Day 1

  • October 26th
  • 9am–6:30pm AEST
8:00am
8:00am housekeeping

Registration

Get the world's best conference coffee (espresso, filter, cold brew and more), and register for two big days of amazing speakers.

9:00am
9:00am housekeeping

Welcome

Welcome to, or welcome back to, our biggest Web Directions Summit ever!

09:15am
09:15 keynote

The Mediated Web

Rupert Manfredi Designer Adept

10:15am
10:15am housekeeping

Morning Break

Fuel your morning with an excellent coffee, and morning tea we've specially chosen to pick-you-up.

11:00am

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

11:00 Design, front end, design systems

The Dawn of Design Engineering: A New Era of Collaboration

Adekunle Oduye Design Engineer, Tech Lead Plaid

11:00 Marketing

Choosing the Right Strategy for Product Growth

Mags Hanley Digital Strategy Consultant

11:00 Content

Grow Your Content Career

Shannon Leahy Senior Content Design Manager Adobe

11:00 React

Architecture Patterns for App Modernisation

Simon Wardan Principal Engineer Terem

11:00 Product Management

Equitable Algorithms: Designing AI for Positive Impact

Aubrey Blanche-Sarellano CEO The Mathpath

11:35am

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

11:35 Product Design

Dear Designer... Sincerely, the Development Team

Jo Minney Nerd in Charge House Digital

11:35 Engineering

Whose Job is Animation?

Matt Colman Engineering Manager Atlassian

11:35 Design Systems

The Who, When, Why, and What of Design Systems

Johanna Lynch Senior UX/UI Designer Pragma Partners

11:35 Marketing

Strategies for Elevating Annual Contract Values

Christopher Truce Advisor

11:35 Content

Content Strategy as Sensemaking

McGee Noble Content Strategist Weave

11:35 React

Why Would Anyone Need JavaScript Generators?

James Sinclair Senior Developer Atlassian

11:35 Product Management

The Art of Product Discovery

Mark Boehm Head of Design and Strategy Palo IT

12:15pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

12:15 Product Design

Brand UX: The Power of Experience

Michal Golas & Lucila Tallone Product Designer & Founding Partner, Product Designer takemedia digital, Bilue

12:15 Engineering

What's New in CSS in 2023

Steve Harrison Senior Front End Developer NSW Department of Customer Service

12:15 Design Systems

Permaculture Design Systems for a Digital Landscape

Mick Real Designer & Creative

12:15 Marketing

Making better marketing decisions in a privacy first world

Will Marks, Marketing Science Director Mutinex

12:15 Content

Content Strategy for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Audiences

Carrie DeHaan Principal Content strategist Biotext

12:15 React

Exploring the Event Loop

Ikram Saedi Software Engineer Stile Education

12:15 Product Management

Customer Interviews & Storytelling for Innovation

Amanda Brown Product Manager Pretzel Lab

12:45pm
12:45pm housekeeping

Lunch

We've always got something special lined up for lunch. Visit our partners, connect in the games room, or reset in the quiet area.

2:00pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

2:00pm Product Design

Five Fundamental Principles of Inclusive Research

Bri Norton & Irith Williams OZeWAI.org - Australian Web Accessibility Initiative

2:00pm Engineering

How the Web can still win on mobile

Alex Moore Executive Director Open Web Advocacy

2:00pm Design Systems

Measuring the Value of REA's Design System

Chris Stonestreet Product Manager, Design System REA Group

2:00pm Marketing

Out of the Marketing Wilderness: A CEO’s Journey

Anna Harrison Founder RAMMP

2:00pm Content

Put yourself in a box: Delivering humanity via email

Mathew Patterson Customer Service Educator Help Scout

2:00pm React

Hooked on Hooks

Erin Zimmer Senior Developer Atlassian

2:00pm Product Management

Defining a New Product Vision for Australia's National Broadcaster

Tim Hardaker Group Product Manager, Product Futures ABC

2:35pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

2:35pm Product Design

Microaggressions and Microaffirmations in Product Design

Laura Kerrison Product Designer RUSH

2:35pm Engineering

Taking advantage of AI to help you write code

Lachlan Hunt Senior Developer Atlassian

2:35pm Design Systems

From a Prehistoric Beast to a Modern Day Product Enterprise

Amir Ansari Design Leader and Coach

2:35pm Marketing

How Gamers Have Turned the Tables on Brand Trust

David O'Reilly Lifecycle Marketing Manager Microsoft

2:35pm Content

Sweat the Small Stuff

Lorien Kaye Content Designer and Strategist Weave

2:35pm React

How Server Components Change The Game Using Old Ideas

Julian Burr Engineering Lead Vouch

2:35pm Product Management

Radical Collaboration: How to Supercharge What Your Team can Achieve

Natalie Ferguson Co-Founder Powrsuit

3:10pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

3:10pm Product Design

Annotating Designs for Accessibility

Sam Hobson & Claire Webber, Digital Accessibility Consultants Intopia

3:10pm Engineering

WebML: State of Machine Learning for Frontend Developers

Shivay Lamba Software Developer TensorFlowJS SIG and WG Lead

3:10pm Design Systems

Unspoken Value of Design Systems

Emily Pearce Product Design Manager Octopus Deploy

3:10pm Marketing

Last minute cancellation

3:10pm Content

Power up Your Content Strategy with Experience Maps

Mary Sabotkoski Senior Content Strategist Canva

3:10pm React

React Server Components in Next.js

Richard Zhang Sales Engineer Vercel

3:10pm Product Management

Visionary Product Leadership

Viveka Weiley Meta-scientist CSIRO

3:40pm
3:50pm housekeeping

Afternoon Break

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

4:10pm
4:10pm keynote

The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI

Maggie Appleton Product Designer Ought

5:00pm
5:00pm housekeeping

Happy Hour (and a half)

Share a drink, a bite, and a chat with your peers, right here at the venue.

Day 2

  • October 27th
  • 9am–5:00pm AEST
8:30am
8:30am housekeeping

Rebooting…

Get your heart started for another day of amazingness, with the best coffee you'll find at any conference, anywhere

9:00am
9:00am housekeeping

Welcome back

Welcome back for another in-depth day of amazing presentations

09:10
09:10am keynote

Steam Engine Time

Mark Pesce Broadcaster and futurist

10:00am
10:00am housekeeping

Morning Break

Fuel your morning with an excellent coffee, and morning tea we've specially chosen to pick-you-up.

11:00am

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

11:00am Product Design

Design + AI = Good or Bad?

MC Monsalve & Phil Banks, Product Design Team Lead, Design Lead - ABC iview ABC

11:00am Engineering

The Soul of a New Application

Alex Danilo Founder Projectadoc

11:00am Design Systems

Pursuing Design Quality

Jina Anne Design Systems Advocate Design Systems Coalition

11:00am Marketing

Leveraging the B2C Experience for B2B SaaS Startups

Irina Smolina Tech Marketer Lentune

11:00am Content

How to Prevent Content Crimes

Scott Collins Content Design Manager Telstra

11:00am React

Understanding and Mitigating Third Party JS Risks

Dominic Lovell Head of Solution Engineering, ANZ Akamai Technologies

11:00am Product Management

When and How to Build Machine Learning into Your Product

Karla Belista Group Product Manager Playground XYZ

11:35am

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

11:35am Product Design

Experimenting with AI at the ABC

Anna Dixon Senior Service Designer ABC

11:35am Engineering

Web Components: Another Tool in your Toolbox

Ben Taylor Staff Software Engineer Stile Education

11:35am Design Systems

Mapping Typography

Scott Kellum Founder Typetura

11:35am Marketing

Achieving growth through a hybrid product-led and sales-led GTM

Peter Ikladious Co-founder; Principal Unlocking Growth

11:35am Content

Content Strategy is Dead, Long Live Content Strategy

Tori Sanderson General Manager of Product, Content and Experience Design Pragma Partners

11:35am React

It is WWW (Is it though?)

Armağan Ersöz Software Engineer GitHub

11:35am Product Management

Bringing AI Magic to Canva

Ivy Hornibrook Product Lead, Magic Design Canva

12:15pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

12:10pm Product Design

Conversational AI Has a Massive, UX-Shaped Hole

Peter Isaacs Senior Conversation Design Advocate Voiceflow

12:10pm Engineering

CSS Between the Pages

Phil Nash Developer Advocate Sonar

12:10pm Design Systems

Evolving the Australian Government Design System

Jordan Overbye Senior Engineer Department of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry

12:10pm Marketing

The Marketer's Guide to Behavioural Economics

Julian Peterson Managing Director APAC Dianomi

12:10pm Content

Building Community in a Content Team

Beatrix Holland Content Design Manager Indeed

12:10pm React

Adventures in Rendering Off the Main Thread

Simon MacDonald Head of Developer Experience Begin Corp

12:10pm Product Management

The Product Manager's Guide to Navigating Corporate Politics

Carl Rigoni CEO and Founder sixsix

12:40pm
12:40pm housekeeping

Lunch

Like everything else we do, expect the best conference food you'll have anywhere, and plenty of it.

2:00pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

2:00pm Product Design

Feedback Fortitude: Designing Success in High-Stakes Scenarios

Carolyn Wilkinson Design Leader Australian Government

2:00pm Engineering

Breaking up Long Tasks

Nishu Goel ePilot Full Stack Engineer

2:00pm Design Systems

Baking Accessibility into Your Design System

Simon Mateljan Design Manager Atlassian

2:00pm Marketing

Growth Hacking with Heart: Applying Behavioural Science Ethically for More Impact

Vidhika Bansal Group Design Manager Intuit

2:00pm Content

How Embracing Complexity Can Deliver Award-Winning Content

Kylie Evans Director & Principal Content Developer Biotext

2:00pm React

Building Type-Safe Forms in React

Brendan Allan Software Engineer Spacedrive

2:00pm Product Management

Scale Your Product Career with Mentoring

Justin Farrell Lead Product Manager VMware Tanzu Labs

2:35pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

2:35pm Product Design

Defending design: writing to influence

Matt Fenwick Communication strategist True North Nontent

2:35pm Engineering

Fantastic Load-Time Savings and Where to Find Them

Quynh-Chi Nguyen Staff Software Engineer Stile Education

2:35pm Design Systems

WCAG 2.2 - What it Means for Designers

Julie Grundy & Zoë Haughton Senior Digital Accessibility Consultants Intopia

2:35pm Marketing

Handle Chaos and Scale Your Growth Experiments

Terence Huynh Software Engineer, Growth Atlassian

2:35pm Content

Best Practice AI Explainability for Content Strategists

Emily Meller & Aden Rolfe Content Strategists Craig Walker

2:35pm React

TypeScript Utilities Every Developer Should Know About

Meligy Senior Tech Lead Telstra Purple

2:35pm Product Management

How to Develop and Use a Customer Journey Framework

Stefan Schroeder Head of Experience Cbus Super

3:10pm

Design

Front End Dev

Design Systems

Marketing

Content

React

Product

3:10pm Product Design

Designer to CEO – The Path Less Travelled

Ross Chaldecott Co-Founder and CEO Kinde

3:10pm React, Engineering

Frontend's Lost Decade & The Market for Lemons

Alex Russell Partner Product Manager Microsoft

3:10pm Design Systems

Closing Panel

Design systems speakers

3:10pm Marketing

Dark Patterns and How to Avoid Them

Kate Linton Head of Design Thoughtworks

3:10pm Content

The state of content conversation

Content track speakers

3:10pm React, Engineering

Frontend's Lost Decade & The Market for Lemons

Alex Russell Partner Product Manager Microsoft

3:10pm Product Management

Building Principles-Driven Product Culture

Simon Hilton Director of Product Karbon

3:40pm
3:40pm housekeeping

Afternoon Break

Need more coffee? We've got you covered, plus an awesome surprise sweet afternoon treat.

4:10pm
4:10pm keynote

All the Things That Seem to Matter

Tea Uglow Director Dark Swan Institute

5:00pm
5:00pm housekeeping

Farewell

Farewell, but hopefully for not too long after two days filled with learning, connection and inspiration.

Partner with us

We work closely with our partners and their technologies to deliver world leading online conferences. Contact us for more on how we work can work with you to help you be even more awesome.

Key Partners

Vercel logo
Icon Agency + Platform.sh logo
Intopia
RAMMP logo
People-loop logo
Mantel Group
Portait of John Allsopp.

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 and X-Ray, and his ideas formed the foundation for Typekit, now Adobe Fonts, and the entire concept of Responsive Web Design. He's spoken at numerous conferences around the World and delivered dozens of workshops in that time as well.

His writing includes several 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".

John brings his deep knowledge of and passion for the web and all things digital to every aspect of Web Directions.

About Us

Co-founded and now run by John Allsopp, Web Directions has for nearly 2 decades 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.

Our annual extravaganza, Web Directions Summit returns to Sydney in October 2023, bigger and better than ever.

Crowd at a conference.

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.