July 2023 – What We’ve Been Up To

Wayne

Every cloud has a silver lining and a bucket load of rain.

I sit writing this update drenched after my short walk to the office, in what has been the wettest summer I can remember. It’s also been one of Twilo’s busiest summers to date. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive, as trips to our coastal towns, and beer-garden-beers are far less tempting when it feels like we’re in the middle of November. Like many service-based businesses, summer is usually our quietest period. We also know from years of running PPC campaigns that weather does have an impact on buying habits; certainly, we see fewer online transactions when the sun is beaming down on us as people are usually out enjoying themselves at this time of year.

This year has been different. It seems the lack of desire to hit the beaches has been positive news for businesses as we’ve seen good year-on-year increases in our marketing campaigns, as I sit here with a number of new client proposals to write. Perhaps the silver lining of these lingering clouds is a boost to small businesses.

Away from work, the weekends have been filled with trips across the country. This is a contradiction to what I said above, but they’ve been flying visits rather than long weekends! Kicking off July with a second-wedding-weekend-in-a-row for my cousin’s wedding, followed by a wet and windy trip to Wales to catch up with friends. After that, an even wetter trip to Glasgow, to see Red Hot Chili Peppers perform their biggest hits, front and centre. I’d love to share some proof from these weekends but I’m useless at taking pictures when I’m out and about, so there is no proof that I did any of those things.

Finally, we rounded the month off with Twilo’s summer outing! Most of us made it out to York Races, and I’m glad to say that the sun did make an appearance for us, finally. We dropped on by going out on the one sunny day of July (it chucked it down the next day, and hasn’t stopped since), but we barely made it out thanks to the train strikes! This resulted in some very expensive taxis to get people from York city centre, back to West and South Yorkshire. About time these strikes ended, right?

Here’s a few from York Races, thanks to Dami and his photography skills!

Andrew

Burgers, brollies, and B chords

It was my birthday this month in which I spent hungover from the night before! I didn’t get up to much other than getting together with family for a BBQ and only just managing to catch the sun before it started pouring down. We had a range of the usual burgers, sausages, and chicken fillets to indulge in. Once I returned home and after physically recovering, I chilled out with a Chinese take-away and my favourite cider (Old Mout).

This has also been an exciting month for films and video games. I went to see Oppenheimer which I thoroughly enjoyed. To top off seeing this film, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart was finally released on PC which immediately took hours out of my weekend playing. For me personally, it has all the same vibes as the old PS2 Ratchet and Clank games I played 10+ years ago and therefore gets the nostalgia points from me.

I had been a bit lazy in the last few months with my guitar practice, so I took up the challenge of learning some more difficult songs such as Coldplay’s Clocks and Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits as well as keeping up with modern music. It’s going somewhat well despite the fact I cannot yet keep up with the tempo of these songs. I still need to find the motivation to learn my theory though.

In the few times that there was sun this month, I traveled to see my friends that live a bit further away than just around the corner. I went down to the outskirts of Birmingham to see a good friend where we stayed the night relaxing with a board games night and some Rick and Morty with pizza to follow after.

I have also spent this month getting a lot of experience in Vue.js and my knowledge is getting much stronger. I feel as though I can navigate the templates and perform more advanced functions more easily than I was able to do a month ago. I look forward to using these skills forward in our future Vue applications.