Join us Wednesday 20th September at The Apothecary for an evening of talks. There is free food and a drink waiting! We’ll be there from 6pm with talks starting at 7pm.
Category: Meetups
August 2017 – Mental Health
August saw us coming together to discuss the importance of mental health within the tech industry.
A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).
Talk
Open Sourcing Mental Illness
In some parts of the world, the burden of mental health disorder is the largest of all disorder categories; but it seems like very few people are talking about it. A world wide problem will undoubtedly impact upon our narrower technical community.So, when it comes to mental health in our community and workplace; where do we begin?
This presentation will provide some context to mental health in the tech community and highlight some of the work being done by Open Sourcing Mental Health.
July 2017 – The value of side projects
In July we focused on the value side projects. Adam presented a talk where he demonstrated building custom applications on the Amazon Alexa smart home platform. Talking us through the process and some of the things learnt along the way.
A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).
Talk
The value of side projects
Side projects are important, you can exercise your own creativity and build all sorts of random things. They allow you to pick up new skills and expand your knowledge along the way. They can just be for fun, or they may even turn into commercial success stories, or sometimes fail… but ultimately they allow us to learn something new, and more importantly, you’re the boss! In this presentation I will go through the value of side projects in more detail, running through some success stories and also showing you a side project I’ve worked on using an Amazon Echo Dot.
June 2017 – Welcoming our new venue
We saw a great turnout for June’s meetup. Thanks to everyone who came along to see our new venue and learn about mobile first SEO.
A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).
Talk
An Arbitrary Number Of Things You Should Know About Mobile First SEO
When Google’s Gary Illyes revealed plans to create a ‘mobile-first’ index in November 2016, it sent the SEO world into a tizz. But really there wasn’t any need. Fast forward seven months and we’re still waiting for Google to confirm when it will be fully rolled out.
So, while we wait, let’s address some of the fundamentals:
- What the heck does ‘mobile-first’ even mean?
- What can we do to prepare?
- And how can we use to our advantage?
May 2017 – WordPress, Accessibility & Security
In May we were lucky to be joined by a number of speakers prominent in the WordPress community. We also said goodbye to the venue which has hosted us for the past two and a half years. The Bean enCounter has been a truly wonderful home for Staffs Web Meetup and we wish Jonathan, it’s proprietor; all the best in his new venture.
A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).
Designing for accessibility
The accessibility of a website is significantly affected by the underlying HTML, CSS and javascript that developers use to create it. But it is also possible to impact upon the accessibility of a site at the design stage – both the visual design, and the interactive design or UX. And it’s not just about colour schemes either.
In this presentation I will outline a few key points to keep in mind when you are designing your next beautiful website or theme. I will illustrate the points with some good (and bad) examples.
Good design and web accessibility can go hand in hand – come and find out how.
Key message: It’s not just developers that need to think about accessibility, it’s designers too.
Practical WordPress Security
So we have all been to the scary WordPress security talk or indeed any security talk where Tim or someone else frightens you to death, but its not too dire, in those talks there is a theme that everything is beyond despair and very little helps. So this talk, which is low on scary tales and high on simple practical tips to improve your sites security. On their own they might not be the silver bullet but they all add up. Tim will guide you through things anyone of any ability level can implement to improve their sites security. While focusing on WordPress these tips can on the whole be used anywhere.
