Dave’s first speaking event and meeting notes from 7th May 2025
Posted by Paul Silver
On 7th May, ten freelancers met in the Lord Nelson Inn to talk all things freelancing and tech.
This is some of what we talked about:
- Matomo – PHP based web analytics package
- Tariffs and changes since last week
- Trying to get a business bank account when the bank IT is crap
- Monzo becoming an actual bank
- Using SSADM (Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method) in your own projects
- Concorde
- Is the need for faster transport now mitigated by video calls?
- Experiences as a mature student
- First speaking event! Dave Bottrill talks Writing Python Packages in Rust at Chalk Connect
- Being able to work very remotely
- Different levels of wealth and how that comes out in controlling your children
- Vegan flights
- Build processes
- Minifying CSS and JS
- SEO as a checkbox exercise
- Are professional qualifications worth getting?
- US tax on unrealised gains (e.g. ISAs) for US citizens in the UK
- Understanding Maths when it is in code, but not mathematical notation
- Travelling with less than six months on your passport
Matomo
This came up twice over the evening from two different people in unrelated conversations. Matomo is a web analytics package, so an alternative to Google Analytics. You can use their hosted service to run it, or run it yourself. It’s written using PHP so easy to host as PHP is very widely supported.
I have clients who are fed up with Google Analytics 4 and how complicated it is. I’ve had clients who found the version before too complicated for their needs. Knowing there’s an alternative that’s easy to host for those who want it, and that captures traffic without the “modelling” Google Analytics now does, is very interesting. I’m looking forwards to trying it.