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My return to public speaking at events

April 7, 2025 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been lucky enough to speak at various events on topics including SEO, marketing and creativity over the years. But it all came to a stop early in 2020, as it did for everyone. And I haven’t really been pursuing opportunities since then for various reasons, but my return to public speaking at events finally happened last week at the April 2025 Digital People in Peterborough meetup.

The talks are normally between 20-40 minutes, but having put together a presentation on ‘The Biggest SEO Myths: Fact or Fiction’, I found out later that I’d been speaking for more than an hour, including some brilliant questions from the DPiP audience.

I couldn’t have asked for a better experience to re-introduce myself to public speaking, and it led to some great conversations about SEO, the growing impact of AI, and why the answer to almost every question will be ‘It depends’.

If you’re interested in speaking at, or attending, a DPiP event, you can find all the details here. It usually takes place on the first Thursday of each month, and everyone is welcome, whether you’re based in Peterborough and the surrounding area, or travelling from further away. And I can highly recommend it if you’re speaking for the first time, challenged by nerves or looking to try out something new, as everyone is incredibly supportive.

I will try and share the presentation itself in the near future, but due to the short notice and some other complications, I need to go back through it to check all the appropriate image attributions and notes are in place. Or it might appear as a series of articles if I can schedule the time to do each myth justice.

Peterborough STEM Festival – October 1, 2016

September 13, 2016 By Dan Thornton

The WayoftheWeb is lucky to not only worth with clients across the UK, Europe and around the globe, but also have a team of colleagues similarly distributed. It gives us the benefit of lower costs and the ability to tap into a wider range of skills and experience. Plus it also gives us the chance to travel a fair bit!

When I started the company seven years ago as a solo consultant, I was based in Peterborough. Realising early on that I missed the real world interaction I’d had with colleagues, I suggested to a few friends that we arranged a social gathering in a local pub. And that turned into the successful monthly DPiP meetup.

Having left the area to establish a new headquarters for the company in Kent (more news on that in the near feature), we’re still involved with DPiP, so it was exciting to originally hear plans for the first ever Peterborough STEM Festival. And it’s even more exciting to know that the free, family-friendly event will take place on October 1st, 2016. As a coincidence, it’s also the anniversary of our start as a company!

It’s a packed day of fascinating speakers, interesting workshops and cool demos and exhibitors. All supporting the drive for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths in education, and also Ada Lovelace day (which celebrates the achievements of women in those fields).

It’s great to know something we’ve played a part in will be delivering something so inspiring. And switching pronouns again, I’ll be volunteering at the festival to help out. There’s no doubt some of the children attending will be the type of employees we’ll all be hoping to hire in the future.

Although the event in free, you do need to book tickets in advance to help the organisers manage numbers. And pre-booking for the workshops will open shortly, as there will be limitations to how much space is available.

Proud Sponsors of DPiP May 2014 event

May 8, 2014 By Dan Thornton

I’m pleased to say that in addition to personally being one of the organisers of local digital gathering ‘Digital People in Peterborough’, TheWayoftheWeb Ltd is also sponsoring the May 2014 event.

It’s a great way to informally meet up with a diverse range of people who share an interest in digital technology, whether it’s a personal interest, a career or their business.

There’s more details on the DPiP website. And although we’re still a small company, it’s great to be able to start supporting initiatives and getting more involved in our local community.

If you’re in Cambridgeshire, we’d definitely recommend checking it out

Digital People in Peterborough Event: April 10, 2014

March 31, 2014 By Dan Thornton

After a bit of a break, Digital People in Peterborough is back with a very cool event on Thursday April 10, 2014.

eic_april2014_banner — Digital People in Peterborough – April 10, 2014

We’ve been invited to the Eco Innovation Centre in Peterborough to offer our thoughts on proposed plans for a new Digital Hub in the city!

If that wasn’t enough, we’re also being generously bribed with some food and drink for attendees, in case you need an extra reason to come along.

So it should be a good event, and an important one for the future of digital industries and creatives in Peterborough. And we’re generally a nice and friendly bunch, so you’ll feel welcome whether you’re a blogger, website owner, eCommerce expert, creative, marketer, developer, database admin, designer or inventing your own job title.

Ghosts of the Past – cool site using historical photos

December 23, 2011 By Dan Thornton

It’s always nice to discover a cool new site, and even better when it turns out to be made by someone I know. Andy Reedman, of Mind of Design and an attendee of DPiP meetups has created a great site, Ghosts of the Past, which I’ve only just discovered.

Like many great ideas, it’s also pretty simple. Take an overhead photo of an area, and then juxtapose that with a historical one, which switches when the image is rolled over.

It’s a diverting way to spend some time, and as someone interested in history, it’s also potentially pretty useful. I know Andy would appreciate any contributions in terms of suggestions/content for future posts, so if you happen to know of anything, he’d appreciate it (@andyreedy on Twitter). So seeing as work is winding down, why not take a look?

Obviously I can’t help but tinker, so the things I’d change asap would be to look at ways to embed the images onto other sites, possibly add more historical references and context either as new content or pulled in from elsewhere, and maybe introduce some merchandise or similar. I’ll settle for trying to supply him with images of motoracing circuits.