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At the Port80 Web Design Conference

Posted on by Clive Walker in Web Design Conference

I wrote this post a while back. The content can still be relevant but the information I've linked to may not be available.

Last week I went to the Port 80 Web Design Conference (Twitter) in Newport. The conference was organised by Joel Hughes who wanted to have a web design conference in South Wales. Great credit to him for deciding to do something like this – and then doing it! Here’s my take on the conference.

The Speakers

There were eight speakers during the day and they covered a range of subjects from responsive web design, progressive enhancement, website speed, content strategy, through to website project management, running a web design business, mobile app development and how to use personality on the web. All great subjects!

Info: The speakers’ slides are appearing on Lanyrd

The speakers did a great job even though (apparently) this was a first speaking event for some. They were helped by a good lecture theatre and great audio at the University of Newport location. The day seemed to go really quick and that’s because the speakers were knowledgeable and entertaining. I liked the fact that there was time for Q and A after each presentation because too often at conferences this is missed.

I enjoyed all the presentations and there were several things from the day that I want to implement or think about for CVW Web Design. For example, web design pricing and assessing potential clients [Joel Hughes presentation] and website speed testing [Andy Davies] but there was a lot more to think about as well.

For me, the sign of a great conference is if I can take things back into my day job. No problem with that here.

The After Party

I think a lot of people left almost directly after the conference but it was easy to talk with anyone at the party afterwards, people were friendly and the music wasn’t too loud [you old fogey, Clive]. We went to two bars/pubs – one was new and modern, the other was very old. The beer was cheap.

Staying in Newport

I stayed at the Etap Hotel which is a 5-10 minute taxi from Newport centre and ideally placed next to J26/M4 if you are driving. I walked from hotel to central Newport on the first evening but you need to avoid a couple of busy roads so taxi is probably easiest for getting into the town.

The hotel was a bit basic but modern and very cheap. Breakfast was toast and cereal only so the hotel is not so good if you want a ‘full fat’ breakfast. Otherwise, the rooms were small but the showers were very good.

On the evening before the conference, I arranged to meet with a few other conference attendees via Twitter for a beer. We went to the Queens Hotel pub in the town centre for a pint. It has a good choice of beers and pub grub.

On Foursquare: Stuff in Newport list for Port 80

Overall

I really enjoyed the conference, the two evenings in Newport, and I met quite a few folk from Twitter that I’d not met before. Yay! Thanks to everyone who chatted with me.

The conference was very affordable with some excellent speakers. I thought the conference was well organised and everything seemed to run very smoothly. The conference organisers even arranged1 for the Olympic flame to go past on the same day. Nice one ;-)

1 Not really but the flame was in town that day.

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Comments

  • 28 May 2012 09:55:44

    Thanks for coming Clive, great to meet up at last! See you next year? :)

    Joel

  • 28 May 2012 10:02:53

    @Joel: Definitely next year!

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