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Web Directions 2015

Don't miss Australia's longest-running digital design, product and engineering conference.

Keeping up with the constantly evolving Web platform is a full time job. Let it be ours, and not yours. So you can get on with building faster, more secure, more scalable, more engaging Web products.

Global Knowledge

Take the world's leading digital creatives, like Buzzfeed Creative Director Cap Watkins, ground breaking strategists like Deputy Director (Digital Strategy), UK Government Digital Service, Tom Loosemore. And industry leading engineering talent, like Patrick Hamann from the Financial Times.

Mix in an atmosphere decidedly unlike any you've experienced at a conference. Add parties, bespoke espresso and pour-over coffee, and all manner of experiences to engage, delight, and stimulate your creativity and conversation. And that barely begins to do justice to the event that is Web Directions.

Now you're thinking, "it sounds awesome, but I can't afford the time to take two days off no matter how good this might be". But the question really is, in such a fast moving industry as ours, can you afford not to?

If you're in Design or Product

VPs and Heads of Product
Product management
Creative direction
Web design
Interaction design
Creative technology
User Experience
User Research
Content strategy

For Engineering & Development

VPs of Engineering
Engineering managers
Technical Directors
Front-end engineers
Front End Ops
JavaScript developers
Web development
App development
CIO
CTO

700

Passionate Attendees

24

Transformational Speakers

2

Unforgettable Days

1

Iconic Location

Keynotes

Start and end each day with inspiring, challenging, big picture talks from our industry's sharpest minds.

Tom Loosemore

Deputy Director,

UK Government Digital Service

Keynote: Tom Loosemore

TBA

Tom Loosemore is a founder and now deputy director of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS). GDS was established in 2011 to ensure the UK government offers world-class digital products that meet people’s needs.

Since 2012 GOV.UK has replaced hundreds of websites, winning Design of the Year and saving £60m in the process. It has also digitally transformed 25 of the most significant transactional public services.

Prior to GDS, Tom ran the digital innovation arm of Channel 4. He was responsible for the BBC's internet strategy between 2001 and 2007, after launching its first sport websites in the late 1990s, was the driving force behind a raft innovative e-democracy sites including TheyWorkForYou.com, and mySociety

Earlier in his career Tom was an editor on the UK edition of Wired Magazine, and founded local information startup UpMyStreet.com

tomskitomski

Hannah Donovan

Product Design Lead, Ripcord

Keynote: Hannah Donovan

Souls & Machines: Designing the Future of Content

Not too long ago, it seemed like big data and collaborative filtering were going to solve our desires for discovery and inspiration. At the same time, platforms dedicated to new methods of self expression – music, writing, video etc. – have matured, and their new forms of content have become mainstays of our culture.

Today, content companies are adapting to become digital products, and tech companies are learning to make content. How does a product designer navigate this changing landscape? What are the answers to questions like “humans vs. computers”; “pro vs. user-generated content”; and “opinion vs. democracy”? This and more will be answered through case studies, experiments and of course, stories. Come to learn, stay for the fun :)

Hannah Donovan is a designer and speaker based in New York City. She's worked at the intersection of music, design and technology for the last decade, making digital products in music and entertainment. She currently leads product design at Ripcord.

Previously, Hannah co-founded This Is My Jam with incubation from The Echo Nest, led design at Last.fm in London, and designed for youth-focused brands in Toronto.

She’s a classically trained cellist who loves hip-hop and R&B;, as well as a classically trained graphic designer who loves bold patterns, clashing textures and type. She also loves tigers, but isn't classically trained to tame them.

han

Cap Watkins

VP of Design at BuzzFeed

Keynote: Cap Watkins

Design Everything

We talk a lot about design-driven organizations and user-focused design practices. But how do you get your organization bought into that in the first place? How do you convince people that starting with design is the good and right thing to do? We’ll talk about strategies for winning hearts and minds, building trust and ultimately designing not just the product, but your entire organization.

Cap Watkins is a product designer living in Brooklyn, NY. He’s the VP of Design at BuzzFeed, as well as a blogger, conference speaker, podcast guest and lover of startups and technology. Cap believes in thoughtful, holistic design solutions that get out of the way and empower people to accomplish more. His past work includes Etsy, Zoosk, Formspring and hush-hush stuff at Amazon.

cap

More…

Who else will keynote?

Keynote: TBA

TBA

More sessions

Web Directions is a two day two track conference. After an opening keynote, each day separates into a Engineering & Development focussed track, and a Product & Design focussed track, each featuring word leading experts.

Alisa Lemberg

Snr. User Researcher, Twitter

Product Stream: Alisa Lemberg

Building Empathy Through Data

Often we think of data as the sum total of user behavior – an abstraction of actual experiences. How might we dive deeper into customer data and take a peek at the real people behind the numbers? In this talk, Alisa Lemberg will share moments from the intersection of qualitative and quantitative research, and reframe data as a tool to bring design and engineering teams closer to user needs.

Alisa Lemberg is a Sr. User Researcher at Twitter where she seeks to uncover the secret sauce behind Internet stardom. Prior to joining Twitter, she was a member of IDEO’s Hybrid Insights team, bridging the divide between the qualitative and the quantitative. She is passionate about finding stories behind the numbers, and learning how to order coffee in new languages.

DataByDesign

Eric Elliott

Author & Developer, Parallel Drive

Engineering Stream: Eric Elliott

The Two Pillars of JavaScript

Software is eating the world, the web is eating software, and JavaScript rules the web. Learn why JavaScript's distinctive features make it well suited to its position as the most popular programming language in the world.

JavaScript popularized two paradigms in mainstream programming that I collectively call "The Two Pillars of JavaScript": Prototypal OO and Functional programming.

The two pillars are essential concepts to learn because they're widely used in industry leading apps from companies like Facebook, Netflix, Instagram, PayPal, and Microsoft. Why not put them to work for you, too?

Compassionate entrepreneur on a mission to end homelessness. #jshomes Javascript, tech education, electronic music, photography, film, viral apps.

_ericelliott

Kitt Hodsden

Front End Engineer, Shopify

Engineering Stream: kitt Hodsden

Automation for Developer Happiness

You’ve done what you need to do to create a functioning, responsive, good-looking site that works blazingly fast in your development environment. How sure are you, however, that it performs well for your users? Does it render quickly? Does it respond well to user input? Where are the bottlenecks of your site? More importantly, can you increase both the perceived and actual speed of your site?

Let’s take a dive into tools for checking site speed and improving site performance. We’ll review the available tools for cross platform, multi-device front-end performance testing, find bottlenecks, simulate our users’ experiences on our site, then automate those checks using Grunt and good old-fashioned shell scripting. In the end, we’ll be able to see how our site changes have affected our site performance, and what steps we can take to increase perceived and actual site speed.

Kitt Hodsden is the 47th laziest developer in the world, a feat which takes considerable effort. Kitt enjoys preaching the gospel of lazy productivity, and hopes to encourage you to automate as much as you can of your work. Kitt is founding director of Hacker Dojo, a community center for hackers, tinkerers, creatives and creators. She is currently a developer at Shopify, having previously been at Phase2, Twitter, and Dreamworks.

kitt

Brynn Evans

Design Lead, Project Fi, Google

Product Stream: Brynn Evans

Beauty of Ordinary Design

Inspired by the book The Beauty of Ordinary Things, this talk is about appreciating ordinary moments in life— ordinary yet nevertheless real. These problems may be unpopular or tricky to solve from a social, political, and design perspective, but the right solution(s) would have a huge impact for the populations affected. I talk about several of these problem areas and related perspectives that designers can take to have more impact in their own work, even if they don't work in one of these areas directly.

Brynn Evans leads design for Project Fi, Google's new wireless carrier. She's been at Google for 4 years, previously leading design for the Google+ Stream. Brynn also runs “gamestorming” workshops on product design, marketing, brand positioning, and leadership development with clients such at Estée Lauder, Apple, McAfee, Google Ventures, and more.

brynn

Dan Burka

Design Partner, Google Ventures

Product Stream: Dan Burka

Build for Speed: How to Prototype and Test Any Product in Five Days

The current methodology for building applications is broken. Most teams go through the classic agile pattern: ideate, build, launch, measure, iterate, repeat. Even when executed efficiently, this process stifles innovation under the burden of engineering and product launching. Using real-world examples, Daniel will show how to test your theses more quickly and increase the overall effectiveness (and happiness!) of your whole team.

Daniel Burka is a design partner at Google Ventures. He works with the venture funds’ many portfolio companies to solve their design challenges. Daniel has had a varied career that included co-founding an agency (silverorange), design directing at startups (Digg and TinySpeck), and founding two startups (Pownce and Milk). When Milk was acquired by Google, Daniel ran a mobile-focused design team there before moving to Google Ventures where he gets to work on everything from robots to apps to wearable therapeutics.

dburka

Mathew Patterson

Head of Customer Service,

Campaign Monitor

Product Stream: Mathew Patterson

I want to talk to a real person — Customer Service as a core feature

If everyone agrees that customer service is important, why does customer support suck so badly so often? How do some teams provide consistently exceptional service while others drive customers away? And why does Campaign Monitor not try to make customers happy?

Learn how Campaign Monitor embeds customer service into the heart of the company and the product, and how you can do it too.

Mathew Patterson spends his days looking after the customer service team at Campaign Monitor so they can look after our customers.

mrpatto

Patrick Hamann

Front End Engineer, Financial Times

Engineering Stream: Patrick Hamann

Embracing the network

The network is intrinsically unreliable. More so, the network is out of your control as a developer. Therefore, we must design systems which embrace the unpredictability of the network and defend against it all costs. How can you prioritise the delivery of your core content? What best-practices can you use to optimise your assets? How are APIs such as ServiceWorker changing the way we think about the network?

Patrick is a front-end engineer at the Financial Times in London where – amongst other things – he is helping to build the next generation of their web platform. Prior to the FT he spent the last 3 years developing theguardian.com. When not speaking or ranting about performance he enjoys spending his spare time discovering new food and craft beer.

patrickhamann

Vitaly Friedman

Editor in chief,

Smashing Magazine

Engineering Stream: Vitaly Friedman

TBA

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. Vitaly is writer, speaker, author and editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine. He runs responsive Web design workshops, online workshops and loves solving complex performance problems in large companies.

smashingmag

More…

More design, product and engineering

sessions to come soon

More to come

Plus many more to be announced

As always, we'll be announcing more speakers, and the final shape of the Product/Design and Engineering Tracks in the coming weeks.

Masterclasses

Join one of our speakers for a Masterclass October 28th, the day before the conference.

Masterclasses are $599 for conference attendees and $699 when purchased separately.

Eric Elliot

Masterclass: The Two Pillars of JavaScript Workshop

JavaScript is built on top of two pillars: Prototypal OO and functional programming. If you don't know these concepts, you don't know JavaScript. The Two Pillars Workshop will take you through an all-day bootcamp where you'll practice several practical applications of each pillar while you build a simple Universal JavaScript App with Node & React.

Learn from Eric Elliott, author of the new book, "Learn JavaScript Universal App Development with Node, ES6, and React".

Key take aways

Prototypal OO in Javascript
Functional programming with JavaScript
ES6 Roadmap
Universal (AKA 'isomorphic') Web apps

You'll Learn

We'll start the morning with a quick explanation of why the two pillars matter, take quick detour for an ES6 ROADMAP refresher, and then explore each of the two pillars in depth. Then we'll introduce a sample project before taking a meal break. When we return, we'll kick off a group hackathon project to build a new app using the two pillars of JavaScript. Eric will be available for questions and guidance during the hackathon, and you'll be encouraged to find allies to collaborate with as you learn from the experience of exploring the two pillars together.

Required equipment and knowledge

This workshop is for Web Developers and Front End Engineers who are comfortable with JavaScript. Bring your laptop to work along on the day.

Vitaly Friedman

Masterclass: Responsive Design, Clever Tricks And Techniques

In this full-day workshop, Vitaly Friedman, editor-in-chief of Smashing Magazine, will present practical techniques, clever tricks and useful strategies you need to be aware of when working on any responsive design project. Most techniques are borrowed from mid-size and large-scale real-life projects, such as large eCommerce projects, online magazines and Web applications.

We'll be looking at specific techniques for building well organised, front-end software, and wherever possible this work will be hands-on. Vitaly will introduce theories and ideas for dealing with common problems, and attendees will be assigned small tasks so they can experiment for themselves with these techniques.

You'll Learn

Effective tools and techniques that can support and enhance your personal workflow when working on any responsive design project

An overview of clever practical techniques for improving UX as well as performance of responsive sites

Front-end strategies for scalable, resolution-independent graphics and maintainable CSS code

Responsive Design Patterns and innovative approaches to designing "responsive modules" such as tables, calendars, multi-level menus, maps and Web forms

Testing, debugging and maintenance techniques for responsive sites as well as lessons learned from Smashing Magazine's own redesign in 2012

Technical issues (and solutions) for responsive advertising and responsive email newsletters

How to optimize responsive websites for better mobile UX, offline UX and print, and How the design processes should adapt in terms of the project management, deliverables, performance budgets, team organisation and strategy.

Required equipment and knowledge

This workshop is intended for professional designers, developers and everybody else who is dealing with responsive design regularly or wants to better understand responsive design in general. You should at least be familiar with some basics of responsive design, HTML5 and CSS. Bring your laptop to work along on the day.

Key take aways

Responsive Design Patterns and innovative approaches to designing "responsive modules"
Improving the UX & performance of responsive sites
optimizing responsive websites for better mobile UX, offline UX and print
Testing, debugging and maintenance techniques for responsive sites

Kitt Hodsden

Masterclass: Front End Workflow Automation — Let’s Get Hands-on

Today’s front end developers have more work to do than ever to create a functioning, responsive, fast, good-looking website. We have differing screen resolutions, browser support, network speeds and other considerations all buzzing around, jockeying for highest priority and attention during development.

Let’s make that development easier by automating away some of the grunt work.

You'll Learn

We’ll cover a start-to-end workflow, along with options to cover other developer cases. Tools introduced and used include yeoman, grunt, emmet, sass (including scout, compass, livereload) alfred, bower, phantomcss (huddle), modern.ie, (with browsershots alternatives) and vagrant (virtualbox). We’ll address responsive web design, review mobile-first development, media queries organization, basics of scripting, browser bookmarks, packaging sprites, and techniques for specific issues like using svg images with png fallbacks.

Required equipment and knowledge

Experience building websites is needed to take full advantage of the workshop. Workshop content will be adjusted to attendees’ needs, covering command line basics and GUI options as needed.

Bring a laptop with a project you want to automate, your site development setup and a modern browser or two.

What to Expect

We’ll send out a questionnaire before the workshop so that we cover not only the general topics listed above, but also the specific requirements of workshop attendees. After we receive your responses, you’ll receive custom instructions on laptop setup, reflective of your chosen operating system and development platform.

Key take aways

Setting up the automation framework
Automatic browser refresh with BrowserSync
Integrating CSS preprocessors
Sprite generation
Asset aggregation and compression
Regression testing
Asset analysis for redundancy checking
Command line tricks, scripting
Who Should Attend
This workshop is for intermediate and advanced web developers and designers who want to streamline their site development workflow.

Our new venue

Web Directions 2015 takes place in the the Big Top at Sydney's iconic Luna Park, right on the harbour, and in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Getting there:

Luna Park is 5 minutes walk from Milson's Point Station. It's also a short ferry ride from Circular Quay. And there's ample parking on site if you really have to drive.

Accommodation:

North Sydney, just a few mintues walk away has a wide range of options, from budget to 5 star. Check out Wotif and Airbnb as well

Opening party

This year's social committee have excelled themselves, planning an amazing opening night party that will feature, along with an the usual excellent array of refreshments– iconic Luna Park rides and attractions like Coney Island and old school amusement park inspired catering.

And, to make it even more fun, your family is invited. From 5pm to 7pm we have exclusive access to various rides, so bring the kids along too (on us)!

Speaker dinner

Exclusively for Gold ticket holders, join our speakers at one of Sydney's finest restaurants, Aqua, high above North Sydney Olympic Pool (home to more world records than any other pool in the World).

There'll be three exquisite courses, matching wines, and the company of the finest minds in our Industry in an intimate setting.

Find the conference pass for you

Gold Pass

conference
speaker dinner
gold exclusives

$1,499 Until August 28
$1,599 Until October 2
$1,699 Until October 29

Silver Pass

conference
silver exclusives

$1,299 Until August 28
$1,399 Until October 2
$1,499 Until October 29

Classic Pass

conference

$1,099 Until August 28
$1,199 Until October 2
$1,299 Until October 29

Speaker Dinner October 29

Join our speakers at one of Sydney's finest restaurants, Aqua, for a three course dinner with matching wines to remember.

Conference October 29–30

2 day conference
Opening night party with rides and more
Closing night Drinks
Awesome conference coffee
Refreshing fresh juice bar
Sensational catered lunches and breaks

Exclusives

A selection of exclusives to enhance your conference experience.

Videos

All past videos of conferences by Web Directions

All past videos of Web Directions South

Web Directions 2015 Conference videos

Find the conference pass for you

Gold Pass

Conference
Speaker Dinner
Exclusives

$1,499 Until August 28
$1,599 Until October 2
$1,699 Until October 29

Silver Pass

Conference
Exclusives

$1,299 Until August 28
$1,399 Until October 2
$1,499 Until October 29

Classic Pass

Conference

$1,099 Until August 28
$1,199 Until October 2
$1,299 Until October 29

Come together

Teams get more

Many teams have long attended Web Directions together, part offsite, part training, all inspiration. Now, sending a team of 5 or more to Web Directions is even more valuable. For the price of a classic ticket per team member, you'll get:

A Silver pass for each attendee
A Device Lab Pro with Ghostlab license for the team.
A team license to all the past Web Direcitons conference videos, as well as videos from Web Direcitions 2015

Just use the code team when you register.

The Best Coffee

The "world's best conference coffee" returns in 2015.

From the roaster of The 2014 Good Coffee Guide's best Barista in Sydney, Sample Coffee Co.'s Reuben Mardan, we'll be serving up espresso, filter and cold drip coffee the likes of which you won't get at any other conference, anywhere.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it

Henry David Thoreau

We know you are busy

Creating and managing a great team, exploring the creative limits of today's technology, and tomorrow's. We know your life is full to the brim with meetings you can't miss.

What we'll deliver is ROT (return on your time). We'll help you save time avoiding rabbit holes of hype that doesn't match reality. We'll help you invest your time wisely in the technologies, ideas and projects that will deliver for your company, clients and partners.

Web Directions is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development.

Phil Whitehouse, General Manager, DT Sydney

I’ve been admiring the Web Directions events for years, and was honored to be part… What a fantastic event!

Ethan Marcotte, inventor of "responsive Web design"

Out of any conference, Web Directions is far and away our favourite

Dave Greiner, founder, Campaign Monitor

About Us

Co-founded and now run by John Allsopp, Web Directions has for over a decade brought together leading developers, engineers, visual, IxD, UX and product designers, Art and Creative Directors, indeed everyone involved in producing web and digital products to learn from one another, and the World's leading experts across this vast field.

We spend our lives thinking about what comes next, keeping up with trends in technology, practices and processes, and filtering the hype, to make sure you don't miss trends that matter, and don't waste time on hype that doesn't.

We promise attending one of our events will leave you significantly better versed in the challenges you face day to day, and in solutions for addressing them.

John Allsopp

John Allsopp has been working on the Web for over 20 years. He's been responsible for innovative developer tools such as Style Master, X-Ray and many more. He's spoken at numerous conferences around the World and delivered dozens of workshops in that time as well.

His writing includes two books, including Developing With Web Standards and countless articles and tutorials in print and online publications.

His "A Dao of Web Design" published in 2000 is cited by Ethan Marcotte as a key influence in the development of Responsive Web Design, who's rightly acclaimed article in 2010 begins by quoting John in detail, and by Jeremy Keith as "a manifesto for anyone working on the Web".