We had a blast, folks, thank you!
Palladium Theater, St. Petersburg, FL
Two days of talks about front-end design and development in a beautiful city with wonderful people.
We'll learn from folks during the talks and from each other while chatting between them. We'll sprinkle in some treats, and hopefully, there will be plenty of laughter.
A mix of speakers from previous years and some new faces
Stephanie Eckles
Brandon Mitchell
Ben Callahan
James Quick
Elyse Holladay
Cameron Moll
Homer Gaines
Jina Anne
Adam Kuhn
Cassidy Williams
Imagine building your app with accessibility in mind right from the very start, like laying the foundation with bricks. An accessible design system can act as this foundation.
It provides a toolbox with clear instructions, core principles, and ready-made components. By prioritizing accessibility from the start, these systems promote the reusability of inclusive design patterns and ensure consistent, well-tested components. This, in turn, leads to a smoother development process and a more inclusive user experience for all.
Staff UI Engineer and Accessiblity Lead for a start-up. Homer speaks at various conferences, blogs about accessibility, and produces music. His latest album, Diving Through Neon, is available on all major streaming services.
Stephanie Eckles is a Sr. SWE focused on design systems at Microsoft. She's also the author of ModernCSS.dev which provides modern solutions to old CSS problems as in-depth articles, and is the creator of StyleStage.dev, and author of SmolCSS.dev and 11ty.Rocks. Steph has 15+ years of webdev experience that she enjoys sharing as an author, egghead and workshop instructor, Twitch streamer, and conference speaker. She's an advocate for accessibility, scalable CSS, and web standards. Offline, she's mom to two girls and a cowboy corgi and enjoys baking.
Dive into using AI to transform raw ideas into blueprints for Proof of Concepts (PoC), using natural language prompts and divergent thinking. This approach leverages AI's ability to enhance and guide the creative process, helping bridge the gap between good intentions to tangible creation.
Brandon is a dad, developer, and user advocate with 17 years at a dream job at three five two.
When was the last time you shipped something that really felt impactful? We know a design system can be a powerful tool—but “value” and “impact” are difficult to define, quantify, and measure. Struggles with adoption, “convincing the business,” and yes, DS teams getting laid off, point to a challenging reality: we're not delivering the value we say we are.
In this talk, we'll explore the idea of “impact” and how to build a design system that delivers it. We'll look at the role of a design system in the product development process, how to measure its impact, and how to use that data to make the case for investment. We'll also discuss how to build a design system that's not just for looking at, but for making a real difference in your organization.
A technical generalist, Design Systems expert, and builder. 10+ years experience in design, software development, and product management on cross-functional teams, with a focus on Design Systems, at Indeed, RetailMeNot, Square Root (acquired), Bazaarvoice.
James is a JS Developer, Keynote Speaker, and Content Creator whose passion for teaching has impacted hundreds of thousands of developers across the world. With 10+ years of Software Development and Developer Advocacy experience, he brings deep technical knowledge as well as a proven ability to communicate across levels of understanding and experience to impact a broad audience of developers. In his spare time, he runs a thriving Discord community called Learn Build Teach, plays co-ed soccer with his wife, and can solve a Rubik's cube in under a minute.
Time to celebrate! Take some photos together in the photo booth and enjoy the company of your fellow attendees.
Breakfast: 8:30 - 9:30
Talks: 9:30 - 12
Lunch: 12 - 1:30
Talks: 1:30 - 4:30
Partaaay: 6 - 9
Breakfast: 9 - 10
Talks: 10 - 12
Lunch: 12 - 1:30
Talks: 1:30 - 4:30
In this session, Ben Callahan will share the most impactful takeaways from over 18 episodes of his collaborative learning community, The Question.
These days, Ben is spending time researching and writing a book on design systems. He writes and speaks mostly about design systems, culture, and being better humans.
Using Astro, edge functions, and Netlify on-demand builders, Cassidy built (and open sourced!) a new way to share specific private content publicly. In this talk she'll explain how it works, how she built it, and how you can build it too.
Cassidy. is the CTO at Contenda, building Brainstory! She is also a startup advisor and investor, developer experience expert, and meme-maker on the internet. She enjoys building mechanical keyboards, playing music, and teaching in my free time. You should subscribe to her newsletter, or play her word game, Jumblie!
It would be fair to argue that design quality is one of the most important measures of the work we do as front-end practitioners. The problem is nobody seems to know what "design quality" means — or at least we can't seem to agree on exactly what it is and why it matters, making it difficult to measure much less aim for. In this session we'll explore together what design quality should mean, how to prioritize design quality with peers, stakeholders, and executives, and ultimately how to achieve it despite headwinds, confusion, and lack of prioritization for all things "design quality."
Since 1999, Cameron has had the privilege of shipping exceptional user experiences for web, mobile, and other digital platforms. He has led teams ranging in size from 1 to 100+ (including remote employees and contractors) at non-profits, startups, and some of the biggest companies in tech.
One of the age-old questions we hear in our industry is, "Should designers code?" But I want to propose a different question: "Should designers no-code?"
No-code — and other collaborative design and development tools — can not only bridge the gap between design and engineering but get rid of the gap entirely. As a design systems advocate, practitioner, and community builder, I’ll share my thoughts on how the future of digital design can bring our worlds closer together — and how some of that is already here today with tools like Webflow.
Jina is a design systems advocate living in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m a designer who codes and “no-codes.”
Let’s take a look at some emerging animation APIs that allow us to transition content states, transform elements on scroll and impart some much needed surprise & delight without the mountain of Javascript we once reached for. We’ll break down a few practical- and a few wildly impractical- examples and cover some animation fundamentals as we explore some techniques to help keep the web weird.
Adam is a creative frontend dev at Lightning.ai. His frequent creative endeavors and demos have been featured multiple times in the CodePen Spark, Codrops Collective and several other industry newsletters, with printed contributions for Net Magazine, Web Designer Magazine and Creative Bloq as well as apperances across several web development podcasts.
🥁 We don't have to go home, but we can't stay there. For those interested, we'll meet up for some final conversations at a local spot.
Some of the people you'll get to meet! We've asked attendees to share a "yearbook style" message if they want to.
spacer.gif
The best connections were made at front end conf!
Make friends first, make sales second, make love third. In no particular order.
Take only memories, leave only kebab menus.
Stoked to see my FrontEnd Conf Family 😬
CSS flexing my way back into tech!
Love all, trust a few, don’t worry about the CSS — I’ll fix it later
FEDC4Life!
I'm beginning to think this whole web thing isn't just a fad.
Excited to see all my homies :)
Life can be like a webpage without a stylesheet - you gotta add your own style to make it interesting.
Ohh yeah, Class of 2014 is back! Hugs all around! I missed you guys!
Excited this is back
Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.
Shapes, colors, and bacon donuts with all of my old FEDC friends!
Super stoked for that FEDC is back! Always a great time, with a shi!t ton of smart folks.
Life is a lot like debugging code—sometimes you just have to embrace the errors and keep on compiling your journey to success.
Can't stop that feelin'
Stoked to attend and meet everyone! (Less stoked for the cross country flight.)
Here for the donuts and friends.
Voted "most likely to attend every year even when it's no longer relevant to her role."
Whoo hoo!! :)
Front-end is the BEST end
alt="happy web designer in her garden"
Keep calm and querySelectorAll.
[object Object]
First time. Excited to be among other like-minded professionals.
Don't let your dreams be dreams
--debug-mode: deeppink;
Humans > Technology
So happy y'all are back, now when's lunch?
I'm just happy to be here.
What Gene said, or maybe it was Carl. I forget.
Always remember to make the logo bigger. xoxo
Today is a good day to clean your desktop
Just saying, Google has helped me solve more problems than my therapist.
Time for Tampabay's nerds to unite!
There are very few problems that chocolate covered bacon can't solve!
I can't wait for this reunion!
Soda or Pop?
I pretend I can accomplish anything, because my parents never told me I couldn't.
VM175:1 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'quote')
Passionate about savory oatmeal and web accessibility.
Let's enjoy the humanity in code and design before the AI overlords take over.
Compiling aspirations and deploying dreams
It'll be fun to be back at Front-End Conf.
H.A.G.S. aka Have a Great (Design) System
Dux Femina Facti
Think atomically, design molecularly, and build organisms. Great interfaces start small.
All my friends are plugins.
Just an Internet Maker-Upper ready to nerd out at this conf!
Can't wait to see everyone again!
Up front?
Kirsty MacRae
Dylan Almonte
Michele Cynowicz
Brandon Brown
Gregory Keener
Christy Durity
Franco Perez
Vivien Lemoine
Anna Gernandt
Jessica Gray
Charlotte Koh
Mckenna Martin
Valerie Yeltman
Robert Lockridge
Nicholas Stees
Brandon Simanteris
Mark Lair
Roy Dacke
Jacob Lynn
Dan Lynn
Jeff McNabb
Xiaoli Tao
Chi Cui
Samael Aponte
I never get lost. Because I always find the right path.
Keaton Moore
Always design with <style>, just don't make everything too !important.
Samantha Pitts
Console of Life
Paige Helms
Ellison Manley
Jeremy Lawson
Patrick Fulton
Charlton Trezevant
Jose Vazquez
this should be interesting
Jason Valle
I'm here to design and party and I don't know how to design
Jeffrey Pereira
UI > BE
Nicolino Carmosino
Jennifer Calderone
Matt Smiley
Jacqueline Thomas
Just traversing through the algorithms of life!
Clavel Macias
2024 is special because the conf has been on a hiatus since the pandemic and the original founders (Dan and Cherrie) are picking it back up. There's a theme of a "reunion", but we're hoping to make lots of new friends as well.
Join us for two days of learning, inspiration, and socializing!
Interested in sponsoring? We have some options and can chat through what could work for you.
Are you a student? Email dan@frontenddesignconference.com for a discounted ticket.
253 Fifth Ave. N, St. Petersburg, FL 33701
The theater is located in downtown St. Petersburg, a short walk from Beach drive or Central Ave. The city is gorgeous and full of fantastic restaurants and bars, museums, and parks. We'll share some of our favorite spots closer to the event!
