Here's our end of month review for December...
Wayne
What was your most challenging project to work on this year?
Difficult to pick one as I tend to be in and out of dozens of projects every day. It’s been our busiest year with lots going on, so keeping on top of everything has been my biggest challenge!What area do you think you made your biggest improvements?
Learning to take a step back to move forwards.
What was your highlight of 2018?
Being accepted on to the Strategic Business Growth Project, more on that below… From a personal perspective, how good was that summer!? About 10 weeks of glorious sunshine, a great World Cup, a great holiday in Rhodes and a special mention for Lollapalooza Festival in Paris which was full of laughs!
What was your favourite song of 2018?
If it has to be from 2018… Lovelytheband – Broken
Describe your year in three words
“It’s Coming Home”
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
I feel like I could write a book here. If I had to choose one thing, it would be to invest your time in the good people, and don’t let negativity ruin your aura.
What have you done this year that you would recommend to anyone?
I haven’t done anything ‘bucket list’ style this year, so I’d say just keep being yourself.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
Yes. I’m not usually one for ‘let’s wait ’til New Year’ because if something needs doing – you just do it, but there’s a lot happening in 2019 that I’m excited for.
I have to work more ‘on’ the business, not ‘in’ the business. So I’ll be concentrating on spending more time with staff and clients. From a personal perspective, setting a training schedule which I stick to and stop using work as an excuse for not going to the gym!
What are you looking forward to in 2019?
So much! Firstly (and I have to say most importantly), I get married in 2019 and I can’t wait for the big day and the honeymoon!
From a business perspective, we move into a new office over Christmas which allows us to expand further. We’ll have new people joining us and we’re focusing on recruiting the right people with the experience to come in and instantly improve the business and the service that we offer to our clients.
Twilo has been accepted on to the Strategic Business Growth Project via Leeds Enterprise Partnership. Only 4 out of 10 applications are accepted, mostly down to the ambition of the business as I understand it, so I’m excited to get started in the New Year and take advantage of this fantastic opportunity. Twilo is now three years old, with the help of the Strategic Business Growth Project I’m looking forward to planning the next three years and seeing it through with the team.
Joke of the Month
Who is Santa’s favourite singer?
Elf-is Presley!
Matt
What was your most challenging project to work on this year?
A couple of the most work intensive projects I’ve had this year we the larger eCommerce stores with 10,000+ products. Structuring those products and categories in a user friendly format was quite a challenge! The biggest creative challenge I’ve had was working on an innovative and non-conventional website for an architects. The client wanted something much more unusual, and the main challenge was developing the concept into functioning website that felt great to use.
What area do you think you made your biggest improvements?
This year I have really embraced the use of Sass, which is a type of supercharged CSS which has much more features. I’ve really stepped up my use of variables and mixins, which along with saving me time and hundreds of lines of code, also makes stylesheets more intuitive and flexible.
What was your highlight of 2018?
A very close call between the amazing summer watching England at the World Cup, and swimming with Manta Rays with the Dive Sibaltan team in Palawan, Philippines.
What was your favourite song of 2018?
DJ Koze – Pick Up.
Clear winner for this one, must have listened to it 100 times.
Describe your year in three words
Sun, Sea, and Leeds United
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned this year?
Learning to Scuba Dive, I’m now a PADI qualified diver.
What have you done this year that you would recommend to anyone?
Taking a long weekend away in the countryside in England. I had a really amazing few days in a cabin in the beautiful woodlands of Yorkshire. We also used it as a tech break, no phones or internet, and felt amazingly refreshed for it.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
No resolutions as such. My aims for the year will be to keep pushing myself to do more of the things I love to do, learn new skills where I can, and enjoy life.
What are you looking forward to in 2019?
I am lucky enough to be going from the icy depths of the English winter, to the sun kissed beaches of Goa in India in February, so I’m hugely excited about that.
Photo of the Month
And to end, here's something cool we've seen this month...
Dortmund, Germany has the largest Christmas tree in the world.
The tree stands 46m (150ft) high and weighs 40 tons, takes 4 weeks to build and is illuminated by an unbelievable 48,000 lights. It’s put together using 1700 small Christmas trees which are grown in a specialist forestry. It is surrounded by 300 stalls and is seen by 2 million people a year!
