Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Last year, in a whirlwind, we pulled together our first Respond conference, focussing on the broad challenges of contemporary Web design. It brought together one of our most diverse crowds, including many Art and Creative Directors, and many more strategic types than we expected. We designed the day as something of a symposium, with a mixture of presentations from both international experts, and local practitioners, alongside Q&A sessions, which went extremely well, and were one of the high points of the day.

to kick off 2015, we’ve just taken the wraps off our second Respond conference. Based on last year’s feedback, were continuing the symposium feel, with an intimate venue, and plenty of time for conversation and Q&A.

Our goal as always with all our events to to carefully curate the content to address what we feel are the most pressing concerns right now when it comes to responsive web design. And to this end we’ve brought together a fantastic lineup from around the world, as well as wonderful local experts, including

• Scott Jehl, author of the recent Responsible Responsive Design from A Book Apart. Scott worked alongside Ethan Marcotte to deliver the groundbreaking Boston Globe responsive redesign. Few people are more knowledgeable about this whole area than Scott, and we’re excited and privileged to have him here.
• Andrew Clarke will be known to many in our audience. He’s come to Australia to speak at various events for us a number of times, he’s the author of several significant books on Web design, and has worked for some extraordinary clients. Not only keynoting, Andrew will be delivering his new CSS3 for Responsive Design workshop as well.
• Yesenia Pere-Cruz may not be as immediately well known as Scott and Andrew, but she’s deeply experienced, having worked with legendary agencies like Jeffrey Zeldman’s Happy Cog, non prestigious global sites for the likes of MTV. Her focus is an area we consider one of this year’s biggest issues, the intersection of Design and performance. While what happens on the screen has long been one of the primary areas of focus when we design across devices, since so much traffic increasingly happens over mobile networks, which are intrinsically slower than typical fixed networks, and on mobile devices, which also has a significant performance implication, how we design is increasingly a key to getting the best possible performance.
• Kris Howard from Mi9 on the implications of 3rd party content like ads for modern responsive sites
• Nabeelah Ali fron Atlassian on responsive typography
• Felicity Evans from Fairfax Media on responsive workflows
• Simon Elvery from the ABC on the ever challenging issue of images and responsive design
• Ben Buchanan from Ansarada on the dilemma of using responsive frameworks or rolling your own
• Peter Wilson on making the case for, and selling a responsive approach to clients or internally

As always with the Web, quite a bit has changed in the last 12 months. We’re here to help you keep up to date with those changes, and to help you build better, more effective solutions.

We look forward to you joining the conversation, in Sydney, March 19 (for the conference) and 20 (for Andrew’s Workshop). And if you can’t make Sydney, Andrew is visiting Melbourne on March 25th, Brisbane on March 27th, and Perth March 31.