Speakers
Want to learn shiny new things about UX and design? Our friendly, knowledgeable and approachable speakers will help and inspire you. You’ll also have time to ask all your questions.
Our speakers and workshop teachers are the best in their fields, and they love to share what they know, how they work and what drives them. On top of that, they are all smashingly nice, and really want to help!
Find our first speakers below, and we'll announce more smashing speakers and workshop teachers soon!
Had a wonderful day @smashingconf. Thanks for putting up such a great event! #smashingconf
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Kevin Powell
Kevin is a CSS evangelist and educator whose primary goal is to help people fall in love with CSS and, failing that, to at least help them be a little less frustrated by it.
He is best known for his YouTube channel, where he posts weekly educational videos that, he hopes, help both inspire and empower people to improve at CSS.
- Talk
- Smart Layout Patterns with Modern CSS
- On the web
- https://www.kevinpowell.co/
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Nick DiLallo
Nick DiLallo is a writer based in Brooklyn. He specializes in helping companies integrate writing with design to launch great brands and digital products. His approach blends copywriting with UX writing, and he's written extensively about the way good writing can help make the internet better for everyone.
In his career, he's worked at top digital agencies like Huge and Work & Co. And he's worked with some of the world's most admired companies, including Apple, Etsy, IKEA, the MTA, and Planned Parenthood.
- Talk
- The New Rules of UX Writing
- On the web
- https://nickdilallo.com/
- On LinkedIn
- nickdilallo
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Calvin Robertson
Senior Manager Employee UX at Corning
Calvin Robertson, a multidisciplinary design leader based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has over 20 years of experience in user experience (UX) design. He has led product design efforts for renowned brands such as Walmart, Hallmark, Federal Reserve Bank, Lowe’s, Best Buy, and Corning.
Calvin excels in leadership and service design, where he effectively combines design thinking, strategic planning, and execution to drive design excellence through well-led teams.
Beyond delivering enterprise solutions, he has also led efforts to launch casual gaming experiences for some of these same companies. This inspired him to establish a youth program in game development through his gaming organization, Jubileague.
Additionally, Calvin shares his experience through keynotes, workshops, and consulting to guide the next generation of organizations and leaders in designing the experiences of tomorrow.
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Christine Vallaure
Founder of Moonlearning
Christine Vallaure is the founder of moonlearning.io, a learning platform for UI, Figma and Product Building with AI. She’s also the author of theSolo.io, a practical guide to building and growing digital products independently, and a regular speaker at design and tech conferences.
Christine is deeply invested in bridging the gap between design and development, creating content and tools that help both sides work better together with more clarity, curiosity, and collaboration.
With over a decade of experience working with startups, agencies, and global brands across Berlin, Mexico City, and London, Christine now calls Madrid home. As a solo founder and creator, she’s passionate about the growing wave of independent builders who are rethinking how digital products are made, from the tools we use to the way we work.
- Talk
- The Invisible Divide
- On the web
- https://www.moonlearning.io
- On LinkedIn
- christinevallaure
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Nathan Curtis
Founder and design systems consultant at Directed Edges. He’s passionate about information architecture, UX, front-end dev and design systems. He wrote Modular Web Design in 2009, blogs frequently on Medium.com today, and speaks regularly at events worldwide.
- Talk
- Architecting Design Systems
- On the web
- https://www.directededges.com
- On LinkedIn
- nathancurtis
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Nadieh Bremer
Nadieh Bremer is a multi-award winning data visualization designer and data artist who once graduated as an Astronomer, started working as a data scientist before finding her true passion in the visualization of data.
Having been awarded "Best Individual" in the Information is Beautiful Awards, and (co-)writer of "Data Sketches" and her new book "CHART," she focuses on visuals that are uniquely crafted for each specific dataset, often using large and complex datasets while employing vibrant color palettes. She's made visualizations and art for companies such as Google News Lab, Sony Music, UNICEF, the New York Times, Scientific American and UNESCO.
- Talk
- Effective & Beautiful Data Visualization
- On the web
- https://www.visualcinnamon.com/
- On LinkedIn
- nbremer
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Chris Kolb
Chris is co-founder and chief design officer at Wahnsinn Design. A designer by trade and business psychologist by education he tries to build software that makes complexity less daunting and gets out of the way quicker. Together with his co-founder Alex he is hosting the podcast bessermit.design.
- Talk
- Designing for Real People
- On the web
- https://chris.wahnsinn.design
- On LinkedIn
- christoph-kolb
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Mystery Speaker
Obviously, our Mystery Speaker is a bit of a… well, Mystery. In true smashing style, you can expect something wonderful. It’s someone worth waking up for. Something unexpected, a little magical, and very much unmissable.
So yes, set that alarm for Day Two. Grab a coffee. Be curious. You won’t want to miss this.
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Vitaly Friedman
Creative Lead and Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine
Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably running front-end/UX workshops and webinars. He loves solving complex UX, front-end and performance problems.
- On the web
- https://smashingmagazine.com
- On LinkedIn
- vitalyfriedman