Wrapping up 2023 - our highlights from the last twelve months 🎁
Sales, Marketing and Events Manager
2 minute read
As the year draws to a close, we reflect on the developments of the last twelve months, and the highlights, achievements and collaborative efforts that have defined our year at Nexer
Season's greetings!
As we approach the festive season and the year draws to a close, it's a moment to pause and reflect on the developments of the past twelve months. We always try to focus on the impact of our work and how it shapes our team. In this end of year wrap-up, we're excited to share the highlights, achievements, and collaborative efforts that have defined our year at Nexer.
Cultural exchanges and collaboration
We've had several amazing opportunities to collaborate with our colleagues across the wider Nexer Group. We enjoy the ability to work with teams in Poland, India and Colombia, and some of our team have had the opportunity to visit, live and work overseas this year. The global nature of Nexer’s workforce allows us to access ranging skills, tap into difference cultural attitudes and offer our clients an expanded range of services.It's also been a great year of cross-team events, which we kicked off with a health and life sciences event in Cambridge with our colleagues from Sigma IT Poland (more on that later!).
In the latter half of the year, we worked closely with the team at Nexer Maverick in Sweden to host three accessibility events across Malmo, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Combined these events saw around 200 attendees join us to discuss the upcoming 2025 European Accessibility Act (EAA), and how businesses can make their products and services accessible for all.
As well as talks and a panel including Danny, Molly, Chris and Emma from our own team, we were lucky enough to be joined by some fantastic guest speakers, including GDS accessibility lead Shaun Conner, who shared his expertise in bringing accessibility to a wide variety of organisations and teams.
As well as talks and a panel including Danny, Molly, Chris and Emma from our own team, we were lucky enough to be joined by some fantastic guest speakers, including GDS accessibility lead Shaun Conner, who shared his expertise in bringing accessibility to a wide variety of organisations and teams.
This year also saw our team take to the Swedish slopes as we enjoyed the Nexer Group WOW tour in Åre which brought together 1300 colleagues from different countries under the theme of ‘Making a difference’ to share achievements and inspiration and make some memories (Our Head of IT Dave falling off his snowboard being a key one…;-)).
Making strides in health and life sciences
2023 presented us with some notable moments in our work in the health and life sciences sector. In March we collaborated with our colleagues from Sigma IT Poland to host an event in Cambridge on our shared work in genomic research for health, with attendees joining from organisations such as AstraZeneca and Exscientia. Team members delivered a series of excellent talks on topics from scaling data solutions to insights on inclusive product and service design.
More recently, the 30th November saw the launch of NHS England’s new Accessibility labs based in Leeds and London. We’ve been working with NHS England for the past several months to develop the labs, and they’re designed to offer access to all within the organisation seeking knowledge about accessible design, assistive technology, and to provide the support to help make new and existing services more inclusive.
Finally, we wanted to share some great news from one of our clients, UK Biobank. Early in the month UK Biobank made headlines internationally as they announced the unveiling of whole genome sequencing for half a million participants, offering an unmatched resource for research projects into health and disease. Huge congratulations to everyone involved in this groundbreaking project!
Designing for the future
Sustainability is an area of increasing focus for us, and within that, we’ve had some interesting discussions and sessions on designing for people, the planet, and the future. At this year’s Camp Digital we held two workshops; Alastair Somerville led a brilliant session on planet-centred design, and our very own Danielle Stone hosted a workshop on Speculative Design – leading participants to explore scenarios years and even decades into the future, and to see how organisations might respond to future challenges.
Within our service design team, we’ve been exploring how we might help our clients to embrace end-to-end sustainability, and consider circularity and social innovation in their processes. We’ve also been exploring how to help organisations to track their digital sustainability as part of their ESG strategies.
This includes some fantastic work our Development Team Lead Rick Butterfield has used as a basis for a talk ‘Decarbonising the planet, one Umbraco upgrade at a time’, which advises organisations on measures for reducing their carbon outputs, including CMS upgrades, greener hosting options, optimisation and decommissioning.
Camp Digital
The 13th July marked the return of Camp Digital, now in its twelfth year. Almost 500 attendees joined us at the Royal Northern College of Music for a day packed with incredible talks, interactive workshops, and a new session of lightning talks. We worked with Sharon O’Dea of 300 Seconds and Diverse & Equal’s Annette Joseph to bring together six new speakers, to platform those from underrepresented backgrounds in tech and bring new faces into the speaker circuit.
We’re delighted to bring this session back for next year’s event on Wednesday 8th May 2024, at the RNCM. We’ve also confirmed a fantastic lineup of speakers including:
- Lou Downe – The School of Good Services
- Julian Thompson – Rooted By Design
- Christopher Patnoe – Google EMEA
- Rachel Morgan-Trimmer – Sparkle Class
Plus immersive workshops, and lots of opportunities for connecting with fellow attendees. Camp Digital early bird tickets are on sale now for just £150+VAT at:
Cheers to a brilliant year!
These highlights capture just some of the exciting projects we've been lucky to support over the past twelve months. To our wonderful colleagues, partners, suppliers and customers who gift us these opportunities,– we hope you have a fantastic festive break and a Happy New Year.
Stay tuned for exciting developments in 2024…
....now it’s time for us to raid the mince pies!
....now it’s time for us to raid the mince pies!
With our best wishes,
Team Nexer