Earlier this month we attended WordCamp Brighton 2017, a relaxed and friendly three day conference dedicated to all things WordPress. 195 WordPress enthusiasts from the UK and Europe, came together to network, share experiences and listen to a whole range of talks on subjects from website design and coding techniques to project management and digital marketing.
It was a great and really valuable conference. Here’s a quick mention of a few talks that really stood out for us..
Designing for Humans by Tammy Lister (Automattic) highlighted the importance of making a website visitor’s experience a successful and positive one. We all had great fun in this session, cataloging the many annoying ‘features’ of websites we had visited. It was a good reminder of the importance of good, robust website design, which treats visitors like human beings – a subject we are very passionate about! Favourite quote from the session.. “When was the last time you told someone to ‘Submit’!”
Talks on website accessibility by Maja Benke and Rian Rietvald (Human Made) were also extremely interesting and it was very valuable hearing from speakers with so much knowledge of what can be done to improve the website experience for users that might be visually impaired or have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
We also have total respect for Laura Nelson (Pragmatic) who shared her personal experience of dealing with anxiety and how it impacted her work. She suggested tips for how anxiety sufferers can help themselves and what employers can do to support them. We thought this was an important topic that needs more open discussion and were very appreciative that Laura shared her personal experiences so openly.
WordPress Behind the Great Firewall of China by Teodora Lazarova was a fascinating talk about the challenges of building WordPress websites for use in China, given the restrictions imposed on the Chinese internet. It was quite an eye-opener to learn that the simplest things could trip you up, like not being able to reference Google fonts in a website. This was a particularly interesting topic for us given as we are about to start work on an international e-commerce site.
We are very proud to have been sponsors of this event. The whole conference was great fun and we met lots of lovely, fellow WordPress aficionados. The food was great and we especially loved the reusable coffee mugs and water bottles given to us in our welcome pack for use over the conference. Good to know we were doing our bit to save the planet!
..oh and we got to spend a great weekend by the sea in Brighton. If you get the chance to visit, we totally loved La Choza Mexican restaurant – we challenge you to try the michelada!
Getting techie at WordCamp Brighton
