and development. It took about 3-4 days to develop the game. I then thought, of having a unique page which worked as a plea for people to get together to contribute to the communities, which was the major focus of STICTCH A TREE page. I got in touch with some people around here, who are at large involved in forest management. The whole idea of bringing about awareness brought a twinkle in their eyes. I might be very soon involved in developing an application for a Non-profit organization, with focus on saving the forests.
Q. This contest turned to be quite challenging – we got 80% of the entries in the last few days, we had many questions about what eco idea may work and may not. Why do you think that is?
A. Opinions are mostly if not, always subjective and perspectives change between people. As a common man, we do not necessarily assess the environment at a global standpoint; but usually the assessment is on a day to day basis and how it affects one another. That, I think is the reason behind the mixed responses. There needs to be local mediums that focus on local eco issues and all those will collate to the global eco effort. Although, many organizations exists already that do try to create awareness of the same, the real motivation should come from within us. Once this is done, good will follow.
Q. Which part of your application was most challenging to develop, and why? Would you like to author an article about a challenging solution you came up with, similar to what Peter Kuhn did for his ‘Do you twig?’ App?
A. The application overall was simple and straight-forward in terms of development, as I did not involve any complex coding logics there. But given the short time-span I had, I had to do a trade-off in various places, where I could have done better. Though at this moment, in time, I do not have anything challenging to write about, kindly keep a watch out on my blog Jeyz Experiments, where in I detail my various experiments and my typical challenges in developing them & also give away lots of free source code.
Q. What was your favorite among the other apps in the contest? Which apps did you give 5 leaves and why?
A. Firstly, my kudos to all fellow participants, for the great effort. I would like to pick three of my best choices and they are as below (not specifically in the order of preference):
1) Forest Finder - This app was very unique. Loved the idea & execution.
2) Save the Earth – Plant a Tree – The app was engaging in the UI, specifically the tree growing process. I liked the whole concept of motivating people to plant a tree (which was in a way linked to The Lost Leaf’s – Stitch a Tree page).
3) Greenlance - Amazing data collection & a high level of future prospects for the project. Blazing effort.
Q. We plan to make one Eco contest each year, with different Eco topics of course. How would you recommend to improve the contest, would you like to suggest the topic for next year perhaps ?
A. The way in which the contest was held was fair and perfect in all ways. I especially appreciate the support & immediate response when I had few doubts & struggled to upload my application (due to its big size). Cheers for that. The contest is definitely heading in the right direction.
What I would like to see though, is the involvement of real organizations who struggle for eco-management. This might help in development of applications, that target the problems directly, asides from creating awareness.
With 2012, hyped for the year of catastrophe’s & destruction, well any topic that would address the above issues and will help convey the message at a quicker pace should do.
Overall, I would like to thank the judges once again & my kudos to all participants. This is my first MIX Event, that I am attending & I am totally excited & looking forward to it. Will post my experiences on my blog, and wish you all good luck.
Thanks Jey! We hope you will enjoy MIX and Vegas, and hope you will share with us your impressions from the best sessions there!