Staffs Web Meetup

March saw a fantastic turnout – thanks to all who came along and made this night memorable. We welcomed Martin Kearn, our guest speaker for the evening. He presented his talk on machine learning; complete with a live demonstration.

Thanks to our sponsors for this event – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).

Talk

Machine Learning for Muggles

Martin Kearn – Microsoft

Artificial Intelligence is the latest hotness. Machine Learning sits behind artificial intelligence and on the surface it may seem like a deeply technical, scientific topic. We are here to tell you that it is more accessible than you think. We’ll look at some of the basics around the Azure Machine Learning service. We’ll also look some of the Microsoft Cognitive Services APIs which make it very easy to implement artificial intelligence ‘smarts’ into your application with simple, standard REST calls.

Thanks for those who came to March’s meetup focussed on productivity – we had a great turn out.

A big thanks to Paul and Andrew for speaking and Trevor for hosting the open discussion.

A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).

Talks

The Toyota Way in Action

Paul Boocock

At Codeweavers we live and breathe The Toyota Way philosophy. This talk will show you how we have used this philosophy, originally from the car manufacturing world, and how it has impacted every corner of our IT business from development to sales to client support. It doesn’t matter what field your business is in, The Toyota Way will help you improve and reach your goal.

Herding Cats in the Digital Age

Andrew McCombe

In this Information Age demands are increasing. Organising a busy work schedule and a home life is a skill in itself. Here’s how I manage it using software and a few special techniques.

Thanks to everyone who came along to February’s evening of lightning talks.

Greg stepped up to give a talk on the Dark Web. Helping to define and dispel some myths.

Dan gave an introduction to building extensions for the Chrome browser. We now have our own “Staffs Web Meetup Checker” extension. Now you’ll always know when the next meetup is!

Bean enCounter’s Jonathan delivered a talk on the types of social network which occur IRL.

Barry shared some details about an upcoming event organised by the BCS. Technology behind the Stoke-on-Trent UK City of Culture 2021 Bid is being held Tuesday 14th March at Staffordshire University’s Leek Road campus.

A massive thank you to our sponsors – iWeb and The Deskspace Project, run by TopCashback’s Charity (TopCharity).

Talks

Spinning a Dark Web

Greg Mayes

In a time where online traffic is more scrutinised than ever, increasing amounts of people are being exposed to terms such as the dark web, the deep web, and Tor. This talk aims to helps to properly define these terms, and dispel false preconceptions.

An introduction to browser extensions

Dan Bovey

This talk will introduce you to the world of Chrome extensions, what’s available to you as a developer, and how powerful they can be to change your web experience. Also, lots of shameless plugging 🔌

How Humans Naturally Build Social Networks: Implications for Social Media

Jonathan Cushing

Jonathan, as an evolutionary psychologist, will talk about how humans innately create social networks – food for thought when creating social media websites.

Thank you to everyone who came to January’s meetup. Staffs Web Meetup held an evening of talks focusing on design and front end development.

Thanks to both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talks

Designing the progressive way

Fiona Knight – Staffordshire University

This talk shall touch on the state of mobile web apps, and the push of ‘offline first’, and how new items in the web platform, including web components, may help.

Integrating pattern libraries into an agency

Dave Redfern – iWeb

In this talk I’ll share what pattern libraries are and their benefits for developers, designers and website owners. Speaking about the challenges of developing and integrating them into an agency environment. I’ll include both the successes and mistakes we’ve made along the way. This is a real life reflection of how pattern libraries are working, and not working, for us.

Our last meetup of 2016! Thank you to everyone who came along and made it a great night. Enjoy your Christmas break! We’ll see you in the New Year for more!

We’d like to thank both our sponsors – TopCashback and iWeb.

Talks

Auditing Your Site: 7 On-page SEO Essentials To Look For

James Kinsella

We’ll cover 7 of the most common and critical factors of your pages to look for from an SEO perspective, as well as how you can get started running an audit on your site today. A big focus on SEO, some best practices for designers and a few things for your developer to think about.

James has published an in-depth blog post covering the topics raised in his talk. See Auditing Your Site: 7 On-page SEO Essentials.

Breaking down the wall with agile design

Martyn Hoyer

We’ve discussed in the past “the wall” between designers and developers. It seems we’re all agreed that we need to communicate and collaborate but that can often be unfeasible.

This talk aims to adjust the mindsets of both parties and help to pre-empt and mitigate some of the common issues that arise.