This past weekend I had the chance to speak at jQueryTO about creating a stronger developer culture within organizations and teams. Specifically, I wanted to share some of my own experiences and get people thinking about how they can create similar cultures of their own.
Recently, a few of us went to the Design Exchange winter exhibit: Stefan Sagmeister, The Happy Show. There has been a lot of buzz this past year over Sagmeister’s upcoming feature film The Happy Film. Couple this with the sneak peek we were given during Sagmeister’s talk at Design Thinkers last year, and we were pretty stoked to go check it out.
Two Fridays ago, we got the team together to kick off our upcoming company planning sessions. With everyone seated around the Sandbox (our nickname for our team meeting room), we openly discussed topic ideas, session formats, organizing action items, and scheduling, among other details.
We make some pretty substantial changes to our process every six months through internal planning, where our team regroups on every facet of operations, strategy, design, and development.
Earlier this year, I was about to start working on a new project, when I was told that it would have to meet certain accessibility requirements (in this case it was ADA Section 508). At first, I wasn't really too worried about it. As long as my code was clean and I didn't do anything too stupid, it would be no big deal… right? Well, reading up on the standards confirmed that making a site decently accessible means that there's a lot more to it than just remembering alt tags.
