Web Directions Summit 2019

SydneyOctober 31 & November 1 2019

A conference for the whole team–featuring product, design and front end engineering tracks

Day 1

  • October 31st
8:00 am
9:00 am
9:15 am
sessionTime plenaryName

Designing smart things: Balancing ethics and choice

Gretchen Anderson, Product Design Consultant

10:15 am
10:45 am
10:45 am Engineering

Getting up to speed with Web Performance in 2019

Patrick Meenan, Software Engineer Facebook

10:45 am Design

Humans vs Design at Scale

Inayaili de León, Senior Designer Microsoft

10:45 am Product

2-speed approach for building right software products right

Andrew Gregovic, Senior Software Development Manager Paypal

11:40 am
11:40 am Engineering

HTTP2: The reckoning

Peter Wilson, Senior Engineer Nine Publishing

11:40 am Design

Maturing Design Culture in an Organisation

Aaron Tan, User Experience Design Lead

11:40 am Product

The 4 stages of outcome-driven teams

Sten Pittet, Co-founder & CEO Tability

12:05 pm
12:05 pm Engineering

Random

Lachlan Hunt, Senior Developer Atlassian

12:05 pm Design

Operationalising Research - How Research Ops can help

Benson Low & Brigette Metzler, UX Research Manager, Senior User Researcher REA Group, Australian Government

12:05 pm Product

Getting Your Team to Think like a Product Manager

Jenny Chu, Product Manager Atlassian

12:30 pm
1:30 pm
1:30 pm Engineering

Accessibility: Small Steps for a larger Audience

Sara Soueidan, Front End Developer

1:30 pm Design

Designing for Trust

Katja Forbes, Managing Director, Australia & New Zealand Designit

1:30 pm Product

Turning insights into product

Cheryl Gledhill, Head of Product BlueChilli

2:25 pm
2:25 pm Engineering

Adapting a component library for better adoption

Tim Holt, Front end developer ABC

2:25 pm Design

Design for Security

Serena Chen, Product Designer

2:25 pm Product

The Pragmatic Product Professional

Laura Van Doore, Head of Product Design Fathom

2:50 pm
2:50 pm Engineering

Intl we meet again

Gilmore Davidson, Senior Developer InnoWell

2:50 pm Design

Rock Star Research

Kevin Wilkins, CX Practice Lead Tquila ANZ

2:50 pm Product

OKRs, the good, the bad and the ugly

Nicole Brolan, Chief Product Officer, ANZ SEEK

3:15 pm
3:15 pm Engineering

Things you can do with CSS that used to need JS

Rhiana Heath, Front end Ruby on Rails Developer Blake eLearning

3:15 pm Design

Story-based design

Shane Morris, User Experience Designer and Coach Automatic Studio

3:15 pm Product

Minimising bias to create a well rounded product

Anna Lee Anda, UX Researcher Zendesk

3:45 pm
4:15 pm
sessionTime plenaryName

New Money

Mark Pesce, futurist, author, entrepreneur and innovator futurist, author, entrepreneur and innovator

5:00 pm
7:30 pm

Day 2

  • November 1st
8:30 am
9:00 am
9:15 am
sessionTime plenaryName

Responsive (Clothing) Design

Nina Walia, Experience Design Lead Google Hardware

10:15 am
10:45 am
10:45 am Engineering

Intuitive APIs and Developer Education

Bear Douglas, Director, Developer Relations Slack

10:45 am Design

Customizability in Design Systems

Sarah Federman, Sr Frontend Developer Atlassian

10:45 am Product

A content-first approach to product onboarding

Jonathon Colman, UX content design lead Intercom

11:40 am
11:40 am Engineering

GraphQL and The Web: Thinking beyond the technology

Ben Teese, Software Developer Shine Solutions

11:40 am Design

Design systems are a service: how to keep your customers happy

Alexandra Skougarevskaya, Design Manager Atlassian

11:40 am Product

Don't go changin': The importance of onboarding your users through change

Alison Cooke & Lauren Max, Senior Experience Designer, Experience Design Lead NAB, SportsBet

12:05 pm
12:05 pm Engineering

SOLID JavaScript

Steve Morris, Senior Consultant, Developer ThoughtWorks

12:05 pm Design

Design Systems QA

Various

12:05 pm Product

Storytelling for influence. A how-to guide to influential storytelling

Omar Andrade, Agile coach Boral

12:30 pm
1:30 pm
1:30 pm Engineering

Fun with Sensors and Browser APIs for the web!

Mandy Kerr, Front End Developer & Development Manager Seven West Media (WA)

1:30 pm Design

Bringing Design, Product and Data Scientist together to design intelligent product

Larissa Azevedo, Vice President of Product & Design Hipages

1:30 pm Product

Igniting growth in product teams

Peter Ikladious, Director, Growth IBM

2:25 pm
2:25 pm Engineering

Machine learning in the browser

Ryan Seddon, Front-end Architect Zendesk

2:25 pm Design

Principles of Conversation-led UI

Amy Cleary, Senior Practitioner Symplicit

2:25 pm Product

Growth through long term relationships

Nick Gower Co-founder Mentally Friendly

2:50 pm
2:50 pm Engineering

My voice is my passport. Verify me?

Ben Dechrai, Technical Evangelist Auth0

2:50 pm Design

Creativity and user needs: pushing beyond the obvious solution

Sheree Hannah, Freelance Product Design Lead

2:50 pm Product

The Tree of Up

Anson Parker, Head of Product Up Banking

3:15 pm
3:15 pm Engineering

Strike a pose - Gesture recognition in JavaScript with Machine Learning & Arduino.

Charlie Gerard, Front-end developer Atlassian

3:15 pm Design

Designing the modern call center

Oliver Maruda, Innovation Lead Arq Group

3:15 pm Product

Done is just the beginning

Christian Baker, VP Design & User Experience Local Measure

3:45 pm

Afternoon Break

Need more coffee? Or an increasingly hip tea? We've got you covered, plus a sweet afternoon pick-me-up.

4:15 pm
sessionTime plenaryName

Metaphors we believe by: the pantheon of 2019

Aaron Z Lewis, Cyber Designer

5:00 pm

Find the conference pass for you

Summit + Culture

  • Summit

  • Summit video

  • Culture conference

  • Culture video

  • $1,995 Standard

Summit Silver

  • Summit

  • Summit video

  •  
  •  
  • $1,495 Standard

Summit Classic

  • Summit

  •  
  •  
  •  
  • $1,395 Standard

Summit
Oct 31 & 1 Nov

  • 2 day conference
  • Happy Hour (& ½)
  • Awesome conference coffee
  • Sensational catered breaks
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Summit Videos

  • Captioned, transcribed and annotated video from the Summit. Almost 50 in total
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Culture Conference
30th October

  • 1 day, fully catered
tick to indicate this is included

Culture Videos

  • Captioned, transcribed and annotated video from our Culture conference.
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Find the conference pass for you

Summit + Culture

  • Summit

  • Summit video

  • Culture conference

  • Culture video

  • $1,995 Standard

Register Now

Summit Silver

  • Summit

  • Summit video

  • $1,495 Standard

Register Now

Summit Classic

  • Summit

  • $1,395 Standard

Register Now

Attend together

Teams get more

Send a team of five or more to Summit and get even more. Register with the code team and for just $1195 per team member, you'll each get:

  • A Silver pass for each attendee
  • A licence to the videos from Summit 2019
  • And we'll give your team recognition at the event, on screen and from the stage.

But wait! If you sign up a team of 8 or more, you'll get all this plus:

  • A complementary place at our Culture (taking place the day before Summit), ideal for team leaders.
  • All for the price of a classic ticket to the event. Remember just register with the code team.

    Want to discuss more? Drop us a line at [email protected].

Huge Freelance, Startup and Not for Profit discounts

We strive to make our events as affordable as possible, and so have a limited number of specially priced tickets for Charitable Not For Profits, early stage (pre Round A) startups and freelancers.

If that's you, use the code nfp, startup or freelance to get a silver ticket for just $799.

Not sure if you qualify? Drop us a line, we try to be as generous as possible.

2-for-1 Pricing for Juniors

We know Junior developers and Designers aren't always the first to be sent to events like our conferences (our research shows the median experience of our attendees is around 7 years, so very far from junior.)

But we feel there's as much value for a junior developer or designer (and equally their employer) in attending our events as there is a more senior professional.

So, for 2019, we're doing something to make it easier for juniors to attend Web Directions Summit: Two-for-one pricing for juniors.

If you're keen to get your juniors inspired, excited, and up to date with the latest in their profession, just use the code 'junior' when you register them, and you'll get half price Silver tickets (so they'll get access to all the videos as well).

Masterclass: How to be Clear: The Elements of Content Design with Jonathon Colman

On October 30, the day before Summit, spend a day with Jonathon Colman, content strategist extraordinaire.

Designing content is hard because writing for people is hard. And writing for mobile apps and experiences is even harder still. How do you find the right voice, develop effective principles and standards, and agree with people on what you mean when you say what you say?

This workshop gives you the tools and experiences you need to make content design easier, faster, better, and more manageable in your organization. You’ll leave with the knowledge and frameworks you need to scale your content design across all of your interactive products, websites, and other experiences as your organization grows.

What you’ll learn

Content doesn’t mean “write the words” any more than design means “make it pretty.” When you design content, you‘re creating an experience with words. That’s why this workshop covers:

  • A complete, end-to-end process for approaching content design for websites and apps
  • A process for discovering your organization’s core values—and use them to guide all of your content
  • A model for designing content from high-level principles to standards all the way down to individual terms
  • A way to conduct—and get the most out of—the design critique process so that you can iterate on your work and build strong teams

Who it’s for

This workshop is best for the people who make content happen in your organization: writers, designers, product managers, information architects, and marketers.

When and Where?

The workshop will take place from 9am to 5pm (registration from 8:30am)

The workshop will be held at the Adina Town Hall, 511 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000

Register now

Register for the workshop for just $695, or register for the workshop plus our Summit the following days and save $100s.

Register Now

Our venue

Web Directions Summit 2019 returns to our longtime home, the International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour.

Getting there:

There are numerous public transport options, and parking available on site.

Accommodation:

If you're coming from out of town, there are many hotel and serviced apartment style accomodation options in Darling Harbour, and otherwise close by.

Praise for past Web Directions events

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

Phil Whitehouse,
Innovation Lead DigitasLBi

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

Ethan Marcotte,
inventor "responsive Web design"

Dave Greiner
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 nearly 20 years brought together leading developers, engineers, visual, IxD, UX and product designers, Art and Creative Directors, product managers 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.

vignettes from our events, social, speakers and more. Includes Hannah Donovan skylarking.

John Allsopp

John Allsopp has been working on the Web for nearly 30 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 acclaimed article in 2010 begins by quoting John in detail, and by Jeremy Keith as "a manifesto for anyone working on the Web".

Code of Conduct

For over a decade, we've worked hard to create inclusive, fun, inspring and safe events for the Web Industry.

As part of our commitment to these values, we've adopted a code of conduct for all involved: ourselves, our speakers, our partners and our audience.

If you have any concern or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us.