In these strange times when everything is connected, it’s too easy to feel lonely and detached. Yes, everybody is just one message away, but there is always something in the way — deadlines to meet, Slack messages to reply, or urgent PRs to review. Connections need time and space to grow, just like learning, and conferences are a great way to find that time and that space.

In fact, with SmashingConfs, we’ve always been trying to create such friendly and inclusive spaces. Places where like-minded folks could build lasting friendships, learn new skills and share their insights. These things often happen unexpectedly: when you run into an old friend, or spark a random conversation around a coffee machine. Well, in a physical world, that is.

Online is different. We often think that it’s a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be. For SmashingConf Live, our new online conference, we don’t want to replicate in-person experiences online. Instead, we’ve designed an entirely new conference experience, focusing around interactive live sessions and discussion zones where you actively shape what happens next, and learn along the way. Jump to speakers & topics.

What’s SmashingConf Live Like?

With SmashingConf Live (June 9–10), we aim to bring all the valuable bits and pieces of a conference to your fingertips. That means practical, hands-on sessions on front-end & UX, easy access to speakers and a friendly, approachable community.

We know that staying in front of the screen for a long time is difficult, so instead of two full days, we break the entire conference into two half days, with enough time for a short break, friendly chats, coffee refills and checking in with your family. Plus enough time to double-check the slides and video recordings at your own time and pace.

SmashingConf has always been a single-track experience, and SmashingConf Live is no exception. However, during the breaks you can jump between plenty of activities in discussion zones. You might meet old and new friends there, and we’ve also invited experts to run short sessions and answer your questions. So if you spot somebody familiar, that might not be a coincidence!

That’s just a start though. In interactive, live sessions you take the driver’s seat, shaping the direction of the sessions as they are happening. You bring up topics and challenges that you’d love to address, and we’ll promote them on stage, so experts (and the entire community) can answer them either live or in the Q&A afterwards.

Not enough? You can also wander between rooms with mystery guests, drop by a front-end & UX job board, crack design & coding challenges, and ask for a live audit of your site or app. We provide live captioning in English as well. That’s SmashingConf Live.

What Do You Get From It?

So what is SmashingConf Live in a nutshell?

• A friendly online conference.
  Focused on practical insights in front-end & UX. June 9–10, two half-days, each 4.5h long. Check the timing.
• A diverse, kind global community.
  We embrace our code of conduct.
• Interactive, live sessions.
  You take a driver’s seat and shape sessions with speakers, live.
• Single-track with discussion zones (details).
  Attend mini-sessions with experts during breaks.
• Easy access to experts.
  Ask your questions during the Q&A and in discussion zones.
• All video recordings and slides.
  Rewatch a session if you missed it.
• Collaborative note-taking (details).
  For everyone to put together notes in a single place.
• Live site/app audits and challenges.
  Ask experts for a live audit of your project.
• Online workshops before & after the event (details).
  Accessibility, performance, front-end and UX.
• Live captioning.
  You can always turn on subtitles to follow along.
• Get early-birds-tickets!
  Save $50 off the regular price. Only 100 tickets are available.

Approachable, Friendly Speakers

With every session, we want you to take away insights that you can apply to your work immediately. That’s why all sessions are designed to be highly practical — be it techniques to improve your workflow, craft a better front-end, or architecting a better design system.

First confirmed speakers and topics are:

• Sarah Drasner (Netlify)
  JavaScript, Vue.js
• Josh Clark (Big Medium)
  Machine Learning, UX
• Brad Frost (Atomic Design)
  Design Systems, Workflow
• Chris Coyier (CSS Tricks)
  Front-End
• Dan Mall (SuperFriendly)
  Design, Workflow
• Nadieh Bremer
  Data Visualization
• Harry Roberts (CSSWizardry)
  Web Performance
• More sessions on accessibility, CSS/JavaScript, design & UX, HTML email, internationalization and many others.

We’re happy to welcome our truly smashing hosts Cassidy Williams and Phil Hawksworth to MC the conference. And you’ll find Rachel Andrew, Paul Boag, Monica Dinculescu, Martin Splitt along with dozens of other experts in discussion zones. More speakers and guests will be announced soon!

All speakers are friendly and approachable, so please don’t hesitate to bring up topics or issues that are most relevant to you. Speakers will also be available in breakout rooms, so you can always ask questions before and after their sessions.

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Interactive, Live Sessions With You

We didn’t want to have pre-recorded sessions, and instead looked into creating a truly engaging, interactive experience. We’ve encouraged speakers to find their own way of interacting with the audience, and mix lecture with interactive bits.

You can help speakers evolve the session as it happens, and bring up topics that are most relevant to you. So every session is unique, because you actually shape it with the speaker on stage — that’s also why we call it Live.

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Discussion Zones With Experts

Apart from speakers, we’ve also invited well-respected experts to join the discussion zones with Q&A and short workshops. That’s your opportunity to ask pretty much anything, with speakers sharing their screen and answering your questions in detail.

In each discussion zone, we’ll have changing topics and moderators for each day, exploring obscure techniques, strategies, tooling and whatever questions and challenges you bring up!

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How Does It Work?

For the conference experience, we’re using Hopin. It turned out to be the best option in terms of quality, reliability and accessibility, with reception and networking area, sponsor booths and breakout rooms.

No installation needed: jump right into the conference with a click on a link. Just make sure to say hello in the chat to all the friendly people around once you’ve joined! 👋👋🏼👋🏾

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Timings Around The World

• CityTime
• San Francisco, USA 🇺🇸8AM–2PM
• New York, USA 🇺🇸11AM–4PM
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 🇧🇷12PM–5PM
• London, UK 🇬🇧4PM–9PM
• Antwerp, Belgium 🍫5PM–10PM
• Kyiv, Ukraine 🇺🇦6PM–11PM
• Mumbai, India 🇮🇳8:30PM–1:30AM
• Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺11PM–5AM

Collaborative Note-Taking

Many attendees take notes of the main takeaways from each session. Yet sometimes these notes miss important URLs or key details. With collaborative Google docs, attendees can take notes, thoughts, resources, tips and questions together, while also documenting answers or adding relevant details to the doc.

It’s magical to see people correcting each other’s typos and helping in those docs, or sometimes even resolving discussion within a matter of minutes if somebody spotted an error or a wrong URL. As a result, by the end of the session, you’ll have a comprehensive report of all insights from the session that you can bring back to your team right away.

Chat and Connect In Slack

Building connections matters, and while a conference is often a great place to kindle conversations, they can easily fade away just a few days after the event. We’ll use a Slack channel for you to connect before, during and after the conference. So you can jump between rooms being sure that you stay in touch with your friends. Won’t be that easy to get lost after all!

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Slides and Recordings

Inclusivity lies at the very heart of every SmashingConf. So for the SmashingConf Live, we’ll provide full captioning in English language, so you can always turn on subtitles to follow along.

And no worries at all if you missed a session or two: you can always rewatch it later at your own time, at your own pace. We’ll collect all slides and video recordings and make them available to you as well.

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Meet Our Partners And Local Meet-Ups

You can drop by our sponsors and partners to learn about their products and services, but also attend their demos and ask them questions. We’ve also invited local communities from around the world to present themselves during the break sessions, so you can connect with global and local communities as well.

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Meet Tobi, Our Conference DJ

Of course the conference is all about learning and connecting, but a friendly and fun experience is a part of every SmashingConf, too. So you are likely to notice our conference DJ Tobi Baldower playing in the breaks. Tobi always pours his soul and heart into creating a truly memorable experience for everyone, so please drop by and say hello! 😉

Find All The Cats!

Are you ready for a lil’ riddle? We’ll hide a few cats in different rooms at different times, so try your luck to spot all of them! Expect a scavenger hunt and a quiz trivia show!

Also, we’ll be working on challenges and group projects together. If that’s not a great chance to meet attendees, learn along the way and win some prizes, what is?

Community Matters ❤️

With SmashingConf Live, we aim for a warm, authentic family atmosphere. We are very, very excited, ad we want to take on this journey with you, and see what a truly smashing conference experience could be like!

We’d be happy to stumble upon you when mingling between or during the sessions! And perhaps meet old and new friends from all over the world in one place — that’s something not every in-person conference can achieve. We’re still working on the final bits and pieces, and we’ll have some exciting updates coming your way soon 😉

Stay smashing, meow and thank you for your ongoing support, everyone!