Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Showing our design systems friends some love

In keeping with our goal of creating the most comprehensive, in-depth conference for product professionals in the world, there’s a brand new track at Web Directions Summit this year! Your own design system track Design Systems: 2 days of all things design systems, designops and design engineering, covering everything you need to build a the […]

The impact of Generative AI at Web Directions Summit

Generative AI: we believe no-one on the product team can ignore this right now–Devs, content people, product managers, UX designers, growth team. So here’s how we’ll help you get up to speed, cut through the crap, and sort out what you need to do next. These 10 Web Directions Summit sessions (amongst dozens of other […]

Upping your content game at Web Directions Summit

Content is the heart of pretty much every user experience, every app or site. So last year we started a brand new content strategy and design focussed track at Web Directions Summit, and this year we’re taking it up a notch, with these incredible sessions. 💡Best Practice AI Explainability for Content Strategists | Emily Meller & Aden Rolfe💡Content […]

How and why we rebooted Web Directions Summit

Before we start, this post was prompted by the design reboot we’ve just done of the site for our upcoming Web Directions Summit–and the launch of the full, and frankly amazing, 7 track conference program, with brand new track covering product and growth marketing and design systems, alongside product design, front end engineering (two tracks […]

the UX of AI–the future isn’t going to send you an invite. It’ll crash your party

Famed science fiction writer (and straight up visionary) Arthur C Clarke (author of 2001 a Space Odyssey among many many novels and short stories, as well the originator of the idea of geo stationary communications satellites and the lunar lander) postulated three ‘laws’ (or better put ‘adages’). The third you have almost certainly heard–’Any sufficiently […]

An AI roundup ahead of Web Directions AI

This week we announced our keynote speakers for Web Directions Summit–a truly stellar lineup, and of course with a strong focus on how AI will impact the Web, and practices like engineering and design. And with a week to go until our AI conference (full lineup here)–use the code ‘wdai’ to pay just $395, or […]

Our Web Directions Summit 2023 Keynote speakers

Choosing keynote speakers is among the most engaging, and daunting, parts of putting together our conferences. Once a year we have the challenge of finding speakers who will capture the sprit of what is important now, and help point our diverse audience toward what comes next. Now, there is no shortage of “thought leaders” and […]

Some weekend reading, the chatbots are the worst edition

I’ve mentioned before that I spend a lot of my time trying to keep up with developments in technology, particularly around web development technologies and practices. I capture links to articles as I read (there’s many dozens of specialist sites in my RSS feed), and then every few days go back to this ever growing […]

Evolution and teleology as models of innovation

Generative AI is currently dominating tech (and broader) conversations unlike just about anything I’ve seen in 40 or more years immersed in technology. Some of the smartest folks I know, often with decades of experience, are enthused in a way people with decades of experience rarely are. Include me as one of them (the enthused […]

Web Directions AI–an ’emergency’ conference

I’ve been doing technology stuff for well over 40 years. As a hobbyist, a student and then professionally for a long time now. I’ve seen many fads and trends (and a few things that have been the real deal) come and go.  As a teenager I saw the emergence of micro-computing (that’s what they’re called before […]

The death the Web continues to be greatly exaggerated

In 2010, Wired Magazine published one of its periodically famous mis-takes (older folks will remember the 1997 “Pray” cover predicting Apple’s imminent demise, and even older folks their prediction that push technologies would kill off the web–”kiss your browser goodbye“). In 2010 it was not Apple that was dying, rather the web was already dead! […]

Random web reading for this week

Some weeks my notebook of links to share fills up, other weeks seem slower–like this one, though I could have sworn I read as much or more than usual. So just a handful of links this week, but all high value. Conditional CSS with :has and :nth-last-child Ahmad Shaheed is one of our favourite CSS […]

Keeping up with an ever changing web

Let’s set the effective starting date of the Web as 1993 and the release of Mosaic, the first graphical browser that gained any sort of widespread adoption. 30 years. A lifetime ago or more for many, though I remember it well. What was the technology landscape at the time? Windows dominated the consumer computing landscape […]

(re)introducing Web Directions AI

TL;DR; Today we’re announcing Web Directions AI A 1 day event focussing exploring the technologies, opportunities & impact of generative AI, taking place in Sydney, July 21st. It’s amazing value already (early bird tickets are just $395), but if you get a gold or silver ticket for Web Directions Summit by June 30th we’ll give you a free ticket […]

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I had an absolute blast, learnt so much, and met so many great people

Carmen Chung Software engineer, Valiant Finance