It is often thought that conferences such as All Day Hey! are for the most part aimed at designers or developers, however, we found every talk insightful and were able to take something away from each guest speaker.
As the Content Designer here at Mixd, I particularly took interest in Amy Hupes talk on ‘writing sh*t documentation’ which was an interesting and witty take on how we write documentation within the industry and how clients may perceive it. Amy said “A good piece of documentation gives people all the information they need to complete a whole task, and nothing more”. This got cogs turning for me and made me think differently about the way I advise on all things content and accessibility. Amy really took the complexity out of the way we write and how it’s easy when you have the knowledge to write documentation, but in fact what we should be thinking about is whether or not the client/user is able to understand the information the way in which it was intended.
Our green champion, Alex, found Michelle Barker’s talk on ‘Building a greener web’ particularly significant. Michelle explained the effects a single HTML webpage can have on the environment, and provided some useful resources to check the amount of energy a website is using, which will help us here at Mixd to make more mindful decisions on how we optimise our websites and contribute to a greener web. Michelle also talked about how ‘the web’ contributes to 3.7% of worldwide Co2 emissions, which is a very similar figure to the aviation industry across the globe. Statistics such as this really had Alex thinking of what we can do to help reduce carbon emissions and make Mixd a greener place to work.
After a pastry and coffee break, we were then keen to listen to Matt Wheeler’s lightning talk around accessibility and how websites may not actually be as accessible as we think. Matt talked about how over 96.3% of website homepages have detected WCAG 2 failures. This was a key talk for us as here at Mixd, we specialise in accessibility and so we came away with a fresh perspective and some actions to trial out, to maximise the accessibility of the websites Mixd create.
Emma Bostain gave a great talk on building effective cross-cultural teams and how she had to adapt when moving to the other side of the world for work. She gave some great insight as to how different cultures give and receive feedback. Amanda Wowk, a content designer, gave a lightning talk on how we all benefit when we speak and write clearly and simply and explained why it’s important for everyone to use plain language in their roles. Alex and I specifically, didn’t start out our careers in digital (and as you can imagine when we first joined Mixd, a lot of the technical terminology meant nothing to us!) but being able to strip back and speak in a way that everyone understands meant that we were able to gain the knowledge to execute our job roles to the best of our ability.
Overall, All Day Hey! was a really informative day, giving us lots to think about. It soon became clear that the entire team would benefit from next years conference.
The annual personal learning and development allowance is one of the many perks of working at Mixd, so we are able to attend paid events like All Day Hey! using our allocated budget. Visit our careers page to browse the current opportunities and join the team at the next conference!