You hear the word ‘conference’ and you probably think boring, stuffy, corporate bullshit.
That is not how I see the conference.
But that’s because I’ve attended a beautiful flavour of one-day, community-driven, curated and inclusive conferences.
Most recently I attended All Day Hey in Leeds. A conference I’ve been to thrice now, and will continue to attend for as long as it runs. This conference adopts a fantastic format – single track, lots of breaks and opportunities to chat to other attendees, and a carefully curated set of talks that touch on the important shit.
All Day Hey shares a beautiful ethos with many other conferences, and some that I have attended. FFConf, Pixel Pioneers, WDC, Front End North, Middlesbrough Front End, State of the Browser… all fantastic events that place the people at their heart, sincerely.
These aren’t conferences full of shirt and ties, sipping away at crap filter coffee and barely talking to anybody else. This is a community event more than a ‘conference’ – a word that I just don’t think does it justice.
While I absolutely love listening to the talks (and take so much away from them) the main thing I take away from these events is a sense of community ❤️
The social is always one of the key parts of these conferences. A place where everyone can decompress, chat about the day they’ve just shared, and get to know each other while sharing a pint or two.
An overwhelming feeling of joy envelops me for days beyond the conference end. I come away having made some great connections, and genuine friendships. I always look forward to seeing some familiar faces at the next event, but also connecting with new people every single time.
What I’m genuinely saying is, maybe the real conference is the friendships we made along the way 😅
Embarassingly, my last blog post was about All Day Hey in 2023. But if you’re curious to learn more about the actual day of talks itself and how that runs, you can read it here.
