We had another great turnout last Thursday! Thanks to everyone who came along. We saw lots of new and old faces. Thanks to everyone who signed up on Meetup or found us through the Feelgood Stafford Magazine.
A big thank you to our sponsors (Connect Group and iWeb) and of course Bean enCounter for the fantastic food, drink and service.
The evening was hosted by Dave Redfern and we had four lightning talks.
Lightning Talks
We’ve included a summary of the talks below and we’ll update the page with coverage (slides/videos) as it comes in.
Creating a CMS using Java
Presented by Ruth Mills
How I created a content management system for beauty salon websites in Java, using the Spring Framework, Hibernate, Struts 2, PostgreSQL and eXist-DB, and how it helped me with learning new technologies.
An introduction to Code Club
Presented by Tim Wilson
Tim is the new regional coordinator for Code Club, a nationwide network of volunteer-led after school coding clubs for children aged 9-11.
In this lightning talk, Tim will provide an introduction to Code Club, the opportunities of becoming a volunteer and what’s involved in setting up, working with schools and an introduction to Code Club projects.
Unit Testing, for User Interfaces
Presented by Adam Davis
Testing is rather an art form, it can be done in a variety of ways, but often not a lot of people write front-end based unit tests. In systems which comprise heavily on front-end based, and complex interfaces the need grows stronger to provide greater front end coverage. This short talk will outline how to approach problems faced when writing tests for these scenarios, and how at RedEye we’re using various technologies to achieve this.
UX: The Bigger Picture
Presented by Kirsty Burgoine
As web designers and developers we spend a lot of time designing and building online experiences. We want the end user to feel joy when using our websites and apps (at least, I do) but its easy to lose sight of the fact that what we create is only one tool in the toolbox and that UX is more than just a shiny happy website. Its about shiny happy people, and creating an overall experience that encourages brand loyalty is so much more.
Having spent a lot of time mulling this over recently, I will look at a few of the brands that I think have got it right and why.
Staffs Web Meetup 