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My key takeaways from Front End North 2025

2 min read
Front End North lanyard with Andy (he/him) tech team lead Evoluted hand written below the event logo

Yesterday I attended Front End North and it was fantastic.

There was an incredibly strong line-up of speakers. I loved how inclusive to the room each talk was.

I was attending the conference as the back up speaker; and whilst in the end I didn’t get an opportunity to speak myself, I really enjoyed each of the talks given and was pleased I got to hear everyone speak. Hopefully next time I will be in the final line-up. 🤞

Here were my key takeaways:

  • Get the core right and the resilient code will follow (Andy Bell) - Feedback is an iterative team process, we should be using it constructively to make things better.
  • Building Better Webs (Olu Niyi-Awosusi) - The web doesn’t have to be corporate, the more people creating an independent web, the better and more valuable it becomes.
  • Unwrapping Web Design (Nils Binder) - We don’t have to create the same boring layouts, we should embrace whitespace and margins in more creative ways. (Also, I loved Nils honest share of his desk space)
  • Inclusive by design (Amy Rogers) - We should be using tech for good and recognising the equalities in society.
  • An introduction to the World Wide Web for very senior programmers (Salma Alam-Naylor) - This talk was a super fun nostalgia trip into the early days of the Web. Perhaps a subtle reminder of how far we’ve come and some of the mistakes we’ve been making along the way.
  • Systems of Harm (Amy Hupe) - It’s really important to have diverse teams to bring different perspectives to a build. Otherwise, despite best intentions we exclude people from the end product.
  • If it's not user-centred, it's not accessible (Craig Abbott) - Accessibility talks are often dominated by talk of compliance. Whilst this is important, we need to remember compliance doesn’t mean a good user experience. You can be compliant and still end up with a poor inaccessible user experience.
  • Summoning Up Old Tricks: Remaking FFIX in the Browser (Joe Hart) - Have fun and make silly things!

I know the organisers put a huge amount of effort into putting this conference on. It was really appreciated.

Hopefully Front End North will be back.

© 2025 Andy Carter