Afternoon Sessions at Dot One London - Part Two

Following on from the morning session at Dot One there was a wonderful lunch and mid-afternoon snacks ahead of the final 3 sessions of the day which offered a variety of non-technical content from 3 Craft CMS agencies.

Lessons Learned

First up after the mid-afternoon break (and incredible vegan chocolate cookies) it was my turn to grace the stage. I'd been sat on the fence over whether to submit a talk for Dot One, largely mulling over what I could bring to the day.

On the one hand, these events need people to put forward talks if they're to go ahead and be a success for the community. On the other, my own experience with Craft isn't especially technical, so thinking about what was likely to be a more technical audience, I wasn't convinced I'd find the right topic.

There was one topic I'd got in mind though; but it was pretty personal and one lived through a painful experience. Was I ready to talk about something that would leave me feeling vulnerable? I guess I was.

Truth be told, 2023 wasn't a great year for our agency. Like many other agencies, we'd seen a slowdown post Covid. It was also our turn to go through the great resignation. Add to that a complex and challenging project, and 12 months on, I felt there was a story to tell about the lessons learned that could have killed our agency.

Sounds a bit dramatic? Well, not really. 12 months ago it's fair to say I'd fallen out of love with building websites and wasn't enjoying running a business. Things were dominated by one project in particular and there were a number of lessons learned worth sharing.

There was a certain catharticism in writing this talk. And to be clear, this wasn't an opportunity to rant about the situation we found ourselves in, but an opportunity to think about and share some of the (hard) lessons we'd learned along the way. It was also a firm reminder that when things aren't going the way we'd hoped, there's others who have been there and worn the t-shirt.

There was loads of positive feedback; and not just ‘make you feel good comments’, but genuine appreciation for talking about something not many get the opportunity to, or choose to do. So thank you to everyone for listening and sharing your own experiences in the conversations that followed.

It's worth adding that 12 months on, we as an agency, and I as it's leader are in a totally different place. The enjoyment has returned and challenges while ever present, feel far more manageable than they did this time last year.

Changing Performance Outcomes for Elite Athletes

The penultimate talk of the day was another offering from the team at Webdna. I loved this talk because it was a fabulous demonstration of the versatility of Craft, and a great project to boot.

The team spoke about a project called Vodafone PLAYER.Connect, an athlete monitoring system used by the Welsh Rugby Union women’s team. Sharing details about the ideation, UX and development behind the system, it was collecting hundreds, in fact thousands of data points from individual athletes on all sorts of measures such as sleep, nutrition and injuries. All bundled into an app and going through a series of iterations, the project was a brilliant example of how Craft can provide a solution to a wide range of challenges facing any type of organisation.

Pitching Craft CMS during the Sales Conversation

Oscar Pettersson was the man stood between us and happy hour at the bar as he stood up for the final talk of the day.

This talk was right up my alley as introducing and positioning Craft CMS to prospects and clients is typically my role at A Digital. As a former developer, it's easy to get caught up in the technical features and details of a platform like Craft, but actually, the questions everyone wants to know are, 'will it solve my problem?' and 'does it support my strategic objectives?'.

From my perspective I always introduce Craft as a platform that puts your content before the management system–quite literally! In other words, build your content in a scaleable way and it will be seamlessly managed with no preconceptions about how it's presented.

Thanks to Pixel & Tonic and Sponsors

At the end of a fine day of talks and insights, it was time to reflect on the days presentations with happy hour on the rooftop terrace as the sun fell, courtesy of sponsors Arcustech and Mutual. While anyone can organise events like this, the economics mean they need sponsorship to support them, and of course an enthusiastic community to attend and share their experiences.

Having spoken previously at Dot All in Montreal back in 2019, I've always found these events to be friendly spaces where everyone is there to listen and learn from one another. Many will have shared experiences in common and something you might feel reluctant about sharing will often turn out to be the thing that others nod their heads in agreement as they quietly acknowledge they've been there too.

So look out for other Craft CMS events, as well as local meet ups and join in where you can. The main Dot All conference is planned over 2-3 days in Lisbon next autumn.