I like hosting meetups (and attending them!), and usually have a side project or two on the go. I really enjoy running workshops and giving talks. Here’s a bit more detail.
Meetups
From October 2012 until July 2018, I was one of the organisers of the Cape Town Front-end developers meetup group. The group hosts monthly events such as talks and workshops.
With a lot of help from some friends, I started the Cape Town chapter of RailsBridge: an organisation that offers free workshops on Rails, Ruby, and other web technologies for groups of people that are underrepresented in tech. From April 2013 until March 2018, I helped organise and mentor at the quarterly workshops.
Projects
I think that a great way to test the robustness and resilience of your site is to play with it on lower-end mobile devices. I joined the Open Device Lab community by starting the Nomad Device Lab in September 2012. It’s a shared pool of internet-connected devices, and is free to use. Every few months someone will contact me through the site and I’ll go and sit with them, usually for a half a day. We test their projects across a range of devices, and discuss ways of improving the front-end performance and user experience. In November 2016, the lab was featured on Smashing Mag: Where Are The World’s Best Open Device Labs?
I’m a big believer in building things that are Future Friendly, so I made a tiny site to join the call to arms. You can read more about the technical details of what that means on my How I Do Things page.
Workshops and speaking
I love helping people learn new things, or get better at things they already known. I like sharing what I learn, so I give talks at local meetups and conferences. Here are some workshops I’ve helped design and run, and some talks I’ve given in 2018.
- November - More heart ❤ and more humans with Inclusive Design at Agile Testing Days in Potsdam, Germany, with Nicola du Toit.
- July - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at Make Games SA, with Nicola du Toit.
- July - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at the UX Masterclass, with Nicola du Toit.
- June - HTML pages and CSS layout workshop at ColorCode. Workshop deck.
- June - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at the Cape Town Dribbble Meetup, with Nicola du Toit; our slides
- May - Global Accessibility Awareness Day workshop at CTFEDs, with Nicola du Toit. Workshop: activities; resources; slides.
- May - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at IxDA Cape Town, with Nicola du Toit; our slides.
- May - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at Cape Town Testing meetup, with Nicola du Toit; our slides.
- May - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans at The IO Powwow, with Nicola du Toit; our slides.
- April - “Speak up!” workshop: the fine art of sharing and presenting at SUGSA, with Justin Slack: materials.
- March - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans: lightning talk at the Scrum User Group South Africa with Nicola du Toit; our slides.
- February - Mistakes Were Made (By Me) at the Cape Town Creative Academy; my slides.
Workshops and speaking
I’ve been at this for a few years. Here are some workshops from the more distant past.
Workshops
2017
- November - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans workshop at UX South Africa with Nicola du Toit. Materials: resources; workshop activities; our slide deck.
- October - Inclusive Design: more heart ❤, more humans workshop at WordCamp Cape Town with Nicola du Toit.
- August - Open Design Cape Town workshop at CTFEDs with Danielle Eriksen and Justin Slack.
- August - “Speak up!” workshop: the fine art of sharing and presenting at CTFEDs, with Danielle Eriksen: materials.
- May - Global Accessibility Awareness Day at CTFEDs with Justin Slack: materials.
- March - LGBT Hackathon at CTFEDs, with Danielle Eriksen: materials.
2016
- November - Playing the Game of Thrones with PopcornFlow workshop at Scrum Gathering South Africa 2016 with Austin Fagan.
- October - Typography workshop at CTFEDs, with Justin Slack: materials.
- September - Front-end Performance workshop at WordCamp Cape Town 2016, with Danielle Eriksen: materials.
- August - Open Design Cape Town workshop at CTFEDS, for Open Design Cape Town, with Justin Slack: materials.
- May - Global Accessibility Awareness Day at CTFEDs with Justin Slack: materials.
- April - Help! The UX Designer isn’t coming in today! at CTFEDs with Jen Poole: materials.
- April - Future Friendly UX Design with Justin Slack at the 2016 UX South Africa workshop sessions in Cape Town: materials.
2015
- November - Future Friendly UX Design with Justin Slack at the 2015 UX South Africa conference in Cape Town: materials.
- August - Design is for Tomorrow workshop with Justin Slack for Open Design Cape Town 2015.
- November - Future Friendly UX Design with Justin Slack at the 2015 UX South Africa conference in Cape Town: materials.
- August - Design is for Tomorrow workshop with Justin Slack for Open Design Cape Town 2015.
Speaking
2017
- November - MC at the UX South Africa conference.
- July - The Hidden Costs of Page Builders: What You Don’t See Is What They Get with Deb Butler at the WordPress Cape Town meetup group; our slides.
- June - MC at the Idea Hackathon.
- April - Performance Matters with Danielle Eriksen at the Pixel Up! meetup; our slides.
2016
- November - MC at the UX South Africa conference.
- June - Accessibility with Steve Barnett & Justin Slack: episode 44 of ZADevChat (podcast).
- April - Progressive Enhancement at the Meteor Cape Town meetup: my write-up.
2015
- November - 2 Burger 2 Furious lightning talk at the 2015 UX South conference in Cape Town: slides; video.
- October - Hashtag Burgergate at CTFEDs: my write-up; slides.
- August - jQuery (vs JavaScript) lightning talk at CTFEDs for the Open Design workshop: slides.
- August - #fedlyfe at Friends of Design: slides.
- February - Gathering Stats and Herding Cats at SUGSA: slides
2014
- October - If I Was King Of The World with Rich Archer, at CTFEDs: slides.
- October - The good, the bad, and the squishy at the 2014 UX South conference in Cape Town: video; my write-up; slides.