 Thank you. My name is Sim, Sim Brody. I'm a designer and developer. I work primarily front end development. I do a lot of work with WordPress, building and maintaining custom themes. You might be thinking first of all WordPress developer, WordPress designer. We haven't seen his face much. Well, there's a reason for that. Let me just get a hand at this. That's the reason. Rufus and Mo, they're really cute, but I rarely make it out of the house. Being here is a massive treat. As I was saying, I work across design and development. I sometimes design sites for other people to build. This was just created as a series of flats, Photoshop. Someone else built it completely. I sometimes build sites that other people have designed. Again, this came to me as a set of illustrator files from an agency. I built it as a custom theme in WordPress. Sometimes I do that. Sometimes I do both. This was something I designed and built. It went from initial ideas to flats to a test site to a custom theme. I think there may be a few other people who do both out there. Are there any other people who do both out there, design development? One or two? Cool. I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts on that. Personally, I think it's brilliant to have a wide range of skills. It makes perfect sense to me. I remember a few years ago, when I first became a freelance, I thought that when I entered the freelance world, I'd be lauded with my amazing dual skills. People would be blown away. Some people responded like that. A very small amount. But a more common response was this. Suspicion. It felt to me suspicion. It felt like some people didn't know where to place me, didn't know what kind of compartment to put me in, and they didn't like that. I remember, at an agency freelance event a year or so ago, the agency were recruiting for both designers and developers. But they specifically said, people who do both don't apply, we're not interested. We can't fit you into our plans. That seemed a bit strange. And then people often ask me when I say I do both. They say, yeah, but which one are you really? Are you a designer or developer? And I've noticed the openings on job boards for people who do both are pretty rare. And while much of my work with direct clients, local businesses, national businesses, whatever, does encompass both, my work with agencies or other freelancers is almost entirely one or the other. I do development or design. And I think some of those larger agencies are missing something because we designer developers, I think, have something unique to offer. But before I go into what we have to offer, I think it's not just an issue for the web industry. I think sometimes, as people who do both, we sometimes view ourselves with suspicion. And I think we have to kind of overcome a bit of insecurity on that. Sometimes I worry I don't have the expertise of a real developer or my designs are not as beautiful as ones done by a proper designer. But I think we designer developers need to overcome our inferiority complex. There's always going to be people who know more than us who know more than anybody in any work. There's always going to be people who have more experience than you, even if you're a standalone designer or developer. So I think we need to change our mindset and focus on the things that we bring to the table that most specialists don't. And that is tools, a wide-ranging skill set. What we can offer is, we can offer a combined service for smaller clients, which is what I often do. In larger teams, we can meet the demand, whether it be design or development, wherever it arises. We understand the perspective of the other side. We understand what works for them and what their prostrations are. So we design sites that are easy to build and we understand that design, and from the other side, we understand that design is important and we'll think of creative ways to bring design to life. But it's important to remember that people who do both can still specialise as well as having a broad range of skills. So you could specialise in things, and I'd specialise in some of these things, JavaScript-based animation or bootstrap or e-commerce sites or simply WordPress, which is a fantastic tool for people who do both, because it gives you a kind of flying start on any project. But perhaps most importantly, I think working across disciplines stretches your mind. As you're pulling in different directions, and it helps to develop mental flexibility and creative ways of thinking. So I wonder if perhaps my own doubts and the occasional scepticism of the wider world arose from the fact that we designer developers haven't claimed a real name for ourselves. Saying you do both is almost saying you're a designer stroke developer is almost admitting you're a bit of one thing and a bit of another. And you're not a unified whole with your own unique set of skills. So I think that needs to change. We need something to call ourselves. Not that. But I think it illustrates that names are important. They can have an impact and they can define you. So I think it's important we do choose a name. This is what I've come up with. First of all, it's not to suggest stand-alone developers aren't creative. It's just the best thing so far that I've come up with. I think it's better than web designer because I don't think web designer kind of encompasses the development side of what we do. And creative developer feels like it encompasses the breadth of what we do, but it's also a thing in its own right. But if there's time I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. But now we've chosen our name, it's time to make sure we keep our superpowers up to date. So here are a couple of things I recommend for creative developers out there. Firstly, remember to specialise. Your field of expertise may be broad, but you can still bring specific design and development skills to your projects. You can specialise in areas that combine the two, or in areas that are just, for example, typography or animation, or a particular JavaScript library or design style. Two, get all the tools. You're covering a wide area, so it's really important you get all the help you can. So don't skimp on setting up your design and development environment. Some of those premium tools that they're worth that initial outlay for in terms of the time they'll save you. Three, best practice and training. Keep your skills up to date, and that's not just development skills. It also applies to the latest design thinking. And make sure your working methods embrace best practice in areas such as design thinking, in areas such as planning and version control. You need to meet the standards of both a professional developer and web designer. Fourthly, collaborate. Working in both design and development gives you a unique opportunity to collaborate with a really broad range of other professionals. Make use of that. And just because you can do everything on your own, sometimes don't always do that. And five, good managed WordPress hosting. It's definitely worth the money in terms of the time it'll save you. And hassle and headaches it'll save you. And that was it. That was my super quick talk. I'd be really... Thanks for listening. I'd be really interested in any thoughts or comments you might have. Thank you very much, Sim. Does anyone have a question for Sim? Thank you. First of all, thank you very much. As we were saying, I'm particularly interested in what you're saying because I'm also more of a designer who talks to developers because the reality of it is that these days most of us have to do that. I know what I started as, which is a designer, and I'm not a full stack developer, not even close. But the reality is that a lot of developers do have to at least understand design or stop having the imposter syndrome that you were talking about. So I think... This is kind of exactly what I'm doing, but maybe from a different perspective from yours. So I think it's really great that you sort of brought this up and are talking about it and saying that yes, it's possible because so many developers think that you need to be artistic or have gone to art school to be able to properly design, and I completely don't agree with that. So I guess it's not a question. That was a good point, I agree. Sometimes developers think they can't be creative when in fact... They are. The development process is creative. Absolutely. Thank you. Are there any more comments or questions for Sim over here, please? Hey, what you've described sounds exhausting. The constant need to upskill and to fight against that feeling that everything's moving more quickly than you can keep up with as well as keeping up with client demands and everything like that. So I guess the question is, how do you balance that with having small kids as well? That's a lot. I have full-time developers that feel that they're not keeping up with everything they need to keep up with. How do you balance that with design and with technology? First, nothing helps balance against two small kids. I guess it's a question of prioritisation. You do still need to specialise and you do still need to realise where your boundaries are. For example, what I was saying about hosting, I realise that I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to hand that over to hosting company if there's a problem, I'll be on the line to them. So you still have to have those boundaries and you still have to specialise in certain areas even though your skillset is quite broad. I guess also you have to pick and choose the type of jobs you do as well and the type of jobs you take. I know the certain pieces of work I won't take because it's not the area I want to prioritise. It's not the area I want to work in. Even though my skillset is broad, I can focus down within those areas still. It's exhausting, but as you say, being a developer now is exhausting in terms of how much you have to keep up with. It's always going to be in the web field. The way it's going now, you have to always keep moving up. The flip side of being exhausting is that it's energising too because it's so interesting. You're always learning new things. I don't know if that answers your question. No, it's good. Setting boundaries around what you know your limits are and then using that creative energy to motivate you through the next learning cycle. Yeah, yeah. Cool, thank you. Cheers. Thank you. Are there any more questions or comments for Sim? Down here please. Hello. Hey. I like the term creative developer. I've referred to myself as a website producer in the past. I design and develop as well. I looked up the term website producer on Wikipedia and it matched the work that I was doing. That's been a term that I've used in the past, but I think I prefer yours. Brilliant. Cheers. Not really a question. Thanks. It's quite hard coming up for a name. I spotted something called, after I put these slides together, Creative Coder as well. I looked it out there, which has been around for a while. That could encompass something wider than development maybe. I think it's the best one I've come up with so far. I'm open to suggestions. Okay. Cheers. Is there anybody else? Gentleman over here. Also like creative developer. I face a slightly different problem. I'm a curriculum error in FE colleges, where we're trying to produce the next generation. The problem that we're finding is that the people that set the courses, the curriculums that we're able to pick from are splitting the two. We either have a creative design-focused course that only moves to prototyping and doesn't actually develop anything, or it's a full-on development course where they do very little creative design or visual language or visual communication. We have to get creative in how we handle that to get the two courses working together so that we create a full product at the end. With the new T-levels that are coming up at level three, it's becoming more and more problematic. The focus is fully on programming and developing and very little focus on the creative development, which I think is a shame. Yeah, I think it's too. Do you find that your students want to do both? They're being pigeonholed? No, we find programmers are programmers. You can spot a programmer a mile off and when they come to look at the prospectus, some people are very specific about what they want to do. Once they're into the course, they start to understand that there is a side to it which exists before it gets to them, which they don't experience. They're getting it straight from their starting to programme and to develop something without the input from a design team. They're seeing the back-end of something and they have very little understanding about user experience or visual language or even target audience. The other side who do study that and they want to do that, they're visually engaged and they want to create something, feel frustrated because they're only allowed, as far as the curriculum is concerned, to prototype. We actually go beyond that. We let them build it. But there's no points scored for them in their assessment for actually building the product. They're just to design to prototype. I feel it's really short-sighted and I can see down the line it becoming a bit of a problem because we're separating it where we should be joining it together. There should be far more joined-up thinking about how we approach because design is designed. Design is not just visual design, it's the whole system is designed and I think there needs to be far more integration. What I'm discovering is that we're separating it out right at the moment we should be integrating it. I think it's a bit of a sad move really. I agree completely. I don't know how we tackle that. Is it because of the demand from the industry? Is that what's driving it? It started with Michael Gove really. The specifications are written with a lot of input from industry but it might be Microsoft giving the input, it might be Fujitsu giving the input. It's large companies, it's large corporations that have defined departments within their setup that can afford that, that put the input into the design of the curriculum, not people that build for SMEs or micro-businesses or people that operate on their own or a team of one or two. It doesn't cater for that at all. So we have to sort of be creative in how we present it and how we produce it within the curriculum ourselves, which we shouldn't have to do really. Thank you very much. So we're out of time for questions. Sim, are you going to be around later? I will be, yeah. That's great.