Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

invest in your career in 2020

While it’s an arbitrary moment in the earth’s orbit around the sun, January is a time for reflection, and resolutions. A time to plan the year ahead, and to hone our aspirations for what this next orbit might bring.

When it comes to our careers, we’re constantly being assessed on our knowledge and capabilities. But how can we stay on top of our game, when our fields of practice are seemingly constantly, and ever more rapidly changing?

photo JJ Halans

In a recent Guardian article, career coach Corinne Mills observed

“Some organisations are good at providing learning opportunities when they can see a direct benefit to the organisation. What’s offered, however, may not always be in line with what you really want or need for your career. So, if you want to protect your employability, you need to take charge of your personal development.”

For 15 years now, Web Directions has been helping professionals, like you, in our industry do precisely that–”take charge of your personal development”. So, as 2020 gets underway, we’d love 5 minutes of your time to show you how we can help you develop professionally in 2020, whether your goal is to develop and enhance your technical skills, stay ahead of industry trends or build your leadership capabilities.

Why Not Wait?

But before we get to our 2020 events, why plan now? It’s just 4 weeks into the year, what’s the hurry?

  • Time has a way of getting away from us, and before you know it, the year’s in full swing, your calendar is filling up, and the chance to block out time for your professional development is fast fading. Why not value your development, and lock in your time right now?
  • Then, the moment you register for an event you’ll get access to our new platform for conference videos, Conffab, with videos of hundreds of presentations, transcribed and captioned, annotated and more. And as a bonus throughout the year the videos from all our conferences (and partner conferences as well) will be added, giving you an ever growing library of world class presentations.
  • Next, Our Code and Code Leaders conferences have sold out weeks in advance for several years now, and we expect Product our combined Product Design and Product Management conference to do so as well  So if you don’t want to guarantee a seat at these events, don’t wait too long.
  • Everyone loves an upgrade! Our pre-release period is the only time to secure a gold ticket to our events, so if you want the added benefit of attending our speaker dinner, then it’s time to start planning.
  • And of course you get the best possible price for our events when you register early.

All in all great reasons to start planning now.

What if something comes up? 

What if something comes up, and you’ve registered for an event, but can’t attend. Or the program doesn’t really suit your needs? Or what if an even better conference gets announced? Maybe it’s better to wait?  

We know things come up and that’s why you can transfer your ticket, or even get a refund, at no cost for all our events.

So why wait? Register now, lock in the best prices, get upgraded tickets, access to hundreds of hours of world class presentations on Conffab now, and get your professional development for 2020 underway, right away.

OK, so what have we got planned for 2020?

If you’ve not noticed, we’ve rejigged our conference lineup for 2020. We’ve combined Design and Product into a single two track conference, called Product, one track focussed on Product Management and Leadership (the focus of last year’s Product conference) and one on Product Design (the focus of previous Design conferences). 

We’ve also rolled Culture into our Summit, adding a fourth people/talent/culture track. Here’s our 2020 lineup in full.

  • Code Australia’s conference for JavaScript Developers, Front End and Full Stack Engineers, Melbourne June 4 & 5. Code has sold out well in advance the last few years, and will be held a little earlier this year so don’t risk missing out! 
  • Code Leaders, Melbourne, June 3–running in conjunction with Code focuses on what senior engineering decision makers need to know about right now. It’s sold out ever since we started back in 2017.
  • Product–Design and Management. Melbourne July 1 & 2. Product is Australia’s only two day conference focussed on the latest thinking and practice in designing and delivering successful digital products. In 2019 we offered Design and Product as two stand alone events. For 2020, we have combined these into a two day, two track conference, called Product. With one track focussed on Product Management and one focussed on Product Design, plus relevant keynote speakers to cap off the beginning and end of each day, it’s a must for all product teams.
  • Design Leaders for those leading design – Melbourne July 3. The third year of our event focussed on the needs of current and emerging design leaders and managers. Running the day after Product, combine the two for 3 in depth days of highly relevant content.
  • Web Directions Summit – where it all began, 15 years ago now. It’s a conference for the whole digital team, ICC Sydney, November 4 & 5. Featuring Product Design & Management, front-end dev plus a new people/talent/culture track.

You can download an overview of all our 2020 events at a glance to share with your team, colleagues or whomever makes the decision to attend events at your organisation.

Hope to see you at one of this year’s fantastic conferences!

delivering year round learning for front end and full stack professionals

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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'