Sally Lait - blog

This is continuation of part one, part two and part 3, a series of posts summarising what I have learnt from my first year of freelancing, in the hope that my experiences will help others considering something similar.

I’m really pleased that a video of my talk from LWC 2013 is now available online.

This is continuation of part 1 and part 2, a series of posts summarising what I have learn from my first year of freelancing, in the hope that my experiences will help others considering something similar.

This is continuation of part one, a series of posts summarising what I have learnt from my first year of freelancing, in the hope that my experiences will help others considering something similar.

Back in March this year I attended the Responsive Day Out, a conference curated by Clearleft in Brighton.

Last Friday and Saturday I had the pleasure of getting involved with the Colchester branch of Good For Nothing, a scheme which aims to get people coming together and using their skills to help local causes.

I’m a big fan of film and of going to the cinema.

I had the great pleasure of speaking at LWC 2013 in Shoreditch, London yesterday for my last speaking gig of 2013.

I’m incredibly pleased that something I wrote has been chosen to be featured on The Pastry Box Project as today’s post.

After speaking at Adobe MAX in May and Scotch on the Rocks in June earlier this year I needed a bit of a pause on the speaking front.

This time last year I had my dConstruct ticket in my virtual mitts, the hotel was booked, and I was excited about the prospect of a day out at the seaside with several of my smartest colleagues and friends.

Today I have been left to fend for myself whilst my other half is out doing virtuous deeds for others, and having spent the last week off in rural Norfolk doing everything but be on the internet, I wanted to spend some time putting together another quick…

Chris Coyier blogged an interesting take on job titles in the web industry yesterday, aiming to provide some standardised terms that we can all use to gain a common understanding, and to avoid the ridiculous “ninja” / “rockstar” terminology.

I appear to be in the middle of a patch of particularly rubbish train journeys at the moment.

I am currently working on a side project for some family members outside of my main contract.

Having been an Instagram user for a good while now (433 photos and counting), I have taken my fair share of banter over my usage of the service, primarily from my long-suffering boyfriend who frequently turns around to find I’ve scampered off out of sight…

This is incredibly belated as it’s now almost a month ago, but I wanted to share my experiences of speaking at the Scotch on the Rocks conference 2013, organised by Fuzzy Orange and held in Edinburgh.

I like to think that I’m generally a pretty laid back person, however as those who know me well will testify, every now and again something will come along that turns me temporarily into a ranty, wildly gesturing little ball of vitriol.

This week I had the huge honour of speaking at Adobe MAX, Adobe’s annual conference for digital professionals, which was held this year in Los Angeles.

I started writing this post on my tablet.

BattleBlock Theatre, the latest output by The Behemoth, is equal parts brilliant, cutesy platformer fun vs mind boggling frustration.

In less than a month I’ll be packing up a huge amount of wires, plug adapters, extension leads and devices (plus some clothes and stuff I guess), and flying on a giant time travelling silver bird to a land across the sea.

Every once in a while something comes along where you kick yourself for not thinking of it first.

Having been asked recently to contribute to a cover feature in .net magazine about tips for working freelance (issue 239, p43-44), I thought that I’d use my blog to elaborate on my answers a bit.

.net magazine dropping through my door is always a highlight of the month.

Over the Christmas holidays I took advantage of an Xbox Live Arcade deal where Episode One of Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead series had been put up for free download.

Having got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas, up until today it had been sat in its original bag when it wasn’t being used.

So it’s this time of year again.

I downloaded the Xbox SmartGlass app for Android a while ago, but hadn’t got around to actually trying it until a couple of days ago.

As I’m sure we’re all aware, there’s yet another End of the World prediction for the 21st December.

It has been a quiet couple of months, for reasons that will become clear in a blog post I’ll release in a week or so.

As announced previously on this blog, last Tuesday I was very pleased to be able to speak at the London leg of Adobe’s Create The Web tour.

Last night Adobe showed off some of the new things they’ve been working on in the form of a live streamed session from their Create The Web keynote in San Francisco.

It’s with great pleasure that I’m able to announce that I have had my Adobe Community Professional status renewed for another term and will be an ACP for 2012-2013.

Nestled deep within the latest issue of Web Designer Magazine (issue 198) I’m very pleased to say that I’m included as an expert comment within Matt Gifford’s great Customise and Personalise Google Maps article.

Several years ago, when headed to London alone one evening, I took with me a couple of headshots and scribbled notes about people that I was hoping to bump into that night.

Having caught the writing bug recently I’m very pleased that I’ve had another article published, this time by CreativeBloQ, part of Future UK.

Seeing as it’s been officially released into the wild now, I’m pleased to say that I’ve written an article for Fourth Source, an independent online digital media marketing publication.

At Lightmaker, our strategic work often revolves around gathering the opinions of others and feeding these into our plans for projects.

Regular readers (hi Mum), may notice that things are looking a bit different around here.

Developers hate inefficiencies.

It was announced last week that the UK government will be replacing the current Information and Communications Technology curriculum with that of a Computer Science focused course.

2011 was a tough year, but a very good year.

Earlier this year I made the tough decision to commit to moving out of Kent, and up to East Anglia.

A while ago, before we were nominated for an Adobe MAX award, I did an interview regarding Lightmaker’s use of Adobe technologies for our work with The R&A and The Open Championship 2011.

Adobe MAX is Adobe’s annual conference, which for 2011 was held in Los Angeles, USA.

Computer Arts Projects issue 153 has been released, and features a nice full page spread on some of the recent work that Lightmaker have been doing.

A while ago Steve Bryant came up with the excellent idea of August 1st being designated How I Got Started In ColdFusion Day, for which ColdFusion users tell their origin story.

Like most people, hearing about Google+ last week caused me to immediately sign up to be invited to the Beta.

I’m back in the UK after what I’m enjoying calling a mini European tour, and I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone that came to see me speak about mobile development in Paris and Brussels this week.