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Signal is a full-service digital agency, based in Edinburgh, London & Cheltenham. We help brands navigate the noise and do better marketing - from the inside, out.

At Signal, we help brands navigate the noise and do better marketing - from the inside, out.

Signal | We're a full service marketing agency that help big brands make an even bigger impact. 

Signal | Full Service Marketing Agency | Cheltenham, Edinburgh & London

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A world-class online platform for a global sporting event.

A better welcome for new supporters, automatically.

A powerful campaign highlighting medical progress.

Signal really, really care. The people are very talented, they work well together, and they embrace us as a client working as part of a small, family-like team.

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[Originally published on The Drum - 3rd July 2019]

It was no surprise that Usain Bolt’s Jamaica won gold in the men’s 4 x 100m relay at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The achievement of Japan in coming second, however, was truly remarkable.

None of the four Japanese sprinters had a personal best time of less than 10 seconds, and yet they beat the United States into third place. Individually, the Japanese were weaker than the Americans on all four stages.  were strong enough to snatch what should have been a nailed-on silver medal for the USA. The secrets of Japan’s success are a parable for teamwork and ways of working.

This article on the Spikes website describes how the Japanese relay quartet became a team of overachievers. It is a study in how elite sporting success happens at the margins. It is also a lesson in quality control. The most telling phrase is, “meticulous attention paid to baton exchanges.”

“Despite its surprise factor, Japan’s Olympic relay success did not come from nowhere. It was the result of years of  data analysis with meticulous attention paid to baton exchanges.”

I quoted this phrase as part of a talk to a client’s in-house agency about creative brief writing. A creative brief is a baton and we should pay meticulous attention to the way in which that baton is passed from its writer  the people charged with responding to it. By and large we’re talking about baton exchanges between planners and creative teams. Briefing, like baton passing, is an act of respect. It is the duty of the  to set the receiver up for success. And it is the duty of the receiver to be open, inquisitive and, well, receptive.

Respect is vital. Baton passing, whether on the track or in the agency, is more than a mechanical transaction. A ‘beautiful’ baton exchange requires more than practice and muscle memory. There is a human at each end of the baton, and only for a fleeting moment do both parties have their hands on the baton at once. That moment accounts for a tiny proportion of the whole process, but it has to go well for there to be a chance of a successful outcome. The Japanese athletes talk about the importance of making baton  personal.

“Just as important as  those baton exchanges were frequent and honest verbal exchanges between all members of the team. ‘We talked to each other all the time,” says Kiryu. ‘We can confidently talk about all thoughts, including our concerns.’”

The baton metaphor applies to any process which requires information and responsibility to be passed from one person or one team to another. In a modern agency, many of those processes involve sprints, which is both apt and ironic in the context of a post about baton exchanges.

Pretty much everything is done in sprints these days, which is not without its issues.

Removed from the context of software development, sprint is a dangerous word. Sprints stop being about focus and feedback, and become all about speed. In this way, sprints mess with the physics of creative. The first law of creative dynamics states that you can perm any two from better, faster, cheaper, but you can’t have all three. Creative sprints have people believing in the impossible, or at least the highly unlikely.

Context is everything. In a properly agile process, sprints are simply how the work gets done between the ceremonies. The ceremonies determine what gets done, in what order, by whom, and why. Less time is spent in ceremonies than in  the ceremonies have to be done right. The ceremonies are baton exchanges. They are personal and they demand respect. Respect is enshrined in the language. They are called ceremonies for a reason. There is etiquette, there are standards.

Ceremonies are a contact sport. They are bastions of humanity. They are oases of analogue discipline in a desert of Slackness.

We should all take a leaf out of the Japanese relay playbook and pay at least as much meticulous attention to our baton exchanges as we do to our sprints.

Creative briefs and the parable of the Japanese baton exchange

Signal Strategy Director Phil Adams thinks we should all take a leaf out of the Japanese relay playbook and pay as much meticulous attention to our baton exchanges as we do to our creative sprints. 

Signal Strategy Director Phil Adams thinks we should all take a leaf out of the Japanese relay playbook and pay as much meticulous attention to our baton exchanges as we do to our creative sprints

Creative briefs and the parable of the Japanese baton exchange | Signal Blog

https://cellosignal.com/blog/creative-briefs-and-the-parable-of-the-japanese-baton

Carefully visualised data can be a joy to engage with. Even a basic bar chart provides our minds with the opportunity to explore and examine information in a way that words alone can’t. 

There is great pleasure to be found, and new truths to be discovered in thoughtful combinations of patterns, colours, shapes, sizes, words and numbers. Indeed, their message can often feel more powerful because we are uncovering the information ourselves. 

And with time being such a precious resource for all of us, a well designed visualisation that gives us powerful new insights in seconds can feel like a much desired shortcut.

Such power and pleasure is what lies behind the work of data-journalist and information designer David McCandless. Quite a few of us at Signal are fans of David’s, so we jumped at the chance to attend his recent workshop dedicated to conceptualising and producing data visualisation. 

He took us through his process; from the importance of finding a strong initial question to build the research on, to choosing the correct format, and techniques for visually encoding and representing the information.

In following such a process, stories can often be told in a way that words alone may have to explain. McCandless’ ‘Billion Dollar Gram’ is a great example of this: 

Beyond a certain threshold, big numbers can become impossible to grasp. But a simple visual treatment can provide a wider context that puts each figure into proportion, helping us draw comparisons and create our own stories and meanings. Most strikingly, contrasting colours help highlight startling discrepancies between what we spend on war, the environment and foreign aid. 

 But care needs to be taken. When encoding information with visual techniques, detail can be glossed over due to misleading design decisions. Even more worryingly, we can be persuaded by statistics of questionable origin. As Giorgia Lupi explains in her TED talk, oversimplified data led to an inaccurate reflection of the voters intentions in the 2016 US presidential elections, giving a false impression of public feeling. Data is not infallible, and its interpretation needs to take into account any imperfections and be sensitive to human nuance. 

Similarly, designers and data journalists need to check their allegiances, particularly when formulating visualisations which are more language based, such this depiction of the political left and right, also by David McCandless:

At the workshop McCandless spoke about needing to check and recheck his language in this piece. He was well aware that his own political and ideological opinions could influence his reporting, and the way he was positing the two ends of this spectrum against each other.

The same tension can also arise when trying to balance the need to tell an accurate story and an engaging one. At either end of this spectrum there are different types of associated representations. 

For instance, a bar chart can be seen as a solidly objective and rigorous method of encoding information, whereas a less structured infographic can incorporate many aspects of visual communication and is open to flair and editorial artistry. Both, however, are valid players in the information design world.

I was inspired by the workshop to put together my own visualisation exploring the spectrum of choices that are apparent when designing information:

Designing information - data visualisation by Jen Lyle, Cello Signal - full size.jpg

Download full-size 'Designing Information' image

Thinking about data visualisation in this way highlights the need to choose visual techniques which align with our overall intention. Interestingly for the digital space, by incorporating interaction and allowing the user to take control, a good balance is naturally found between the need to engage and present the facts.

By introducing filters and enabling the data as a navigable entity, stories can become personal to individual interest. You may not have seen all the films listed in McCandless's analysis of ‘true story’ films, but you can change the results according to what’s of interest to you.

In its many varied forms, data-vis can can be a great content ally in this attention-zapped, noisy world. It can cut straight to the heart of your message and compel your reader to think and feel differently, and even prompt them to take action in response. And  we are always on the lookout for opportunities to encourage these kind of 'aha moments' for our clients and their audiences.

Do you need a new perspective on a complex challenge? Get in touch if you'd like to chat about how we can help.

How data visualisation can help brands communicate better

Data visualisation can can be a great content ally in this attention-zapped, noisy world.

Data visualisation can can be a great content ally in this attention-zapped, noisy world. It can cut to the heart of your brand's message and compel your audience to respond.

The IOF Convention, which takes place over 3 days in July each year at the spectacular Barbican Centre in London, is Europe’s biggest fundraising event of the year. 

It’s a fantastic opportunity for professional fundraisers to learn from their peers and share their latest insights through a series of expert presentations, panels and workshops. 

It’s also a chance for us to check in with how the sector as a whole is tackling the current charity change conundrum.

With this in mind, we assembled an intrepid team of Signallers to attend this year’s event and find out what the burning issues are for fundraisers in 2019. 

Here are the four talks (or themes) that stood out:

‘Digital transformation: another way’  

Mistie Roskelly, Client Service Team Leader

Within the charitable sector, 75% of leadership have an intent to implement digital transformation, but only 37% have a strategy to implement this. It is clear that digital transformation is a huge area to be addressed in all charities, with many hurdles and blockers in the way. 

Martin Francis Campbell and Ben Nolan are both under a year into their roles in World Vision, but are driving real, tangible digital progression within the charity. Moving on from just the intent to change, they have recognised that true digital transformation cannot be achieved by simply layering a ‘new tech product’ over the top of existing processes and donor journey strategies, and hoping for different results. 

Instead, for example, using new tech products to support new agile online acquisition strategies has brought down World Vision’s cost per email address from £5 to under £1, as well as resulting in improved engagement and timeliness with the supporter.

The key factor to take away for the sector is that there are no longer ‘historical' fundraising products that anyone can be confident will work in perpetuity. Instead, there needs to be a fundamental change in the business model itself, and in every area of a charity, to make digital part of their new fundraising and supporter engagement reality. 

‘Build the plane as you are flying it’

Julie Roberts (Pancreatic Cancer UK) and Nick Burne (RAISETHRU) shared how PCUK used Facebook Ads to recruit over 100,000 leads from cold prospects and double their regular donors. One key theme became clear - if you wait until everything is perfect you will never get off the ground. Instead, their advice was to ‘build the plane as you are flying it’. 

Though a potentially terrifying prospect in the world of aviation, in the world of digital marketing it makes sense. We can never know for certain what will work until we try it, and as Julie pointed out, if a Facebook Ad wasn’t working she could simply just turn it off. Building the plane as you are flying it allows us to test ideas, learn what is working, and adapt or discard what is not.

Legacy acquisition is one of the strongest areas of growth in most charities, however it continues to be the most under-resourced. It is almost seen as a bit of an add-on and often charities don’t even have a dedicated team. A show of hands in the room backed this up, with most people there who worked on legacies also having other roles and responsibilities. 

The speakers from Cancer Research UK and Kew demonstrated that the main reason their programmes have been successful is down to collaboration within the charity, not operating in silos and seeing it as all part of the same supporter journey. 

Putting supporter engagement first - and making ideas happen

Monday’s presentation from WaterAid’s Director of Fundraising and Marketing Marcus Missen was a good example of what people mean when they say "we need to move away from transactional fundraising".

Missen shared how WaterAid have grown their income thanks to two big shifts:

1. Creating a more agile and innovative way of working internally

2. A new marketing strategy that focuses on engaging donors in a more relevant way and reduces the number of donation requests

Internally, they just went for it and created a culture of “if you’ve got an idea, make it happen”, and the result was that 75% of their comms now completely focus on demonstrating progress rather than asking for donations. 

They also talked about two recent campaigns that have performed well. To Be a Girl was their first integrated campaign, and it centred around supporters sharing their own childhood photos alongside their current photo as a way to make the issue more relevant. Their goal was to raise £1m within three months, but it went on to raise more than £2m – the most ever from a stand-alone WaterAid campaign at that point. 

Their #untapped campaign, which launched in 2017, was even more of a success, raising £8.9m (with half coming from UK Aid Match). It centred around telling the story of a community in Sierra Leone as clean water was brought to them. 

It’s heartening to see that charities that they need to learn fast and adapt their methods to cope with the shifting landscape, which is an area we are currently addressing for clients such as the British Heart Foundation.

We also saw an increasing emphasis on more inclusive collaboration across departments. More and more charities are understanding the link between breaking down silos to work more efficiently, and their ability to engage donors in more relevant ways.

From the recent discussions at the Convention, it’s clear that charities should aim to be much braver when trying out new ideas. They don’t need to be perfect the first time, as long as they are continually testing, learning and adapting, looking at what works and what doesn’t, and acting on this data. 

Of course, this won’t mean overnight transformation for most charities. But it’s great to see that making small steps in the right direction can lead to significant success.

4 key takeaways from the IOF Convention 2019

The burning issues for fundraisers in 2019. 

We assembled an intrepid team of Signallers to attend this year’s IOF Convention to find out what the burning issues for fundraisers in 2019. 

Four key takeaways from the IOF Convention 2019 | Signal Blog

Clients look to agencies to help them navigate the noisy world of digital marketing. The last thing they need is an agency who only adds to that noise.

Yet many agencies are doing their clients a disservice by veiling their expertise in overly technical language, complicated models and intricate process diagrams.

I have personal experience of this, having moved from digital agency to client-side in the charity sector and back again. I’ve seen agencies make digital marketing appear inaccessible, an elusive universe that only they can access. This is likely the result of wanting to sound like the leading experts in their field, or more cynically, because of concerns around work increasingly being taken in-house.

And because this is so widespread, clients accept it as part of the territory.

The result is that everyone loses. Agencies miss out on a chance to show the fundamental value that digital can bring to a business or organisation. This makes it easier for clients to fall back on superficial quick-fixes rather than put effective long-term solutions in place.

Digital marketing is a complex world. New technologies, new platforms and an incredibly fast-moving landscape mean that businesses have to grapple with many components, and this can appear bewildering. No wonder then, that the need for ‘simplicity’ is the number one issue highlighted by in-house marketers in a 2018 cross-sector survey from AAR Group.

The good news is that digital marketing is inherently simple. Yes, it has many components, and each has its own unique set of rules, but many core principles can be applied from one platform, channel or technology to the next.

Targeting the most appropriate people requires the same thoughtful and evidence-based selection whether through an email, paid search or social media campaign.

Choosing genuinely useful metrics to measure performance is as important in a brand awareness campaign as it is when the focus is on website visits or sales.

Finding the balance between reach and return-on-investment requires the same careful allocation of budget in a small display campaign as across a multi-channel digital strategy.

The language we use also matters. Too often in an agency, we ask our clients to decipher what we are saying, and then consider the meaning behind our words.

Agencies need to rethink how they speak about digital marketing and avoid using terminology that is far removed from the real world. Words such as ‘users’, ‘decks’ and ‘journeys’ sound natural in an agency setting but can be completely meaningless in someone else’s office. Let’s talk about ‘people’, ‘presentations’ and ‘experience’ instead.

Agencies offer incredible levels of both broad, cross-channel knowledge and deep, channel-specific expertise. But this doesn’t justify arrogance. They can best showcase their talents by playing a central role in developing client’s capabilities, and if they really want to be listened to, they must do this in the most succinct and straightforward way possible.

Agencies must consider mentorship as a core duty in working with any client. They should give at least some measure of success to how they have developed their client’s understanding of digital marketing, so in-house marketers can ultimately take greater ownership of their digital strategy.

If agencies get this right, and do it consistently, then they have the chance to be seen as an invaluable strategic partner, earning the right to work with clients to overcome some of their most significant challenges.

Don't let your agency tell you it's complicated

Why agencies need to rethink how they speak about digital marketing.

Our strategist Joanna Harrod on why agencies need to rethink how they speak about digital marketing & why they must consider mentorship as a core duty.

Don't let your agency tell you it's complicated | Signal Blog

Our strategist Joanna Harrod on why agencies need to rethink how they speak about digital marketing & avoid using terminology that is far removed from the real world.

https://cellosignal.com/blog/dont-let-your-agency-tell-you-its-complicated

Front-end web development is an ever evolving discipline and the pace of change can sometimes be difficult to keep up with. 

New technologies and techniques are constantly emerging, and one of the best ways of staying informed is by engaging with the international community of developers.

With this in mind my fellow front-end developer Mike Shelton and I recently travelled to Berlin for the 6th (and final) CSSConf EU. 

CSSConf EU was a one day single track web conference held annually in Berlin at the Treptow Arena - a huge former bus depot on the banks of the river Spree. 

The event aimed to bring together international experts on front-end development with the broader development community. It featured talks from both new and established creatives and front-end developers involved in building performant, accessible and beautiful websites and apps. 

The conference began in 2013 with 190 attendees and grew to become a key event in the global conference calendar for front-end web developers. This year’s event was attended by over 800 designers and developers from all around the globe.

The event had a strong focus on diversity and inclusion and included a scholarship programme for under-represented groups within the tech world as well as a dedicated venue space for Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color in Tech (BIPoCiT).

Features this year included 20 talks on three stages; a community space with lightning talks by first-time speakers; an art exhibition; superb conference catering; an ice cream van (really); and a group of DJs and multimedia artists who dazzled the crowd with a display of audio-visual creativity on the largest conference screen we have ever seen.

Whilst there were no set themes for the conference as a whole - there were certain recurring topics and issues to be found across the diverse range of talks:

These included the Subgrid feature of CSS Grid Level 2; The new CSS Containment property; and Houdini CSS which lets developers interact more deeply with the CSS rendering engine within the browser.

Website speed and performance should be a major consideration for all front-end web developers. This was reflected in the number of talks which touched on the performance gains to be had in using the latest CSS Modules and techniques.

Testing websites can be a complex process and several talks focused on the need for better testing tools for front-end web developers.

Rachel Andrew is very well known within the front-end developer community. She is currently the editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, and also a member of the CSS Working Group.

Rachel’s talk introduced us to the new Subgrid feature of the CSS Grid Level 2 specification. Subgrid will give developers much additional needed control over how nested elements should be displayed within Grid layouts. 

The Grid Level 2 specification is currently a working draft, but has already been implemented in the Firefox Browser (nightly version). Rachel advised that Firefox will most likely be the first browser to ship a stable version of Subgrid. So we should soon be able to make use of Subgrid in our designs, with some fallback support for older web browsers.

CSSconf EU 2019 | Rachel Andrew: Hello Subgrid!

Jason is a design strategist, UX leader, and typographer who works with teams from organisations like Adobe and IBM. He is also an Invited Expert on the W3C Web Fonts Working Group.

Jason introduced us to the design possibilities and performance improvements made available to us by using Variable Fonts with CSS custom properties.

Variable fonts allow for a collection of fonts from a font family to be combined into a single highly optimised file for use on a website. This will make it a lot easier for web designers to create truly fluid typography, which responds to screen sizes and browsing environments.

Sam is an engineer on the Google Chrome web browser and is a developer advocate for the CSS Houdini Task Force.

CSS Houdini is a proposed suite of tools which will for the first time allow front-end developers to access and manipulate the underlying rendering system in a web browser. This will enable developers to use JavaScript to determine how aspects such as layout and style calculations are performed by the browser and will allow for much more sophisticated design systems. 

Sam introduced us to the overall concepts behind Houdini and demonstrated some very slick page components build on top of Houdini - which would be almost impossible to build with current web technologies. Sam advised that Houdini is not yet available to use in production, but is under active development within Chrome and Firefox web browsers.

CSSConf EU 2019 was a superbly organised conference with a truly inclusive and diverse agenda. The talks covered a broad range of current topics in front-end development, and the speakers were of a consistently high standard.

Unfortunately, the conference organisers announced that this years’ event would be the final CSSConf EU. They did suggest that the conference may return in future, though it would be in a different format - possibly a series of smaller regional conferences. If so we would certainly be keen to attend another of their events.

Watch more videos from the event on the official YouTube channel

Developer's notes from CSSconf EU 2019, Friday 31st May 2019 at Treptow Arena, Berlin

Signal's senior front-end developer reports back from CSSconf EU 2019 in Berlin.

Highlights from CSSconf EU 2019 | Signal Blog

https://cellosignal.com/blog/news-sites-are-struggling-amp-can-your-brand-do-betterhttps://cellosignal.com/blog/highlights-from-cssconf-eu-2019

GDPR one year on - a legitimately interesting time for marketers - Signal.pdf

GDPR was one year old on the 25th May. But from a consumers’ perspective it seems like marketing communications have hardly changed since the regulations were introduced. 

In fact, over 70% of those surveyed by Marketing Week said that the relevancy of emails they have received is either no different or has got worse. 

On the face of things this seems a little odd. This could have been a watershed moment for the marketing industry, where we were forced to think and act differently in how we plan and deliver communications to customers. 

GDPR provides brands with a golden opportunity to adopt a much more tailored, timely and relevant communications strategy; a catalyst to improve marketing effectiveness and, critically, create a better experience for customers. 

Brands who fully embrace the spirit of the regulations in this way will therefore have a significant competitive advantage.

Many brands will have quite rightly had to prioritise time, effort and money on the core tasks of ensuring compliance. This has involved a lot of complicated IT tasks, especially for those with big legacy infrastructures. For example, there have been essential data processing and storage changes, which are complex to implement. These include responding to the right to be forgotten and subject access requests within the strict time periods.

Legitimate interest has protected the status quo

The ICO published guidance for when 'Legitimate Interest' can be used as a legal basis for processing data. The guidelines are pretty broad however, giving many brands licence to use Legitimate Interest as a rationale for maintaining their existing strategies for contacting customers.

Changing marketing practices is always harder than not changing

This means there is currently no regulatory burning bridge forcing brands to drastically change. And change is always harder than doing nothing, especially when existing activity is more often than not still profitable. Decision-makers need convincing that less contact, or a more appropriate level of contact is better for business as well as for the customer. 

Moving towards more personalised, relevant communications that also nurture and protect customer privacy may be hard for big brands, but it’s also inevitable given how customer expectations are evolving. Which means that brands who embrace the spirit of GDPR at this early stage will quickly differentiate themselves from their less proactive competitors. 

There are three key aspects to doing this well:

1. Modernise data strategy and management practice

We know that customers prefer personalised, more relevant communications and are more likely to respond to relevant offers. Refining what data you request at the point of collection can do more than just ensure compliance. It can also help to gain more insight into each individual’s interests and preferences, thereby enabling better segmentation to target the right people much more efficiently and effectively. 

2. Develop a data-led contact strategy that’s based on value-exchange

Personalised communications is one thing. However a contact strategy that moves from a push to a pull model of communications needs to factor in a number of things; the volume that are sent; their relevance; which channels they are sent through, and considerations on what else is being communicated. 

A recent survey commissioned by Google suggests that consumers expect to get value from their loyalty or sharing of personal information. Permissions are a precious commodity, so personalised and relevant offers at scale is the opportunity, or rather it is the ‘must do’. Their research calls out that relevant offers is not just a nice-to-have, but can lead to resentment and disengagement if it doesn’t happen. 

A GDPR-friendly contact strategy will therefore be built on triggers and interaction opportunities where there is a genuine value exchange for consumers.

3. Lay the operational groundwork and celebrate small wins

There are two key technical considerations for making a contact strategy work. The decisioning (the brains), and the data processing and messaging composition (the engine). Quite often the decisioning is well taken care of, with triggers built, next best action algorithms written and technology deployed. But the composition part, where data meets content, might not get picked up. Or the sales pitch of a specific technology platform might not quite match the reality of the quality of the source data. 

While navigating these roadblocks can undoubtedly be daunting, a ‘think big, start small’ and ‘test and learn’ approach is likely to be the best way forward, including being able to track progress and demonstrate what’s working and what’s not is essential. 

Once you have a proof of concept in place, it will be easier to persuade colleagues of the benefits of taking action. This can be achieved by partnering with people who have already successfully managed similar programmes of change.

Conclusion: This is a second chance for brands

One year later, GDPR may not have yet had the expected impact when it comes to progressive communication strategies, but that doesn’t mean that brands should rest on their laurels. We may well see tighter guidelines on Legitimate Interest from the ICO in the future, for example, if they want to prompt more meaningful action from brands. And we have yet to see what impact the new ePrivacy regulation will have when it finally lands.

In the meantime, with basic compliance now in place for most organisations, the first anniversary of GDPR provides marketers with a perfect opportunity to take a step back and reflect on progress so far. Those who use the learnings of this last 12 months to reboot their strategies and take small steps in the right direction are likely to find a very receptive audience amongst existing and potential customers. 

Taking a progressive approach to implementing GDPR is therefore not only the right thing to do, but is also likely to lead to much more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.

Originally published by the Financial Services Forum.  

Signal helps brands get better results, faster. Find out more about our services.

GDPR one year on - a legitimately interesting time for marketers

Why brands still have time to fully embrace the spirit of GDPR, and how it can provide a better customer experience (and competitive advantage).

GDPR one year on - a legitimately interesting time for marketers | Signal Blog

https://cellosignal.com/blog/gdpr-one-year-on-a-legitimately-interesting-time

Last month, three of Signal's front-end developers (including myself) headed off to Paris, where we attended ReactEurope for the first time.

We’ve shared some of our stand-out talks from both days below which will be of particular interest to other front-end developers.

As suggested by its name, ReactEurope focuses on React and React Native.

The conference takes place over two days. Fuelled by frequent coffee breaks, speakers from all over the industry share their experience and expertise on a range of topics, from the history and future of the technology, to accessibility and performance. 

Day 1 kicked off with registration, where we got some fantastic swag and your typical French breakfast (not a black pudding in sight). 

All the presenters did a great job but these are the talks that stood out:

Joshua Comeau - Saving the Web, 16ms at a Time

Joshua talked about animation performance differences between mobile and native apps.  Mobile apps haven’t taken over native app in terms of usage. 

He made the point that user experience and animations feel more polished in mobile and native apps which makes it hard for web apps to compete. He gave us a clear technical explanation on how the browser renders the page, and techniques for bringing better performing animations to the browser. He had a lovely example of how he created Twitter’s ‘Like Tweet’ animation,  and how animations are affected when the main thread is being used (they slow down). 

He then went into detail about a technique which was common a couple of years ago, using sprites to show the 'Like’ animation. When profiled, these turned out to perform much faster due to the fact they are not rendered on the main thread.

Paul Armstrong - Move fast with confidence

Paul talked about the techniques and processes that the teams at Twitter have incorporated, which gave us some useful new ideas and tools to use.

He suggested using Husky, which makes using Git hooks simple, by adding pre-commit checks and linting and bailing out of the commit if it detects any issues. Another suggested use for Husky he mentioned was automating the installation of modules on checkout, merge or rebase. Paul also talked about performance budgets, as well as type safety using flow/typescript to help catch JS errors before they hit production. And he demoed his side project Build Tracker.

DJ Fresh (Daniel Stein) gave an inspiring talk about his journey from Rockstar DJ to developer. He spoke about how music has hidden codes which reveal sounds that are universally appreciated, breaking cultural and language barriers.

This inspired him to investigate whether machine learning can assist in finding these patterns. We’d recommend watching this one in particular if you want to get a real feel for Dan’s passion.

Coders are the new Rock Stars - Dan Stein aka @DJFreshUK at @ReactEurope 2019

Ives gave an update on what has happened over the past year with CodeSandbox, giving us an interesting insight into its growth. At the start of the year Ives started an internship at Facebook but continued to work on his CodeSandbox project in the evenings and between lectures. 

During his internship, CodeSandbox released its new Themes functionality. Ives described in detail how they managed to do this, and talked about other new features that were introduced (e.g. VSCode extensions), how they were implemented and the struggles they had. He finished up with what the future of the CodeSandbox and the team looks like. 

A year of CodeSandbox, tech edition - Ives van Hoorne aka @CompuIves

Lee gave a brilliant talk on the history of the web from the perspective of a developer in  1999. He gave an enthusiastic look at where development started, from static pages to dynamic pages/applications. After a short history of PHP/LAMP he  then jumped ‘back to the future’  to 2019.

He shared some stats that PHP usage in 2019 is around 80% and WordPress is powering around 30% of websites. Lee then moved on to talk about how and why Facebook engineers came to create React, Flux, Redux, GraphQL and Jest through Abstraction, syntax and better mental models. And he described how these tools developed out of some interesting situations that happened during his time with the Facebook team. 

Tim gave us an overview on building an app and how to make it scale with Next.js. He started with the basics around creating a page/route, and then made some exciting announcements about what was coming ‘next’ to the framework, including dynamic page routing. 

He moved onto talking about how Next.js manages to do Server-side rendering or how you can turn off SSR, which is being introduced as new function useMounted() that will render only on the client-side. 

He also discussed how Next.js can help developers create hybrid apps, plus a few other and strategies developers might want to use, including the use of AMP. 

TypeScript support - all that is required is a change in file ext

Next.js Core has been written in TypeScript

Improvements in how pages are built, components with no changes won’t rebuild the whole project.

We had a great time at ReactEurope and took reassurance that we have made the right choice in using React and React Native both internally at Signal and for clients. 

And we even got a chance to explore Paris before we headed back to Scotland!

All talks can be found at ReactEurope's YouTube channel

A front-end developer's perspective on ReactEurope 2019 in Paris.

The best talks from ReactEurope 2019 in Paris.

Some of the best talks from ReactEurope 2019 in Paris, according to three of our front-end developers.

The best talks on software development from ReactEurope 2019 in Paris, as reported by Signal's front-end developers.

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Creative briefs and the parable of the Japanese baton exchange

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How data visualisation can help brands communicate better

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Don't let your agency tell you it's complicated

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Ed Knight

GDPR one year on - a legitimately interesting time for marketers

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What can the charity sector learn from the climate change debate?

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Is your company guilty of 'brandwagoning'?

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