Tech Mids community conference
- 2 minsWoah.
That’s how you bring a community together!
230 of the Midlands best and brightest descended on the Mailbox in Birmingham for the TechMids conference.
Did we have fun? We sure did 😎
The sessions across the day covered an extremely broad range of topics. Whilst every single one deserves a mention, there are a few highlights that provided value that is being taken back to the Sapphire Holidays dev team.
Becki Floyd dropped a UX bomb, showing the audience the inner awesomeness of the Voxpopme, a tool to validate ideas and garner feedback at a humungous scale.
Guy Barker shared a11y insights drawn from his dotnetMAUI Accessible Solitaire app, backed by a lifetime of experience in the field. What the talk lacked in chanting (this time), it made up for in actionable insights 🙌
Si Jobling dispensed psychological safety from the stage, thanks to the PETALS framework. It’s a simple framework for continuously improve a tech team’s health. Don’t worry Si. . . I refused to do the exercise with Toby as suggested. . . instead having a useful topic adjacent conversation during that part of the proceedings 💬
Wrapping up the day was a wonderful talk from Shaun Lawrence which perfectly walked the tightrope of informative, fun, and inspirational. I’ve not yet managed to convince the team to set up a IoT brewing operation in the corner of the office, but I suspect it won’t take much more persuasion.
Overall, this is tied with WhatTheStack Conference as my favourite community led event to be a part of in 2025.
Why?
- As a speaker, you know you’re part of a great line-up when you don’t want to be in your own talk!
- You also know you’re in safe hands when the track host, conf team, and audience join forces to fix show stopping problems in the moments before your talk starts (thanks Bruce 🙏)
- You know your witnessing a thriving community when the conversations carry on LAAAAATE into the night.
With TechMids over, my speaking engagements for 2025 are complete. There is no other conference on the earth that would have provided a juicier cherry to top this years conf cake.
It. Was. Perfect.
Let’s make this a tradition and do it again next year.
It’s lovely to finish the year with a short-long trip home 🚗
P.S - If anyone knows how to take good a selfie whilst facing the camera into a cinema projector. . . please let me know. It’s turning into a recurring problem 😂
Originally featured on LinkedIn.