Speakers
We will be diving deep into web performance, accessibility, psychology, conversion, design patterns, privacy, security, tooling—and we branch out to—practical CSS and JavaScript techniques!
Below are our SmashingConf Austin speakers — we plan to publish all talk descriptions and the schedule soon.
Want to stay updated on the latest speakers and talk topics, why not follow us on Twitter?
Smashing Conf has been so amazing. What an incredible line up of speakers! I feel so lucky to have been here and experience this and day one isn’t even over ❤️ #SmashingConf
Luke Wroblewski
Luke is currently a Product Director at Google. Prior to founding start-ups, Luke was an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital, the Chief Design Architect (VP) at Yahoo!, Lead User Interface Designer at eBay, and a Senior Interface Designer at NCSA: the birthplace of the first popular graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic.
Luke is the author of three popular Web design books (Mobile First, Web Form Design & Site-Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability) in addition to many articles about digital product design and strategy. He is also a Co-founder and former Board member of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA).
- Talk
- Mind The Gap
- On the web
- https://www.lukew.com
- On Twitter
- @lukew
Miriam Suzanne
Miriam is a co-founder at OddBird, with 15 years experience as a project manager, user-experience designer, and front-end architect.
She is the creator of Susy, a core contributor to Sass, author of SitePoint’s Jump Start Sass, staff-writer for CSS Tricks, teacher for the Mozilla Developer channel and Invited Expert on the CSS Working Group.
- Talk
- When Variables Cascade
- On the web
- https://oddbird.net
- On Twitter
- @mirisuzanne
Brad Frost
Brad Frost is a web designer, speaker, writer, and consultant located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of the book Atomic Design, which introduces a methodology to create and maintain effective design systems.
In addition to co-hosting the Style Guides Podcast, he has also helped create several tools and resources for web designers, including Pattern Lab, Styleguides.io, Style Guide Guide, and This Is Responsive.
- Talk
- Let's Build A Design System!
- On the web
- http://bradfrost.com
- On Twitter
- @brad_frost
Chris Coyier
Chris is a web designer and developer. He created and runs CSS-Tricks, a website all about building websites, now going strong for 10 years.
He is also the co-founder of CodePen, a playground for front-end web development. It’s a social development environment for front end designers and developers.
Chris has spoken at events and given workshops all over the world, as well as written two books: Practical SVG and Digging Into WordPress.
- Talk
- Shop Talk Show
- On the web
- https://css-tricks.com
- On Twitter
- @css
Sophie Tahran
Sophie currently leads up UX writing for The New Yorker at Condé Nast. (She’s still working on winning the Cartoon Caption Contest, though.) Past lives include establishing a UX writing practice at InVision and wearing many hats at Lyft.
- Talk
- Designing With Words: An Introduction to UX Writing
- On the web
- https://www.sophietahran.com
- On Twitter
- @STahran
Rémi Parmentier
Rémi Parmentier is a french front-end developer working at his own small web development agency, Tilt Studio. He loves to learn, and enjoys even more to teach.
This led him on a joyful quest to understand and demystify HTML emails coding. Rémi runs workshops, gives talks and writes articles on his blog to help others code better HTML emails. Rémi also likes collecting Game Boy consoles and listening to Sufjan Stevens.
- Talk
- Think Like An Email Geek
- On the web
- https://emails.hteumeuleu.com
- On Twitter
- @HTeuMeuLeu
Robyn Larsen
Robyn Larsen is a front-end developer, entrepreneur, and speaker. Robyn is also an active community member who advises numerous startups across multiple industries and frequently mentors women in tech and STEM. She is is a member of the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) with Microsoft and Avalanche Canada.
She builds tools for entrepreneurs on the International team at Shopify, teaches Zero to Launch workshops for entrepreneurs through Embrk, she is a globe trotting, adrenaline junkie currently living the remote dream in Singapore.
- Talk
- International Is The New Mobile First
- On the web
- http://www.robynlarsen.ca
- On Twitter
- @robyn_larsen
Harry Roberts
Harry is an award-winning Consultant Performance Engineer from the UK. With a client list ranging from the United Nations to Google, the BBC to the Financial Times, he has helped some of the world’s largest organisations make their websites faster.
He also holds positions as a Google Developer Expert, where he shares web performance research and findings, and as Performance Ambassador for SHIFT Commerce, where he aims to make ecommerce faster from the inside out.
He writes about all things front-end performance at csswizardry.com, speaks at tech events all across the globe, and regularly shares his insights at @csswizardry.
- Talk
- From Milliseconds To Millions
- On the web
- https://csswizardry.com
- On Twitter
- @csswizardry
Zach Leatherman
Zach is a builder for the web with Netlify. He’s currently fixated on web fonts and static site generators. His public speaking résumé includes talks in eight different countries at events like Beyond Tellerrand, Smashing Conference, CSSConf, and The White House.
He is an emeritus of Filament Group, NEJS CONF, and still helps out with NebraskaJS.
- Talk
- A Tech Talk About Building Web Sites
- On the web
- https://www.zachleat.com
- On Twitter
- @zachleat
Mystery Speaker
Obviously our Mystery Speaker is a bit of a… well Mystery. In true smashing style you can expect something wonderful, so we’re very excited.
