Now that the dust from the conference has settled, I wanted to post a quick look back on what was another fantastic year for All Day Hey!.
There was such a buzz surrounding the conference this year, not just around the incredible speakers that were about to take the stage, but also the sense of community that revolved around the day. I always get excited when people start to arrive, and a queue starts to form up the stairs (don’t worry, we work as quickly as possible to get you in!).
The schedule for the day kicked off with an interactive talk from Remy Sharp, who gave a great demo on what was essentially reverse-engineering a ZX Spectrum. Nadieh Bremer followed with an insight into her work visualising data, it’s hard not to get excited when you see Nadieh talk as she’s so passionate about her work, especially where it intersects between her two loves, Astronomy and data visualisation!
After a short break, Sharon Steed took the stage to deliver a thought-provoking talk on empathy, and specifically, it’s application in the workplace. Andrew Betts educated us on Feature Policy, and how we can use it to reduce the scope for attacks on the things we build.
We welcomed three lightning speakers to deliver a 10-minute talk on a topic of their choice. Sally Bridgewater, who first spoke at a Hey! event a few years ago showed the audience her way of dealing with a loved one with ADHD. Sally had devised a way to manage the daily struggles of life by organising weekly tasks just like an agile team would, with a huge amount of success!
Jeremias Menichelli gave a great summary on how to properly deal with custom fonts in a way that doesn’t block your audience getting to the content as quickly as possible. Ana Rodrigues rounded off the lightning talks by giving her opinion on why blogging is so important for your personal and professional development. One of my favourite quotes from her talk was:
Reading about how relatable we all are keeps the community going.
Taking the stage for the final part of the day was Sarah Drasner and Tim Kadlec. Sarah (after starting off with a video from Monsters Inc. to capture the audience’s attention) jumped straight into the future of web animation with a great demo of 3D CSS properties used in VR. Tim finished off the day admitting he’d joined “Team Leeds” over “Team London” after spending more time in the city. His talk went into detail about how to ensure your site still performs well even when unexpected things happen (like network conditions being less than ideal, for example).
After the conference, we invited everyone to Headrow House for a drink and a chance to socialise. Most people took us up on this, and it was great to meet attendees and get feedback on what we can improve next year.
As we pack away the conference kit for another year, I just wanted to wrap up by saying a few thank you’s…
A big thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket, the support means we can keep putting on conferences and work even harder to create a safe space for the community to learn and share experiences. A huge thank you also goes to our amazing speakers who delivered world-class talks (not that we expected anything different).
A special thank you goes to James, Jack, Tom, Rosy and Marcus for staffing the day and ensuring everything ran smoothly. And to Ox Club for providing an incredible feast for our speakers the night before the conference.
And finally to the Leeds International Festival for having us as part of your Core event line-up, it’s great to be part of a festival that helps promote Leeds to the masses.
See you in 2020!
Find out more about All Day Hey!