Well this has gone about as well as most of my new year resolutions. I know I said I was going to write every week, but in my defence – I’ve been on holiday for two weeks*. If I’m honest, it wasn’t the best. The first week was cold and rainy (it’s not been the best summer so far) but the second was much better. We even managed to get out on the motorbike a few times.

*Well, on leave from work. We didn’t go anywhere – we spent most of it working in the garden, moving a garden wall back a foot and putting up a new fence. Digging holes in the cold and wet – I had flashbacks to fieldwork in my Archaeology degree.

I did manage to go to MFE24 – a software development conference with a focus on front end – organised by Middlesbrough Front End. MFE is the brainchild of Lewis Morris and Jamie Bradley, two software developers from Middlesbrough. They’ve been organising meetups in Middlesbrough since 2019 and last year saw the first MFE conference, which was a real success and led to this year’s conference at Middlesbrough Town Hall. I went with a few other people from Waterstons (who very kindly bought our tickets!) and had a fantastic day listening to a wide range of speakers with Jimmy Lees as MC.

There were too many speakers for me to write about them all but my main takeaways from the day were from three talks in particular. Michaela Reaney‘s talk on empowering “accidental managers” highlighted the problems faced by people who fall into managerial roles but aren’t supported in gaining the skills needed to succeed. Michaela made a very good point in saying “soft skills” should be renamed “human skills”. Lex Lofthouse‘s Design for Developers talk was very enlightening, it is easy to spend so much time focussing on the functionality of a system that the actual look and usability can be overlooked. She outlined the principles of design and the importance of hierarchy, contrast, proximity and balance. Continuing the theme of usability, Anuradha Kumari spoke about how DevTools can be used to test a website’s accessibility. A few months ago I attended a webinar about the latest WCAG standards and I’m keen to learn more about how I can ensure systems I work on are inclusive and accessible to as many users as possible.

And finally – this week we had a team afternoon out at Go Ape! in Matfen. Thankfully it didn’t rain and we all had a lot of fun climbing, ziplining and tarzan-swinging through the trees. Cargo nets were cursed, fears were faced and a lot of laughing made for a really enjoyable afternoon. I think just about everyone ended up mucky with a few not-so-graceful landings from the ziplines.

I did do some work this week I promise…