So after 7 months of maternity leave and fitting into my new job role as mummy, where daily life is very much to a strict routine and learning a new language of go go ga ga, what better way to ease back into work than with a conference trip including an overnight stay in lovely Brighton. Set in the Brighton Centre overlooking the sea front it was the perfect setting.
Brighton SEO is a twice yearly search marketing conference which brings together some of the best speakers in the world of search, our MD Justin Taylor included so I couldn’t miss this opportunity to go along.
So to kick start the 2 days we started with a bus journey down to the venue with our very own in car DJ and chauffeur, Steve Tucker. All in good spirits we arrived in time for a quick burger and an evening of Karaoke with our fellow Seo friends.
The day of the big event…
The Brighton Centre was full of exhibitors, the atmosphere was buzzing with teams sharing there insights and expertise on all things search. The morning was spent taking a look around at the company stands in the exhibiting hall and collecting some pretty cool merchandise along the way… I now have a search T-shirt for every day of the week, my personal favourite from the Accu Ranker team with the ‘GoogleGrump’ shirt. Onto auditorium 2 where Stephan Bajaio co-founder of Conductor gives his talk about search presence intelligence and we learn about why UX is SEOs best friend, with talks by Michelle – Wilding – Baker from the Telegraph Media Group followed by Luke Hay. The session talked about how important it is to make your websites work for its users as well as google to improve rankings. After lunch was the main event in our diaries, with a talk from our very own MD Justin, sharing the process of creating amazing websites 10x faster using modern tools Adobe XD and Sketch to create fully functioning prototypes. With an attractive slide deck to accompany, the showcase was a huge hit demonstrating just how ‘we make UX great’.
I come from a design led background so the search side of things can be a little daunting sometimes. I was afraid I would feel out of my depth at this event, however this was not the case at all and if anything it has now made me more confident to attend similar events, to gain more knowledge in this field which in turn goes hand in hand with the design side of the business.
Although a great trip, the feeling of mum guilt hit pretty hard during the event. Being a fair few miles away from home the fear that both baby and daddy would be spending the whole time in a screaming match never passed my mind. During my time at the conference I noticed the crèche facility available run by professionals and including a wide selection of activities available for your child during the day, so you can be rest assured that baby will be in safe hands whilst you enjoy the conference. There is also a new parent room allowing you to feed baby in private and also warm up bottles, taking out the stress of preparing feeds for the day ahead. What a fantastic idea!!! I will definitely be considering this for my next conference.
Thanks for a great event Brighton, look forward to the next one.
