Useful Talks And Videos From Web Design Conferences

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Inspiration, Design, Events, Videos, Conferences
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Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing, he’s most probably running front-end & UX … More about Vitaly ↬

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More and more conferences are turning to video to capture their events to not only preserve the experience, but to pass it on to those who could not attend. We have gathered some inspiring resources and conference talks in this post, just in case you missed them or needed the refresher.

As a Web professional, you can get great inspiration from a good conference session. While conferences may not bring value to all industries, the Web industry is stacked high with inspirational experts and quiet little geniuses beavering away from small home offices. A good Web conference shines a light on these clever souls and promotes professional growth and shared knowledge.

The number of conferences surrounding the Web design and development field continues to grow as new processes, techniques and other shared experiences, turned learning opportunities, are always presenting themselves throughout the industry. The problem becomes, with so many conferences that are out of reach for one reason or another, how does one catch the highlights from the conference that won’t fit into a 140 character tweet?

Luckily, more and more conferences are turning to video to capture their events to not only preserve the experience, but to pass it on to those who could not attend. So there are more chances than ever for Web professionals to stay abreast of all the latest industry talks and tips even when they can’t make it to a particular conference in person. We have gathered some inspiring resources and conference talks in this post, just in case you missed them or needed the refresher.

Bringing The Conferences To You

As a conference organiser, getting the word out about a conference can be as difficult as it is important. Lanyrd is great for the social element, and Eventbrite is a no-brainer as the ticket gateway. But what about after the event?

How do you reach the audience that you missed initially? How do you effectively expand the reach of your conference’s most poignant and potent talks? A number of sites have sprung up collating all of this wonderful content. Each with their own take on curating a library of conference videos.

Organized Wonder

Organized Wonder is a true oasis to find great content. The platform lets you discover the best talks, documentaries, interviews, short films and various other videos across the Web, and you can follow people you admire and share the content you value with others.

Taking a community/social approach to curated conference video, users are able to post video and receive followers, much like Twitter. Organized Wonder is the brainchild of Sawyer Hollenshead and features not only conference video, but also interviews and documentaries relevant to the Web industry.

David McCandless - The Beauty Of Data Visualization

Frank Chimero - Do Things The Long, Hard, Stupid Way
Craig Mod - Nourishing Habits For Nourishing Design
Jeremy Keith - All Our Yesterdays
Saron Ann Lee - Redesigning Success
Rich Hickey - Simplicity Matters

Ontwik.com

Conceived by Ahmed Al-Ajmi, Ontwik is a curated library with content being pulled in via YouTube and Vimeo. The sessions on Ontwik tend to be development related with a large number of JavaScript sessions.

Ontwik has a comments feature so users can interact with other viewers and like the other video libraries, Ontwik has featured content on the front page.

Paul Irish - Javascript Development Workflow Of 2013

Techpresentations.org

Techpresentations takes a different approach to collating conference video. It’s basically a wiki of technical presentations on various topics. Users can contribute to the site and there are feeds for upcoming events and calls for papers. The site doesn’t actually have conference video, but links to various conference sites. However, the Website’s conference listing is not very comprehensive.

Tim O’Reilly - Keynote Of OSCON 2012

TED Tech Talks

TED tech talks is a great place to go if you are looking for inspiration and future ideas from brilliant people from around the world. Browse the best talks and performances from TED conferences, TEDx and partner events, by subject, length, or rating. You can also check out TED’s What’s Next in Tech theme.

Evan Williams - On Listening To Twitter Users

Creative Mornings Videos

Creative Mornings is a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types. All events are free of charge, include a 20 minutes talk, and are hosted in cities all over the world.

Kelli Anderson - About Design, Physics and Apple Pie

Besquare

Besquare is meant to be resource for designers and developers to watch inspirational content when they have the spare time. At present, the content is being pulled in from Vimeo and YouTube. Future content will be hosted directly with Besquare. Plenty of useful features are planned to be rolled out to the site, including streaming of live events and speaker profile pages.

Ethan Marcotte - A Dao Of Flexibility

Josh Brewer - Design Is About Relationships
Jeffrey Zeldman - Interview
Wilson Miner - When We Build
Matthew Smith and Jamin Jantz - Switch: From Freelance To Entrepreneur

Do Lectures

DoLectures. Do Lectures is based on the simple idea that people who do things can inspire the rest of us to go and do things, too. Each year a set of people is invited to come to Do Lectures in Wales, UK and tell what they do. Small Do’s, big Do’s or extraordinary Do’s - definitely all of them are inspiring talks from people who want to change the world.

James Bridle - So What Does The Future Of The Book Look Like In A World Gone Digital?

Shira Lazar - Breaking Barriers
Mike Beeston - How To Read The Digital Tea Leaves
David Hieatt - How Love, Luck And Ideas Got A Town Making Jeans Again?
Mickey Smith - Do Trust In The Things You Love

Confreaks

Confreaks. Confreaks records conferences, seminars and workshops. The Website features the five most recent conferences, and the top five most viewed videos of the last seven days, the last 30 days, and all time.

Aaron Patterson - Rails 4 And The Future Of Web

TYPO International Design Talks

TYPO Video Portal lets you watch talks from innovative designers, professors, marketing experts, scientists, artists, journalists and many more who speak at Typo Conference in London, Berlin or San Francisco, where they present and discuss diverse approaches in the fields of communication and design.

Tina Roth Eisenberg - The Power Of Side Projects And Eccentric Aunts

Tina Roth Eisenberg - The Power Of Side Projects Anfigure Eccentric Aunts

MAD 2011 Conference Talks

MADinSpain is a Spain based international design event, hosted by the Spanish-speaking online community Domestika. Once a year, some of the best creative designers and agencies gather together in Madrid to share their insights and breathe creativity.

Matt Lambert - Motion Graphics,CGI, And Other Story Telling Elements

Matt Lambert - Motion Graphics And Other Story Telling Elements

JS Conf EU

JSConf EU JSConf EU events are described as intense, informative, challenging, even exclusive to a certain degree, but above all they’re fun. The JSConf EU 2012 had some of the talks take place in an inflatable transparent plastic bubble.

Michael Bebenita and Shu-yu Guo - Low Level JavaScript

Beyond Tellerrand Conference Videos

Beyond Tellerrand is an affordable three-day event with intensive workshops and high-quality talks for Web enthusiasts about design, technology, inspiration and networking.

Des Traynor - Creating Dashboards And Data Visualizations That Resonate

WebShaped Conference Videos

Finland’s only frontend conference, Webshaped is a one-day event bringing together design and development.

Dan Eden - Moving The Web

The Thinking Digital Conference’s Videos

Thinking Digital is a three-day event, in an intimate and informal setting, with speakers from the worlds of technology, media, science, industry and the arts. While it has a much broader topic range than just Web industries, Thinking Digital delivers great talks for designer and developers, too.

Cameron Moll - The Burden Of Being Creative

An Event Apart Videos

An Event Apart is an intensely educational two-day learning session for passionate practitioners of standards-based Web design. They present a wide diversity of Web-related talks. Some of the great minds in our industry discuss the newest developments and techniques.

Jeff Veen - How Web Works

Jared Spool - Anatomy Of A Design Decision
Kristina Halvorson - Message And Medium: Better Content By Design
Like Wroblewski - Mobile First!
Dan Cederholm - The CSS3 Experience
Jeremy Keith - The Essence Of Interactivity

5D Immersive Conference Videos

As today’s digital technology blurs the boundaries between design, environment and storytelling, 5D explores our common goal of shaping immersive experiences through creative world-building. These videos are not focused on Web design and more on design in general.

Gore Verbinski - Reality And Hyper Reality

JavaZone Conference Videos

JavaZone is one of Scandinavia’s biggest meeting places for software developers. JavaZone has been described as a high-quality, independent conference, and is a forum for knowledge exchange, recruitment and branding. As the name implies this conference focuses on the development side of design. Here be code!

Jonas Bonér - Up, Up And Up: Scaling Software With Akka 2

Øredev Conference Videos

Øredev Developer Conference in Malmö, Sweden, is another Web development-oriented conference focusing on subjects such as Java, .Net, Project Management, Web development and Testing.

Some Of The Talks from 2011 You Can Catch Up On

Jon Moore - Hypermedia APIs

JSConf 2012

JSConffocuses on two things, presenting mind-altering JavaScript technology during the daytime and providing exceptional “networking” parties during the evenings. One of the key differentiators about JSConf is that it is put on by a (crazy) group of JavaScript developers just like you.

James Whelton - Changing The World One Coderdojo At A Time

Avni Khatri And Chris Williams - Diversity In Computing
Christopher Chedeau - JSPP. Morph C++ Into JavaScript
Brian McKenna - Roy
Nikolai Onken - The Bikeshed Initiative
Jake Archibald - AppCache Douchebag

Re:Build 2011

Re:Build is a conference about building the Web, drawing speakers from all fields of Web work.

Some Of The Talks from 2011 You Can Catch Up On

Neven Mrgan - Bit Depth

WebStock

Webstock is a series of Web-related events with the aim of improving how websites are built through inspiration, education, insightful analysis and practical application. It’s a well-respected conference with thoroughly selected speakers. The archive of the site provides over 120 talks.

Interlink Conference Videos

Interlink Conference is a small hand-crafted event created for all types of creative Web professionals. Explore the intersection of Web design, code, and content during 2 empowering days of curated talks and workshops in Vancouver.

Paul Boag - Unbelievable eCommerce

PHP UK Conference Videos

PHP UK Conference. PHP UK Conferences take place once a year in London. They are attended by hundreds of delegates, speakers, sponsors, partners and volunteer assistants, and run by volunteers from the PHP community and elected committee members of PHP London. Among the delegates are professional Web developers and managers, along with some general PHP enthusiasts/evangelists and employment recruiters.

Harrie Verveer - Recognising Smelly Code

Build Conference Vimeo Channel

Build is a five-day design event made up of three days of conference, workshops, lectures & parties - bookended by a day of film and another of music.

Simon Collison - We Are The Explorers

Breaking Development Conference Videos

Breaking Development is one of the first conferences devoted entirely to designing and developing sites and applications for mobile devices using the open Web stack.

Matt Menzer - Here Be Dragons: Mobile Web And The Enterprise

Scandinavian Developers Conference Videos

SDC is about bringing together people who work with software development, to discuss new ideas, views on industry trends, and exchange experiences. It covers all the news about the latest tools and frameworks for both the Java and .Net platforms, as well as plenty about development for the Web, IBMi, and Mobile devices.

Martin Roth - RJDJ

Keeping it Realtime Conference

Keeping it Realtime is a melting pot conference for realtime technologies. The event describes itself as being a smaller gathering free of elitists, out of which you can get real big value, like being to talk to everyone and thereby making great connections.

Leah Culver - Why We Chose Long-Poling Over Websockets

99U’s Videos

The annual 99U Conference, held each Spring, brings together 400+ creative thinkers and doers for two days to hear talks from creative luminaries and exchange best practices on making ideas happen.

James Victore - Your Work Is A Gift

Mobilism Conference Videos

In 2011 and 2012 Mobilism invited some of the best speakers from the Web development and the mobile world, as well as representatives from browser vendors, operators, W3C, and tool makers, to guide you through the confusing jumble of platforms, tools, screen sizes, standards, and browsers that is the mobile ecosystem.

Brad Frost - For A Future-Friendly Web

New Adventures Conference Videos

New Adventures is a unique and affordable Web design conference in the heart of England.

Robbie Manson - The Mindful Designer

Velocity Conference Videos

O’Reilly Velocity Conference focuses on scalable, fast, and reliable Websites and services. It’s the best place to learn from peers, exchange ideas with experts, and share what has worked (and equally importantly, what has not worked) in real world applications. The focus is on practical, large-scale Web development, presented by experts.

Jay Parikh - Building For A Billion Users

Fronteers Conference Videos

Fronteers is the Dutch non-profit trade organization of front-end developers, currently uniting some 450 front-end developers across The Netherlands and Belgium.

Chris Heilmann - Reasons To Be Cheerful

Frontend Conference Videos

FrontEndConf. Two days of inspiring talks on Frontend and UX technologies.

Javier Bargas-Avila - Is Beautiful Really Usable?

Massimiliano Marcon - How Late Is Later?
Thomas Jaggi and Rosmarie Wysseier - Frontend Development In Complex Projects
Roger Dudler - Bridging The Gap Between Design And Development
Denys Mishunov - Science Of Design

Day of JS Videos

Day of JS. On Jan 27th, 2011 MJG International put on a free conference at Google HQ. With speakers covering topics such as the state of the mobile Web, mobile javascript frameworks, browser performance and mobile best practices.

Scott Jehl - jQuery Mobile

Valio Con 2012

Videos of the talks from the Valio Con 2012, a Web design and development conference known for having a great vibe and being a lot of fun, like beach and bonfires, giveaways and prizes and easy approachable people.

Jeff Sheldon - On Ugmonk: Building A Brand From Passion Project To Full-Time Gig

There are plenty of extremely valuable conference materials out there. Sites like those listed above will hopefully help to share the knowledge from extremely talented speakers from around the globe. The world suddenly seems like a much smaller and better connected place for Web folks.

About The Author

Email Newsletter

Bringing The Conferences To You

Organized Wonder

Ontwik.com

Techpresentations.org

TED Tech Talks

Creative Mornings Videos

Besquare

Do Lectures

Confreaks

TYPO International Design Talks

MAD 2011 Conference Talks

JS Conf EU

Beyond Tellerrand Conference Videos

WebShaped Conference Videos

The Thinking Digital Conference’s Videos

An Event Apart Videos

5D Immersive Conference Videos

JavaZone Conference Videos

Øredev Conference Videos

Some Of The Talks from 2011 You Can Catch Up On

JSConf 2012

Re:Build 2011

Some Of The Talks from 2011 You Can Catch Up On

WebStock

Interlink Conference Videos

PHP UK Conference Videos

Build Conference Vimeo Channel

Breaking Development Conference Videos

Scandinavian Developers Conference Videos

Keeping it Realtime Conference

99U’s Videos

Mobilism Conference Videos

New Adventures Conference Videos

Velocity Conference Videos

Fronteers Conference Videos

Frontend Conference Videos

Day of JS Videos

Valio Con 2012

Further Reading

Smashing Newsletter

Front-End & UX Workshops, Online

TypeScript in 50 Lessons