Tonight we were treated to an extra session, as Liftshare opened their office (and their slide) for a special Sync Norwich evening. The office was secreted away in a huge, mainly disused building in Norwich city centre, the door to which many people probably walk past daily without noticing it even exists. After being buzzed in through what could have been the entrance to a secret club, I was presented with a beer (always a good start) and a chair right at the front. The small office had been turned into a mini-auditorium with a good 30 or more people in attendance and the slide show had already begun.

I don’t know what the collective noun is for people named Sergio, but we had two present. After an introduction from founder Ali Clabburn, Sergio from Liftshare took the floor. He talked us through some of the pitfalls and issues they experienced in the process of creating their app, something they had wanted to create for four years or more. Then Sergio from “classic mega large agency” (his words) DigitasLBi talked about their collaboration with the company and the difficulties of working and communicating remotely. Overall the two main headaches that came out of the hour-long talk, were the amount of trouble that dealing with legacy brought about and finding a reliable company to deal with payments cost effectively.

The highlight for me was the slide with Sergio and Sergio beaming with pride, their fingers hovering over the ‘submit’ button of their app to iTunes. A few people downloaded the app and played around with it during the course of the evening, with some picking up bugs. Liftshare’s Sergio welcomed any feedback or bug-spotting, offering his email address to send details to ([email protected]).

While I didn’t get to go down the slide (to be honest it looked like an industrial airduct with a steep enough gradient to shoot me at high speed out the other end), the evening was a well-attended and social one.