IBM South Bank Cake Baking

A regular cake baking club which has been running since 2001.

When I began working for Micromuse in 2001, our team held regular team meetings in which we often discussed what we’d done during the previous weekend. During one of these team meetings, I told my team that I’d make a cake and was immediately asked why I didn’t make one for them!

The following week, I did make them a cake. It went down very well and when someone was asked to make one for the next meeting, a tradition had begun.

That was way back in 2001. To this day, the cake meeting still survives – now in IBM.

[one_half]

At first, the rota was just in our heads but we soon lost track. Various methods were tried and it eventually evolved into a perl script which sent out emails to remind bakers. When I first learned how to use Django, I used the cake baking rota as a project to help me understand it and the cake baking website was born.

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

[shashin type=”photo” id=”5772″ size=”medium” columns=”max” order=”user” position=”center”]

[/one_half_last]

[one_half]

[shashin type=”photo” id=”5771″ size=”medium” columns=”max” order=”user” position=”center”]

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

Bakers can add new cakes, along with recipes and photos or edit existing cakes and the next baker is emailed in the week leading up to cake day to give them time to come up with something.

Over the years, we’ve had all sorts of weird and wonderful creations from all over the world, due to the diverse nature of our team. Sometimes bakers are too busy to bake and so cakes are bought from the local patisserie but most of the cakes are baked by hand. We’ve had everything from plain old Victoria sponges to elaborately decorated cake depicting The Battle Of Cable Street.

[/one_half_last]

It’s a regular, weekly tradition that really gets the team together and I’m quite proud that it began with me one day back in 2001. Long may it continue.

Updated: