Registers.app Blog

Simon Worthington

Simon is a founder of Register Dynamics, a data consultancy on a mission to make data more useful for everyone, and the creators of Registers.app.

As a technologist with years of experience applying cutting-edge data technology to meet real user needs, Simon gets that data is hard. Tell him your data problems on Twitter @RegDyn!

The next step after a data strategy

We've helped many organisations transform their approach to data and deliver on their data strategy. We’ve learnt lots of lessons with them along the way about why they get stuck with implementation. In this first of a trilogy of articles, we'll share the problems we've helped organistions overcome on their data transformation journey.

Why custodians need self-serve tools

Cultural change around data without self-service custodianship is hard to achieve. Central data teams need to provide simple tools to custodians in order to scale their architecture and governance to a whole organisation. We've identified three key features that self-serve tools need in order to build and manage canonical datasets.

Excel yourself with our web spreadsheet editor

We wanted to use a spreadsheet interface to let our users feel at home editing Registers. But we needed an editor that was similar to desktop office apps but didn't confuse users in areas that Registers and spreadsheets differ. So, we built our own spreadsheet widget and we're now using it everywhere in Registers.app.

How to keep data up‑to‑date at scale

Keeping important data up-to-date is critical. Organisations commonly centralise their key data – but this creates three hard problems. In this post, we explore a better way of keeping data up-to-date that keeps data scalable and flexible.

What is a Register?

You’ve probably heard the R-word several times before, but may never have had a concrete explanation of what a Register is. In this post, we explore some of the properties that make a Register an excellent fit for holding important shared data.

Solving conundrums of spreadsheets at scale

Organisations of all sizes struggle to manage their important, canonical data and face constant tension around using spreadsheets. Our conclusion is simple: spreadsheets don’t work at scale. What if teams producing canonical data could continue to use their spreadsheets and others who need that data could consume it in a machine-readable, updatable and flexible way?

Open Permits and the power of open source software

What if we can do more with physical proofs? What if we encode permits in a machine-readable way that also allowed the data to be verified as accurate? I’ve taken the open-source Registers technology that lets people build secure lists and packed individual items into QR codes, and then built a scanner app that runs on a smartphone and can read and verify the data.