SmashingConf Freiburg 2019: Videos And Photos

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Rachel Andrew is a web developer, writer and speaker. She is the author of a number of books, including The New CSS Layout. She is one of the people behind the … More about Rachel ↬

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We had a lovely time at SmashingConf Freiburg. In this post, Rachel Andrew wrappes up the event, including links to the video of all of the presentations, so you can relive what you enjoyed — or share in something of what you missed.

We returned to our home in Freiburg for the 2019 SmashingConf, and brought all the SmashingConf fun with us. We’ve wrapped up the event in this post, including links to the video of all of the presentations, so you can relive what you enjoyed — or share in something of what you missed.

Smashing built in lego bricks — ‘Smashing’ in Lego, built by our attendees. (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

The Presentations

Day 1
Day 2

Workshops
Side Activities

Morning Run
Jam Session
Planetarium, Cable Car and Photo Walk

The Presentations

The main focus of the conference is the speakers and the presentations they bring. As with all of our 2019 events, some speakers opted to present without slides. In the tables below, I’ve linked to slides for those talks which had them, plus the video of each presentation. Enjoy two days worth of learning from the comfort of your own couch!

Day One

The Day One Collaborative Doc created by attendees is full of takeaways from the first day of the conference. Rémi Parmentier used our stage to launch his project “Can I Email…?”, a site which aims to do for HTML email what Can I Use does for web platform features.

Speaker Name	Talk Title	Video & Slides
Joe Leech	Designing Powerful Users Experiences With Psychology	Video, Slides
Anna Migas	Effortless Performance Debugging	Video
Uri Shaked and Benjamin Gruenbaum	The Anatomy Of A Click	Video, Slides
Val Head	Designing With Motion	Video, Slides
Rémi Parmentier	Think Like An Email Geek	Video, Slides
Benjamin Hersh	Every Product Has A Voice	Video

Two people on a sofa on stage talking — Vitaly interviews Anna Migas after her talk. (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

Day Two

Check out the Day Two Collaborative Doc for more resources and thoughts from our attendees and speakers.

Our mystery speaker was Seb Lester. No-one managed to guess the theme mystery, although there was a suggestion it might be the panda that was sat on stage!

Mystery revealed. Beautiful and inspiring talk by @SebLester. "Believe in yourself" #smashingconf #mysteryspeaker pic.twitter.com/AqSwkV54cP
— Anna Karon (@anqa_ka) September 10, 2019

We then enjoyed talks covering a wide range of topics from our day two speakers. Our final speaker, Heather, also announced her new book, which she will be publishing through Smashing Books! Heather also wrote up a post in which she shares her thoughts on speaking at Smashing Conf and also answers lots of questions from the audience that she didn’t have time to during the Q&A session.

A woman presenting on stage — Heather Burns Was our final speaker of the day. (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

Speaker Name	Talk Title	Video & Slides
Robyn Larsen	International Is The New Mobile First	Video
Philip Walton	Service Workers For The Rest Of Us	Video
Guillaume Kurkdjian	A Little Advice From An Illustrator And Animator	Video
Sara Soueidan	Applied Accessibility: Practical Tips For Building More Accessible Front-Ends	Video,
Heather Burns	Building Privacy Conscious Products	Video, Slides

A man and woman on stage, the woman behind a lectern — Sara Soueidan being introduced by Vitaly (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

Workshops

Our workshops are a big part of each of our Smashing conferences. In Freiburg, workshops were held the day after the conference. This time round, we saw the following workshops:

Name	Workshop Title
The Deque Team	How To Translate Wireframes Into Accessible HTML and CSS
Sara Soueidan	Accessible UI Patterns
Joe Leech	Psychology For UX And Product Design
Vitaly Friedman	Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns

Spending the day at workshop of accessibility-superhero @SaraSoueidan 🤩 Awesome how much important details you can have during a one workshop. @smashingconf #smashingconf pic.twitter.com/dcfEjTp03n
— Joonas Kallunki (@JKallunki) September 11, 2019

Side Activities

A conference isn’t just about the talks and speakers. We want to make spaces where attendees and speakers can learn from each other and share experiences in a more informal setting. We want to offer something for everyone — from the party-goers to the fitness enthusiasts, and everyone in-between! So at lunchtime, we had lunch sessions: On Day 1, we saw the “Web We Want” panel discussion from Microsoft, and on Day 2, Deque ran a session in which attendees could grab a plate of lunch and settle down in a more cozy environment to take part.

Three women panelists — ‘The Web We Want’ panel (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

We had a great lounge area, with the talks live-streamed where some attendees spent time watching talks and building lego or doing jigsaw puzzles.

Overhead shot of people doing jigsaw puzzles and building lego — Doing puzzles in the lounge (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

We enjoyed all of these things powered by excellent coffee from a barista stand, sponsored by our friends at Honeypot.

Morning Run

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I’m a keen runner, and it’s always nice to have some company on an early morning run. For a few conferences now, we’ve been organizing pre-conference runs — Freiburg was no exception. Runners joined me on both days for 5k along the river — we even avoided the rain.

Jam Session

The Jam Session this time round was hosted by Shopify. Attendees spent time socializing and hearing some lightning talks.

Thanks to our @Shopify and @smashingconf friends for hosting a great jam session tonight!

If you missed @theHarrisius's talk on axe-pro and #a11y, be sure to visit us at our booth or sign-up for the axe-pro beta: https://t.co/ONZgYIRkpA pic.twitter.com/6DsDxI1C1Y
— Deque Systems (@dequesystems) September 8, 2019

The Planetarium, Cable Car And Photo Walk

On the Sunday before the conference, some hardy souls took a trip up the Schauinsland Cable Car. It’s the longest loop cable car in Germany, and everyone had fun despite the weather being less than ideal for views from the top.

Pre @smashingconf cable car ride with some attendees to the top of the #blackforest! #webdaign #webdevelopment @smashingmag pic.twitter.com/OueRuMDAS5
— Scott Whitehead (@scottwhitebread) September 8, 2019

After Day 1, everyone was invited to enjoy a show at the Freiburg Planetarium before heading over to the after-conf party. Our party this year was held at Grünhof Freiburg and sponsored by Speedcurve. Speakers and attendees were able to enjoy time together in the garden there, as the weather had improved from the previous day!

After Day 2, many attendees enjoyed a history photo walk around beautiful Freiburg, learning more about the town and having the chance to take some photos.

Want To Join In The Fun?

We packed a lot into those few days! If you were there, we hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did. It was great to meet so many of you.

Conference attendees throwing balloons — Balloons! (Photo credit: Drew McLellan)

If you would like to be part of the SmashingConf fun next year, we have launched our full schedule of events for next year. You can join us in San Francisco, Freiburg, New York, or our new city of Austin! The conferences this year all sold out well in advance, so if there is an event you have your eye on, grab a ticket at early-bird pricing today!