Thankfully Conferences are coming up norf
Careful! This post is looking a little old and could be inaccurate in many, many ways
I’ve not exactly been in the business that long, only 4 years, which is depressing when you discover more talented web geeks that have both more experience and happen to be younger than me.
Any way I digress.
In these four years it’s been pretty apparent that although there is some excellent work coming out of web design studios around the country that the main hubs of web types seems to be in the south, namely London, Brighton and Bath for whatever reason. And because these cities are where the web design ‘scene’ is at these cities are where most upcoming designers flock to, either working for the high profile agencies in the area or simply there to try and make connections with other web types.
As all these are the hubs for web types it is natural that a high percentage of web conferences take place in these areas. Why make everyone travel to Aberdeen to go to FOWD for example or how about renaming UX London, UX Liverpool. I doubt these conferences will be moving any time soon, and they probably shouldn’t especially when they tie their name to the city they are hosted in. Yet finally some are recognising the opportunities for conferences further north. When FOWD announced their tour last year I was straight in for the Leeds event and for Speak the Web which were smaller evening meet-ups I was at both the Leeds and Sheffield events.
Add to this the DIBI conference in Newcastle and the newly announced New Adventures in Web Design to be held in Nottingham finally I don’t have to travel 300+ miles to get my fill of inspiring web related geekery. I’m still trying to decide whether to go to New Adventures in Web design because although Nottingham is much closer that London and the tickets are fantastically priced, Nottingham is still a bit of a trek, and in an unfamiliar city.
Yet the movement is there and I hope there will be more conferences coming to the North in the future and I hope they are priced similarly to New Adventures in Web Design as it’s much easier to attend a one day conference at £80 than shell out £500 for a three dayer.
So if anyone is planning on any new conferences in the North then I hear the Yorkshire area is a pretty awesome place to hold a conference.