Tag: Toronto

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08 Aug

Now Live: Your SmashingConf Toronto Playlist

by TBSCategories: News

Now Live: Your SmashingConf Toronto Playlist

Now Live: Your SmashingConf Toronto Playlist

Rachel Andrew

We have edited and prepared the video from SmashingConf Toronto, and it is all now live for you to watch and learn from. To get a feel for the event, watch our compilation. We think that it really captures the atmosphere of a SmashingConf!

Day One

The Day One Collaborative Doc created by attendees is full of takeaways from the first day of the conference. You might find some of those notes helpful as you watch the video linked below.

Speaker Name Talk Title
Brad Frost “Let’s Build A Design System” (Video)
Sarah Drasner “Let’s Write A Vue App From Scratch” (Video)
Phil Hawksworth “JAMStack: Silly Name. Serious Stuff.” (Video)
Jenny Shen “Build Bridges, Not Walls: Design For Users Across Cultures” (Video)
Chris Gannon “Make It Move! Create A Web Animation From Scratch” (Video)
Kristina Podnar “Help! I’m Your Ailing Website. The Digital Policy & Standards Rehab Hour” (Video)
Steven Hoober “Authentic Digital Design By The Numbers” (Video)

Day Two

Check out the Day Two Collaborative Doc for more resources and thoughts shared by our attendees and speakers on the second day of the conference.

Speaker Name Talk Title
Phil Nash “Diving Into Service Workers, Live” (Video)
Dan Rose “Seeing The Pages For The Components” (Video)
Diana Mounter “The Secret Lives of Color Systems” (Video)

Some of the speakers shared additional resources, or GitHub repos to go with their talks. You can find all of the relevant links here.

You can also find all of the video in the Vimeo showcase for SmashingConf Toronto 2019, and we have a lot of videos from previous events for you to explore.

If you would like to be part of the SmashingConf fun next year, we already have tickets on sale for SmashingConf San Francisco 2020. The rest of this year’s events (New York and Freiburg) are already sold out! There are a few workshop-only tickets available for New York 2019, but be quick!

Related Resources on SmashingMag:

Smashing Editorial (il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers


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11 Jul

That Was SmashingConf Toronto 2019

by TBSCategories: News

That Was SmashingConf Toronto 2019

That Was SmashingConf Toronto 2019

Rachel Andrew

We all enjoyed returning to Toronto for the second Smashing conference, and in this post, I am sharing some of the things that took place as well as the resources that were shared over the course of the two conference and two workshop days. Look out for the videos of all the presentations which will be released very soon.

The team worked hard to create a friendly welcoming space for everyone at the conference. We all know how it can be a little overwhelming to walk into a room of a few hundred strangers, knowing that you would love to make friends and have interesting discussions, but finding it hard to get started.

In order to avoid that, we asked everyone to read and follow our Code Of Conduct, try to create a range of spaces and activities where people can meet like-minded people, and also encourage everyone to follow “The Pac-Man Rule” when standing in a group.

Slide showing a graphic of the pacman rule
Pac-man rule for conversations (Large preview)

“It’s a genuine friendliness that the Smashing team possesses, and that serves as the foundation for an inclusive, approachable event. It turns out that little things like launching balloons to kick off the event and advocating for the Pac-Man Rule go a long way towards making everyone feel welcome.”

— Dan Rose

The Presentations

The first thing you think about when attending a conference is to wonder who is speaking, and what they will be talking about. At SmashingConf Toronto, we had an amazing lineup of speakers, with people you might know quite well plus some new faces. As many of our speakers presented without slides, we don’t have a huge number of slide decks to share. However, the list below links to some of the resources our speakers shared. We will also have videos available very soon!

Stage with people throwing candy into the audience
Vitaly and Phil throw candy to audience members (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Day One

The Day One Collaborative Doc created by attendees is full of takeaways from day one of the conference.

Speaker Name Talk Title
Brad Frost Let’s Build a Design System
Sarah Drasner Let’s Write a Vue App From Scratch
Phil Hawksworth JAMStack: Silly Name. Serious Stuff.
Chris Gannon Make It Move! Create a Web Animation From Scratch
Kristina Podnar Help! I’m Your Ailing Website. The Digital Policy & Standards Rehab Hour
Steven Hoober Authentic Digital Design By The Numbers
Sarah onstage coding
Sarah Drasner writes a Vue app on stage. (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

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, and many of you were thrilled to get to hear his talk.

We then enjoyed talks covering a wide range of topics from our day two speakers.

Speaker Name Talk Title
Phil Nash Diving Into Service Workers, Live
Jules Forrest For The Love Of The Grid
Dan Rose Seeing The Pages For The Components
Diana Mounter The Secret Lives of Color Systems
Scott Jehl Move Fast & Don’t Break Things

We found a few blog posts sharing takeaways from these talks. Arshabhi Rai recapped Day 1 and Day 2; and kinopo shared their takeaways in What a lovely SmashingConf.

Workshops

Auditorium style lecture room with people working on laptops
Vitaly shares responsive design knowledge with his workshop group (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

Our workshops are a big part of each of our Smashing conferences. In Toronto, we had two days of full-day workshops, with some attendees choosing to do a workshop day before and after the conference. Workshops this time round were as follows:

Name Talk Title
Rachel Andrew Next Steps With CSS Layout
Chris Gannon Designing Delightful Animations For The Web
The Deque Team How To Translate Wireframes Into Accessible HTML/CSS
Vitaly Friedman Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns
Scott Jehl Lightning Fast Web Performance
Sarah Drasner Intro To Vue.js
Brad Frost The Design System Process
Vitaly Friedman New Front-end Adventures, 2019 Edition
Cloudinary Hacking Lizard Brain: Improving Visual Experience On The Web

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. To help with that, we ran various other things over the conference. At lunchtime, we had lunch sessions run by Deque on Day 1, and Netlify on Day 2, attendees could grab a plate of lunch and settle down in a more cozy environment to take part in those sessions.

We had a great lounge area, with the talks live-streamed for folks who wanted to step out of the movie theater for a while.

People on sofas watching a presentation via a live stream
Our lounge area (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

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 — Toronto was no exception. We had 12 runners on Day 1, and 6 hardy souls on Day 2 joining us despite having attended the party. We only got slightly off-track once, and got a nice view of Toronto to take our photos.

Jam Session

On the evening before the conference, we had a Jam Session at Shopify hosted by Tiffany Tse (and her lovely assistant Walnut). There was a speaker panel featuring Steven Hoober, Scott Jehl, Kristina Podnar, Brad Frost, Jules Forrest, Phil Hawksworth and myself, plus lightning talks from Tiffany Tse, Kelly Harrop, April Ellsey, Steve Pereira, and Christine Fowler.

Graffiti And Photo Walks

On the day before and last evening of the conference, walks took place to explore graffiti around Toronto and take photos of the city. A great way to meet people and explore the location for those coming from out of town.

People in a street taking photos of graffiti
On the graffiti walk (Photo credit: Scott Whitehead)

Conference Party

There has to be a party, and we always try to do something fun and perhaps a little unusual for our conference parties. This time, we went bowling — courtesy of sponsorship by SpeedCurve.

Focus On The Local Community

Between sessions on stage, we invited organizers of community groups in the Toronto area on stage to share information about their groups. We hope that local attendess found some new meetups to go to. The groups that we featured were:

Name Details
Women Who Code Toronto Twitter: @WomenWhoCode,
Introduced by Stephanie
DevHub Toronto & Vancouver Twitter: @devhubTO
Events, educational programs, collaboration, and co-working
Introduced by Emma
The DevOps Toronto meetup Twitter: @devopsto
Introduced by Steve
Designers & Coffee Twitter: @Doriganic
Meetups, hands-on design challenges and feedback sessions, to casual networking nights.
Introduced by Dorsa
DevTO Twitter: @DevTO
Coding stories, eats and drinks. Join us on the last Monday of every month!
Introduced by Nael.
Serverless Toronto meetup Introduced by Daniel Zivkovic
Toronto Web Performance Group Twitter: @towebperf
Introduced by Henri Helvetica

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.

Audience members throwing balloons
SmashingConf Toronto opened with balloons (Photo credit: Marc Thiele)

If you would like to be part of the SmashingConf fun next year, we already have tickets on sale for SmashingConf San Francisco and you can leave your email to be the first to know when SmashingConf Toronto 2020 goes on sale. The rest of the 2019 events (New York and Freiburg) are already sold out! There are a few workshop-only tickets available for New York 2019, but be quick!

Smashing Editorial (il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

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17 Oct

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

by TBSCategories: News

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

Live Accessibility And Performance Audits At SmashingConf Toronto

Markus Seyfferth

Earlier this year, many of your favorite speakers were featured at SmashingConf Toronto, however, things were quite different this time. The speakers had been asked to present without slides. It was interesting to see the different ways our speakers approached the challenge.

Two of our speakers chose to demonstrate how they audit a site or application live on stage: Marcy Sutton on accessibility, and Tim Kadlec on performance. Watch the videos to see an expert perform these audits, and see if there is anything you can take back to your own testing processes.

To watch all of the videos recorded in Toronto, head on over to our SmashingConf Vimeo channel.

Accessibility: Marcy Sutton

Marcy took two example components, built using React, and walked us through how these components could be made more accessible with some straightforward changes.

Performance: Tim Kadlec

Tim demonstrates how to test the performance of a site, and find bottlenecks leading to poor experiences for visitors. If you have ever wondered how to get started testing for performance, this is a talk you will find incredibly useful.

Enjoyed watching these talks? There are many more videos from SmashingConf Toronto on Vimeo. We’re also getting ready for SmashingConf New York next week — see you there? 😉

Smashing Editorial (ra, il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

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05 Oct

SmashingConf Toronto Videos

by TBSCategories: News

SmashingConf Toronto Videos

SmashingConf Toronto Videos

The Smashing Editorial

This year, many of your favorite speakers were featured at our conference in Toronto, however, things were quite different this time. The speakers had been asked to present without slides. Yep, and it was brilliant!

In this pairing of videos from SmashingConf Toronto, discover sketching with Eva-Lotta Lamm and SVG Animation with Sarah Drasner, but if you fancy watching all of them then head on over to our SmashingConf Vimeo channel anytime.

How I Think When I Think Visually: Eva-Lotta Lamm

Sketching is something which lends itself perfectly to the no-slides format. In this talk, Eva-Lotta demonstrates her process for visual thinking. A method which helps her order her thoughts, create sketchnotes, and visualize processes such as user journeys.

SVG And Vue Together From Start To Finish: Sarah Drasner

In this talk, Sarah starts with only an Illustrator document and by the end, makes it move! In this talk, which has an included GitHub repository to help you follow along, Sarah uses animation and Vue.js to create the final piece.

Enjoyed watching these talks? There are many more videos from SmashingConf Toronto on Vimeo. We’re also getting ready for the upcoming SmashingConf in New York — see you there? 😉

Smashing Editorial (ra, il)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

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03 May

A Conference Without Slides: Meet SmashingConf Toronto 2018 (June 26-27)

by TBSCategories: News

A Conference Without Slides: Meet SmashingConf Toronto 2018 (June 26-27)

A Conference Without Slides: Meet SmashingConf Toronto 2018 (June 26-27)

Vitaly Friedman

What would be the best way to learn and improve your skills? By looking designers and developers over their shoulder! At SmashingConf Toronto taking place on June 26–27, we will exactly do that. All talks will be live coding and design sessions on stage, showing how speakers such as Dan Mall, Lea Verou, Rachel Andrew, and Sara Soueidan design und build stuff — including pattern libraries setup, design workflows and shortcuts, debugging, naming conventions, and everything in between. To the tickets →

Smashingconf Toronto 2018
What if there was a web conference without… slides? Meet SmashingConf Toronto 2018 with live sessions exploring how experts think, design, build and debug.

The night before the conference we’ll be hosting a FailNight, a warm-up party with a twist — every single session will be highlighting how we all failed on a small or big scale. Because, well, it’s mistakes that help us get better and smarter, right?

Speakers

One track, two conference days (June 26–27), 16 speakers, and just 500 available seats. We’ll cover everything from efficient design workflow and getting started with Vue.js to improving eCommerce UX and production-ready CSS Grid Layouts. Also on our list: performance audits, data visualization, multi-cultural designs, and other fields that may come up in your day-to-day work.

Here’s what you should be expecting:

Dan Mall and Lea Verou are two of the speakers at SmashingConf Toronto
That’s quite a speakers line-up, with topics ranging from live CSS/JavaScript coding to live lettering.

Conference Tickets

C$ 699Get Your Ticket

Two days of great speakers and networking
Check all speakers →

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save C$ 100 Conf + Workshop

Three days full of learning and networking
Check all workshops →

Workshops At SmashingConf Toronto

On the two days before and after the conference, you have the chance to dive deep into a topic of your choice. Tickets for the full-day workshops cost C$ 599. If you combine it with a conference ticket, you’ll save C$ 100 on the regular workshop price. Seats are limited.

Workshops on Monday, June 25th

Sara Soueidan on The CSS & SVG Power Combo
Sara SoueidanThe workshop with the strongest punch of creativity. The CSS & SVG Power Combo is where you will learn about the latest, cutting-edge CSS and SVG techniques to create creative crisp and beautiful interfaces. We will also be looking at any existing browser inconsistencies as well as performance considerations to keep in mind. And there will be lots of exercises and practical examples that can be taken and directly applied in real life projects.Read more…

Sarah Drasner on Intro To Vue.js
Sarah DrasnerVue.js brings together the best features of the Javascript framework landscape elegantly. If you’re interested in writing maintainable, clean code in an exciting and expressive manner, you should consider joining this class. Read more…

Tim Kadlec on Demystifying Front-End Security
Tim KadlecWhen users come to your site, they trust you to provide them with a good experience. They expect a site that loads quickly, that works in their browser, and that is well designed. And though they may not vocalize it, they certainly expect that the experience will be safe: that any information they provide will not be stolen or used in ways they did not expect. Read more…

Aaron Draplin on Behind The Scenes With The DDC
Aaron DraplinGo behind the scenes with the DDC and learn about Aaron’s process for creating marks, logos and more. Each student will attack a logo on their own with guidance from Aaron. Could be something you are currently working on, or have always wanted to make. Read more…

Dan Mall on Design Workflow For A Multi-Device World
Dan MallIn this workshop, Dan will share insights into his tools and techniques for integrating design thinking into your product development process. You’ll learn how to craft powerful design approaches through collaborative brainstorming techniques and how to involve your entire team in the design process. Read more…

Vitaly Friedman on Smart Responsive UX Design Patterns
Vitaly FriedmanIn this workshop, Vitaly Friedman, co-founder of Smashing Magazine, will cover practical techniques, clever tricks and useful strategies you need to be aware of when working on responsive websites. From responsive modules to clever navigation patterns and web form design techniques; the workshop will provide you with everything you need to know today to start designing better responsive experiences tomorrow. Read more…

Workshops on Thursday, June 28th

Eva-Lotta Lamm on Sketching With Confidence, Clarity And Imagination
Eva-Lotta LammBeing able to sketch is like speaking an additional language that enables you to structure and express your thoughts and ideas more clearly, quickly and in an engaging way. For anyone working in UX, design, marketing and product development in general, sketching is a valuable technique to feel comfortable with. Read more…

Nadieh Bremer on Creative Data Visualization Techniques
Nadieh BremerWith so many tools available to visualize your data, it’s easy to get stuck in thinking about chart types, always just going for that bar or line chart, without truly thinking about effectiveness. In this workshop, Nadieh will teach you how you can take a more creative and practical approach to the design of data visualization. Read more…

Rachel Andrew on Advanced CSS Layouts With Flexbox And CSS Grid
This workshop is designed for designers and developers who already have a good working knowledge of HTML and CSS. We will cover a range of CSS methods for achieving layout, from those you are safe to use right now even if you need to support older version of Internet Explorer through to things that while still classed as experimental, are likely to ship in browsers in the coming months. Read more…

Joe Leech on Psychology For UX And Product Design
Joe LeechThis workshop will provide you with a practical, hands-on way to understand how the human brain works and apply that knowledge to User Experience and product design. Learn the psychological principles behind how our brain makes sense of the world and apply that to product and user interface design. Read more…

Seb Lee-Delisle on Javascript Graphics And Animation
Seb Lee-DelisleIn this workshop, Seb will demonstrate a variety of beautiful visual effects using JavaScript and HTML5 canvas. You will learn animation and graphics techniques that you can use to add a sense of dynamism to your projects. Read more…

Vitaly Friedman on New Front-End Adventures In Responsive Design
Vitaly FriedmanWith HTTP/2, Service Workers, Responsive Images, Flexbox, CSS Grid, SVG, WAI-ARIA roles and Font Loading API now available in browsers, we all are still trying to figure out just the right strategy for designing and building responsive websites efficiently. We want to use all of these technologies and smart processes like atomic design, but how can we use them efficiently, and how do we achieve it within a reasonable amount of time? Read more…

Conference Tickets

C$ 699Get Your Ticket

Two days of great speakers and networking
Check all speakers →

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save C$ 100 Conf + Workshop

Three days full of learning and networking
Check all workshops →

Location

Maybe you’ve already wondered why our friend the Smashing Cat has dressed up as a movie director for SmashingConf Toronto? Well, that’s because our conference venue will be the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Located within the center of Toronto, it is one of the most iconic cinemas in the world and also the location where the Toronto Film Festival takes place. We’re thrilled to be hosted there!

TIFF Bell Lightbox, our venue in Toronto
The TIFF Bell Lightbox, usually a cinema, is the perfect place for thrillers and happy endings as the web writes them.

Why This Conference Could Be For You

SmashingConfs are a friendly and intimate experience. It’s like meeting good friends and making new ones. Friends who share their stories, ideas, and, of course, their best tips and tricks. At SmashingConf Toronto you will learn how to:

  1. Make full advantage of CSS Variables,
  2. Create fluid animation effects with Vue,
  3. Detect and resolve accessibility issues,
  4. Structure components in a pattern library when using CSS Grid,
  5. Build a stable, usable online experience,
  6. Design for cross-cultural audiences,
  7. Create effective and beautiful data visualization from scratch,
  8. Transform your designs with psychology,
  9. Help your design advance with proper etiquette,
  10. Sketch with pen and paper,
  11. … and a lot more.

Download “Convience Your Boss” PDF

We know that sometimes companies encourage their staff to attend a different conference each year. Well, we say; once you’ve found a conference you love, why stray…

Think your boss needs a little more persuasion? We’ve prepared a neat Convince Your Boss PDF that you can use to tip the scales in your favor to send you to the event.

Diversity and Inclusivity

We care about diversity and inclusivity at our events. SmashingConf’s are a safe, friendly place. We don’t tolerate any disrespect or misbehavior. We also provide student and diversity tickets.

Conference Tickets

C$ 699Get Your Ticket

Two days of great speakers and networking
Check all speakers →

Conf + Workshop Tickets

Save C$ 100 Conf + Workshop

Three days full of learning and networking
Check all workshops →

See You In Toronto!

We’d love to meet you in Toronto and spend two memorable days full of web goodness, lots of learning, and friendly people with you. An experience you won’t forget so soon. Promised.

Smashing Editorial (cm)


Articles on Smashing Magazine — For Web Designers And Developers

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