Sponsor: Reason Digital

Package: Gold

Reason Digital

When you grow up with computers and the web you grow up believing that things can always be made better – that you can change things.

And that’s what Reason Digital is really all about.

We’re social enterprise that makes the web make a difference. We only work on projects that do social good.

Right now, we’re saving sex workers’ lives with a Comic Relief-funded smartphone app. We’re boosting charities’ incomes by transforming the way the British public gives goods to charities, with Cancer Research UK and The British Heart Foundation. We’re helping to connect people with food banks, with the Trussell Trust. And we can say that we did our bit towards helping Alzheimer’s Research UK on their quest to find a cure for dementia.

It’s all for good. And that’s a brilliant thing to be able to put your skills towards.

So WordCamp Manchester? Why are we sponsoring it?

Well, WordPress, to us, is a liberator.

We often work with small-to-midsize charities that are locked into a proprietary CMS, created by well-intentioned, but under-resourced web dev agencies, or freelancers.

We use WordPress to give them the control of their site back, and the freedom to work with whoever they want without ongoing licensing fees. Be that us, another agency, or a volunteer. That said, part of the power of WordPress, since v3, is its ability to be used as a framework for bigger projects. We’ve launched larger charity sites now – you can read more about some of the charity websites we’ve worked on, to get an idea of what we do.

We’ve had the privilege of being able to lend a hand to some inspiring people that are working to change the world. And we’ve used WordPress to help them do it.

Oh, and by the way, we’re always looking for talented WordPress folk at Reason Digital. Especially people with PHP skills. So if you’d like to get paid to help us make the world a better place, instead of making some rich guys slightly richer, then get in touch with us at: http://www.reasondigital.com/get-in-touch. We’re based in Manchester, UK, and, as well as being a great bunch of people, we also have an ice cream machine and an office balcony. Just in case you were wondering.

Website: http://reasondigital.com/

Sponsor: Make Do

Package: Gold

Make Do (http://makedo.in)

Make Do are a UK-based Creative WordPress Design & Development Agency that have been building for the web since the 90’s. Our team take great pride in what we do and guarantee that you’ll get on great with us if you need an advanced WordPress solution.

We use WordPress to deliver projects of any size or scope. Our team of engineers and designers specialise in modern WordPress development and love playing with all the interesting tools that go with it like Vagrant, NPM, Bower, Composer, Sass, Git and the REST API.

We also work hard to make awesome open-source Tools & Products such as our Kapow! boilerplate (https://github.com/mkdo/kapow-skeleton) the AspireCPD system (http://aspirecpd.org/) and Posim (http://posium.io/) a flexible WordPress theme designed for people who run meetups, conferences and events of any size.

We love WordCamps

This is the second time we have sponsored WordCamp Manchester and over the past 12 months we have supported WordCamp London, Birmingham and Europe while also running our own monthly meetup in Sheffield (http://wpsheffield.com) which recently had its 5th birthday.

WordCamps are important to the Make Do team because without them we would never have started the Make Do agency. Our co-founder Kimb Jones spoke at his first WordCamp in 2009 in Cardiff and was lucky enough to have both Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little attending and speaking. This watershed event inspired him to build WonderThemes, a WordPress theme marketplace which unfortunately closed in 2011 but led to Make Do. Initially an events and training company Make Do evolved into a full-stack WordPress specialised development agency in 2012 after joining forces with Matt Watson, a long time friend and back-end developer with experience in NHS and Local Government organisations.

Since then Make Do have been lucky enough to work with big-name clients like Stephen Fry and Oxford University while also partnering with a number of world renowned design, marketing and digital agencies to provide them with awesome WordPress solutions for their customers.

We’re growing so you can too

Make Do are a remote team and we’re looking for new members of staff to join us from anywhere around the world. If you think you have the right blend of can-do-attitude and a deep love for WordPress and the web then get in touch direct via: hello@makedo.in or find Matt, Kimb or Dave at the event.

We’re currently looking for team members with skills in PHP/WordPress and front-end/CSS/JS. Experience working remotely via Slack, Trello and Skype is a must.

Personal growth and education are important to Make Do and all members of the team are encouraged to take time out of client work to grow their skill set. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a Junior or Senior developer we’ll consider all applications.

Sponsor: Elementary Digital

Package: Gold

Website: http://www.elementarydigital.co.uk 

Who We Are

Elementary Digital is a Leeds and London based digital agency with a focus on WordPress solutions. Infact, we would describe ourselves as a dedicated WordPress agency and we’re pretty obsessed with building, developing and innovating in the platform.

Elementary Digital was formed in 2012 with a remit to follow a new way of working. Not only picking a platform to specialise in rather than being a jack of all trades and master of none, but also in pushing the idea of a location agnostic model for employees. Give us an Internet connection, a nice chair and a pot of coffee and we’re good to go anywhere!

This allows us to be flexible in how, when and where we work. Sure we still need to answer the phone 9-5, but if a developer gets on to a roll in pursuit of fixing a particularly difficult issue they can keep going and have a lie-in as a reward the next day. Cutting the commute out and letting our staff work in familiar environments has done wonders for stress, motivation & productivity. We maintain presence with our clients via regular stand ups – again we just need a decent Internet connection and a suitable space and we can connect via Skype.

We keep a cohesive team feel with weekly meetings and ad-hoc nights out, usually centred around good food and good beer!

Why We Chose WordPress

After a lifetime of stress dealing with homebrew CMSs of varying abilities it was time for a change. Even the better ones tend to resemble a Frankenstein’s monster of code as feature creep over the years takes its toll. Clients will keep wanting to add just one more feature to a system that is often not designed to be particularly extensive.

Then there’s the ‘passability’ of the site – with a system like WordPress we can (and often do) pick up someone else’s project and deliver it to completion. There’s a major time overhead when trying to do that with a custom system. This type of CMS can often resemble an attempt to lock someone in with the original agency. Not always, of course, but often enough.

We also love the flexibility of WordPress. Often derided as being a platform ‘just for bloggers’ we know that infact some of the world’s most popular sites are either running WordPress or integrating it as part of a wider solution. We understand that this is down to the perceived ease of the platform, but it’s not like that puts any of us out of business. It’s great for beginners to jump into and half an hour later they have a website! But we chose it because it’s powerful enough to go far beyond that.

WordCamp Manchester 2015

For us, sponsoring WordCamp Manchester 2015 is about finding a way to contribute to the community of a system that was a revelation to us when we found it and it’s part of our duty as a dedicated WordPress agency.

We believe that by being a part of fostering the community we all gain. We want to contribute what we know; our experiences, our techniques. There’s no point in trying to hoard all the knowledge – new ideas can be born in isolation, it’s true, but the best results come from a group of fired up peers bouncing ideas off each other. It sounds like an awful piece of business-speak, but it’s true, the group dynamic often creates something more. As a forward-thinking agency we want to be part of that.

It’s also about learning for ourselves. Between us we’ve years of experience in WordPress, but we never claim to know it all. We want to keep learning and growing. Keep going or be left behind!

So that’s why we’ve decided to sponsor Wordcamp 2015. We can’t wait to get involved, watch the talks and get to meet you all!