David Beesley

All Day Hey 2025: A Retrospective

7 min read

For some of us in the web/software development industry, the word ‘Retrospective’ makes your blood run cold. This will be bourne of over-zealous implementations of Scrum and Agile, in corporate dev teams, or maybe from working in toxic environments where the ‘Retrospective’ is actually the weekly/fortnightly ‘Blame Meeting’. Neither of which I currently reside in, I must emphasise.

I apologise for that slight trigger moment, but the word ‘Retrospective’ felt the right term for my reflections on what was an incredible positive and invigorating few days for me. Originally I was intending to call this a ‘Review’ – but that all seems too formal for an event which was way more than some people talking on stage about the web. Although they were awesome too!

Those of you who were there may have seen a strange lad in the second row, feverishly taking notes through the talks – it was always my intention to write an article on the event, and I felt that taking these would really help me to retain the content when revisiting them a few days later. Especially given that some days I can’t even recall what I had for Breakfast (Blueberry Wheats with Whole Milk btw)

A shot in the arm at a critical time

I was looking forward to this event immensely before embarking on the great drive North (6 hours on the M1 was totally worth it) – but I never expected it to impact me so much.

For the past few years I have been working as an in house developer, with a particular focus on a VueJS/Laravel application – in a bit of a “Back of the Front End/Front of the Back End” role. In this time I have partially lost touch with full on front end development as I outlined in my post about CSS aspect-ratio, what I didn’t realise is how much I had lost touch with the community too. This is possibly also driven by my disenchantment with Twitter since it’s takeover – similar to the reflections in Thomas’ post

It was fantastic to meet up with people who I haven’t seen in several years, or have only spoken to on Bluesky (and previously Twitter) – but also to be introduced countless new people who have immediately made me feel warmly welcomed and included.

They also say “don’t meet your heroes” – but at this conference I met several people who were speakers at my first ever conference – Mobilism 2012. Even a few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I would be sharing a social space with them – let alone a Thai Curry and several beers. You know who you are, and thank you for making me feel welcome and included.

Incredible talks, inspiring content

Whilst I have cast my notes to one side, and wanted to take a higher level view of this conference and my experience – I wouldn’t be doing it justice if I didn’t mention the inspiring talks, and a few take aways I got from the people who spoke on Thursday.

  • Lola Odelola, What do you see? – I think most people who attended agreed that this talk was the most thought provoking of the day (not to undersell the others mind you) – Lola really brought home the importance of Alt Text as more than just a utility to formally describe images on your website. How could we impart atmosphere and context? She encouraged us to think “What if Alt Text was displayed by default?”
  • Thalita Vergilio, The good news or the bad news? Directing a narrative as it happens using AI – A pertinent talk which was at times chilling. The talk explored the use of AI and analytics tools during a theoretical company presentation. These tools were used to understand how employees were reacting to changes in company policy, and to tweak the announcements in real time. Thankfully, Thalita clarified that a lot of these tools were theoretically, and their usage would be restricted in the UK and EU.
  • Sareh Heidari, No signal, no service: digital exclusion and how to change it – A fantastic talk on removing the barriers to usage, as services move towards the digital space.
  • Luke Stringer, Do Repeat Yourself. How to move from development into leadership (Lightning) – A fast paced talk on the mindset and process shifts required when moving into a role managing development teams. How to stay technical, how to retain expertise, and how to effectively communicate. “Ignorance is your new super power”
  • Ali Farooqui, What every technologist needs to know about security (Lightning) – Another quick talk on the importance of security at all levels and budgets of tech projects. “Security is an investment, not a tax.”
  • Imran Hussain, With great community comes great responsibility (Lightning) – The last of the lightning talk section, and a great insight into building digital communities around shared values.
  • Andy Bell, Get the core right and the resilient code will follow – A talk about CSS, without CSS in it. Andy talked about how effective communication and collaboration can lead to better outcomes. This is the second time I have seen this talk, and it has proven invaluable in my day-to-day work. Just the mantra of “assume everyone is busy” has improved my prioritisation of tasks no end.
  • Katie Fenn, Around the wwworld: Web MIDI, Web AUDIO and what the web does best – Katie closed the show with a bang (or maybe a series of beeps) with an impassioned talk on the importance of freedom in web standards (in this case the MIDI API), and an incredible set of demos which built up to a crecendo where we were treated to a rendition of “Around the World” by Daft Punk, processed entirely through the browser console.
  • Phil Hawksworth, MC – Phil’s reputation as an incredible MC preceeded him, so I had high hopes which weren’t dashed in the slightest. Phil opened the day with a hilarious AI generated intro, and linked the day together brilliantly. I simply wrote about Phil “Charming, Michael McIntyre-esque”

Perfect Production

The day came together brilliantly well. Largely thanks to the organisation of Josh, his family and his wider team. The venue, Everyman Cinema in Leeds, was warm (maybe a little too warm in the atrium) and inviting. The sponsors dovetailed nicely with the event. The coffee was top notch. And free access to the Clockwise co-working space was a nice touch.

Community driven events like this are the life blood of our industry. Thank you so much for an amazing few days. I feel fully re-energised and re-integrated into a community I had started to lose touch with. I can’t wait until next year. It’s just a shame I cannot make it to WDC this year – but I encourage anyone reading to go, Alex and his team lay on a similarly wonderfult event.

Read More

I must also take the time to link to some other great articles on this conference which I have read up to this point.

Apologies if I have missed yours, give me a nudge and I will add it above

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