My first year at Readable has flown by and as Christmas draws near, I’m feeling reflective. Here’s a recap of what’s happened at Readable HQ in 2019.
I settled into my new role
I started working at Readable in December 2018, just a couple of weeks before Christmas time. After working a Black Friday and Cyber Monday in retail admin - photographic equipment, at that - I was ready for the changes and challenges my role at Readable would bring.
There were a lot of firsts for me. First time writing content for a living. First time with flexible working arrangements. First time working in an environment with the occasional game of pool and an adorable office dog at the specialist agency clockworkTalent downstairs - who, by the way, recruited me for the role.
First Christmas at Readable
Last year, as well as reflecting on festive children’s books we love, we made the office look pretty:
Merry Christmas from the @readableio team plus this Dumb Cane plant who’s wondering why trees get all the fun! #clockworkChristmas pic.twitter.com/YlQ09eGUyW
— Laura Kelly (@lauraekelly_) December 12, 2018
Complete with Westworld's Teddy Funko figure holding a tinsel lasso. Hey, we might like to keep things simple, but that doesn't mean we don't appreciate the attention to detail.
New year, new goals
2019 was the year we started doing more active audience listening. We began our subscriber focus series, in which we focus on putting a spotlight on our users’ case studies.
Hearing about how you guys use Readable is so useful to us because it allows us to learn about what features you love using and the features you’d love to see in the future. We also like to celebrate people who use plain language to make their industry better.
Readable HQ moved to Brighton
We moved from Hickstead into an office at PLATF9RM. Right near the heart of Brighton’s North Laine, croissants are never too far away - and P9 itself always has a vat of strong coffee at hand.
We’ve had worse views for team meetings ツ @platf9rm pic.twitter.com/eUNcDuWfu8
— readable.com (@ReadableHQ) May 30, 2019
My first BrightonSEO
On a hot day Brighton in September, the city was buzzing with digital marketing folks attending the biggest SEO event of the year. I went along as a learning experience and to soak up some inspiration for our SaaS.
Laura’s ready to be our sponge at #BrightonSEO today learning many many things that will benefit us and our users! https://t.co/ywRiMBLVHU
— readable.com (@ReadableHQ) September 13, 2019
Readable attended PLAIN 2019, Oslo
In the same month as BrightonSEO, we headed to Norway to attend the PLAIN plain language conference in the beautiful and historic city of Oslo.
Plain language saved Norway’s largest pension fund 🦸♀️ #PLAIN2019 pic.twitter.com/uLRjMmfSRp
— readable.com (@ReadableHQ) September 26, 2019
We learned a lot about the inspiring use of plain language both in private and public sectors, ate some excellent seafood and braved the rain to explore the city.
Exciting new features for ReadablePro
It’s been a great year for updates. Our interface has had a serious makeover over the last year and our most recent update is the addition of our new metric, reach. We’ve already had some great responses from our subscribers.
We’re always looking for ways to make readability scoring more straightforward and useful for our users. If there’s something that would make it so much easier to communicate readability results to your team and/or your client, please don’t hesitate to get in touch - your feedback matters.
Bring on 2020!