10 Degrees shortlisted for two Wirehive awards

Yesterday, the shortlist for the Wirehive 100 awards were announced. We’re absolutely thrilled to have been shortlisted for two categories!

Agency Leader

The team and I secretly nominated Jonny for this award. Those of you that know Jonny will know he is very modest about both his own abilities and the achievements & success of 10 Degrees. True leaders are people that others want to follow and Jonny leads by example every day. His democratic, engaging and non hierarchical approach to management has earned him the full respect of the team, coupled with his excellent technical skills that inspire the team to continually improve.

It is also clear from the strength of feeling within the testimonials we received from clients for this task that the same level of respect and admiration for Jonny is felt by our clients:

“I have had the pleasure of working with 10 Degrees for the last three years, Jonny exemplifies the best in leadership. He has a unique blend of technical and interpersonal skills and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him and his organisation.”

Jonny started 10° in 2009 and for the first five years the ‘business’ was nothing more than Jonny working as a freelancer. Finally in 2014, Jonny took the leap to take on his first employee and four years later we’re now a team of 8. This steady, organic, consistent growth is representative of Jonny’s attitude to growing a business – it is about doing what feels right to him and when, it is not about a capitalist agenda of making as much money as quickly as possible. It is about providing a good level of service to clients, maintaining a happy team and not jeopardising either of those things by uncontrolled growth and over-stretching too quickly.

Jonny is yet to read the testimonials we submitted as part of this award nomination, but I suspect when he does, he will probably be quite overwhelmed by them – and will then brush them off as an achievement of the whole team and not him individually – in typical Jonny altruistic style!

Agency for Good

This is a category that means a lot to us. At 10 Degrees we consider ourselves a not-just-for-profit organisation. At the heart of our business is a strong ethical belief in the sustainability of our business, our community and our environment. This belief forms our ‘Full Circle’ ethos, to give back to all facets of the community that our business impacts and engages with.

• Our team: Ensuring we provide a friendly working environment that promotes physical and mental wellbeing within our team.
• Our clients: We work with clients that align to the same ethical standards and will turn away clients that do not share them. 
• Professional community: We sponsor, volunteer and speak at WordPress events (e.g. WordCamp London). We encourage all our developers to publish their code and contribute back to the developer community.
• Local community: Local community events such as Wokingham Festival, Wokingham Bikeathon, Wokingham Walk and Wokingham Open Air Cinema are all sponsored by 10 Degrees.
• Charity: Starting in 2016, we’ve committed to undertaking at least one charitable initiative as a team every year, this can be helping out hands on as a team or rebuilding a website for free. We also collect spare change in our office ‘Chari-tea’ teapot to donate to the Salvation Army at Christmas.
• The next generation: The 10° Academy is our initiative to address the gender imbalance within the tech industry.  It will teach school-age girls how to set up their own WordPress website, free of charge. The aim is to get more girls interested in web development as a later career choice. 
• The environment: Our long term goal is to build our own carbon-zero office, we want to ensure our impact on the environment is as minimal as possible. We use 100% renewable electricity to power our office; promote electric vehicle adoption and we’re installing an EV charge point for visiting clients. All our office waste is either recycled or used for biofuel.

Just being shortlisted in these categories, and in the company of some other fantastic agencies, is a huge achievement in itself. Roll on October for a fantastic evening of celebrating the successes of this wonderful industry that we are in. (Fingers crossed!)

The Author

Lynda Harvey

Managing Director. Leading our business strategy and culture.

The 10 Degrees Team