What is Work In The Web?
Work In The Web is a free 3-day development workshop for students and run by the team here at Mixd. Each day we hold talks and workshops enabling students to not only learn more about different elements of web development, but also what goes on in an agency in the industry.
Where was it?
This year we were delighted to host the event from our HQ at Platform, Leeds. We moved into the building back in June 2019 and were super excited for people to join us here and see why we love working here too!
Bruntwood, the company who run the building, were one of our sponsors and we can’t thank them enough for their support over the three days.
Who came?
We launched our applications in November and we were overwhelmed. We had students come from across the country who joined us from:
- Solent University
- Manchester Metropolitan University
- Sheffield Hallam University
- University of Northampton
We also had students who represented some of our local universities:
The schedule
Here is a quick peak at what our schedule looked like!
We had a fantastic schedule which included talks about our workflow here at Mixd, our design process and even a WordPress workshop. We also included our Q&A session which the students loved. We find this a perfect opportunity for them to ask us, as industry professionals, questions and get to learn some top tips and good advice.
It’s not all work though, we had a breakfast social on the first morning, a great chance to welcome everyone and break the ice! In the evening, we took everyone over to Roxy Ball Room for a couple hours of games and some beers.
Our last day saw us welcoming everyone up to our office to eat pizza, drink beers and admire those office rooftop views. We finished with a couple of hours of socialising to end a fabulous three days!
The speakers
Each staff member at Mixd took to the spotlight to speak at least once. On the Wednesday afternoon session, we had our lightning talks and each had 10 minutes to speak about our chosen topic. This was not only a good opportunity for the students to get to know the team here but for our team to share their knowledge too!
On Thursday and Friday, we were honoured to welcome some guest speakers from the industry:
- Paul Berwin from Berwins Solicitors who spoke about legal touchpoints for designers and developers. A highly informative and important talk for our students to learn about.
- Mike Francis from Bulb Energy who discussed API’s. An engaging and interactive session where Mike helped the students understand the power of API’s and how to introduce them into their own projects.
- Harry Roberts who spoke about web performance and the power it has in the industry – an intriguing and fascinating topic for all!
Our lovely sponsors
We had some awesome sponsors this year. From food and event space, to licenses and merchandise, we would like to thank them again for their sponsorship and support.
What we learnt this year
Well, it was a packed three days and we all went home with new things to think about. Whether that was a new command learnt for the command line, a method to create variables or arrays in JavaScript, or using empathy mapping as a new way to attack UX design.
There was a lot to learn from the students; what they already know, what they want to know and what we, in the industry, should do to help and support the next generation of web developers.
From our guests, we learnt more about the industry and what different challenges are faced on a day-to-day basis. We enjoy supporting other businesses and people in our industry and we are grateful we had three of them join us for the day.
During the networking and socials, we were able to really learn about the individuals that joined us and find out what the young developers are learning about at university and what they are interested in.
We would like to thank everyone involved for making this event as great as it was. We thoroughly enjoyed it and we wish the Class of 2020 the best of luck for the future!