Speakers
We will be diving deep into web performance, accessibility, design systems, HTML email, internationalization, UX, copywriting, tooling—and we branch out to—practical CSS & JS.
With Luke Wroblewski, Robyn Larsen, Brad Frost, Sophie Tahran, Harry Roberts, Mystery Speaker and others. Jump to all speakers ↓
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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 Suzanne is an author, artist, web developer, and teacher in Denver, Colorado. She’s a co-founder of OddBird web agency, a member of the Sass core team, and a W3C Invited Expert on the CSS Working Group.
After building Susy for responsive CSS layouts in 2009, and then True for Sass unit-testing, Miriam became one of the primary developers of Sass & CSS developer tools, with a focus on layout, architecture, and design systems. She’s also a prolific teacher – offering CSS workshops, and speaking at conferences around the world. She’s a co-author of Sitepoint’s Jump Start Sass, a staff writer for CSS Tricks, and was a founding teacher on the Mozilla Developer youtube channel.
- Talk
- When Variables Cascade
- On the web
- https://miriam.codes
- On Twitter
- @TerribleMia
Marcy Sutton
Marcy Sutton is a freelance web developer and accessibility specialist. Previously, she's worked as the Head of Learning at Gatsby and as a Senior Front-End Engineer on the axe-core accessibility testing library at Deque Systems.
In 2016, O’Reilly gave Marcy a Web Platform Award for her work in accessibility. She's a founding member of the Accessibility Seattle Foundation, a nonprofit supporting the A11ySea meetup. When away from the keyboard, Marcy can be found hiking with her dog, riding a bicycle, or snowboarding.
- On the web
- https://marcysutton.com
- On Twitter
- @marcysutton
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
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
Henri Helvetica
Henri is a freelance developer who has turned his interests to a passionate mix of site performance engineering and pinches of user experience. When not reading the deluge of daily research docs and case studies, or auditing sites in devtools, Henri can be found contributing back to the community: Toronto Web Performance Group meetup + Jamstack TORONTO organizer + curating conference content or volunteering his time for lunch and learns at various bootcamps.
Additionally, you can find him frequenting conferences, and touching base w/ the community - all with a radiant smile. Otherwise, Henri is focusing on running the fastest 5k possible (surprise surprise).
- On Twitter
- @henrihelvetica
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
Dave Rupert
Dave Rupert is the lead developer at Paravel, a three person web shop based in Austin, TX. He co-hosts the Shop Talk Show with Chris Coyier, a weekly sound effects podcast that also covers web design.
- Talk
- Shop Talk Show
- On the web
- https://daverupert.com/
- On Twitter
- @davatron5000
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
- http://www.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
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
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
Rachel Andrew
Rachel Andrew is a front and back-end web developer, author and speaker. Author or co-author of 22 books including The New CSS Layout and a regular contributor to a number of publications both on and offline. Rachel is co-founder of the CMS Perch and Notist, Editor in Chief of Smashing Magazine, a Google Developer Expert and an Invited Expert to the CSS Working Group. She writes about business and technology on her own site at rachelandrew.co.uk.
- On the web
- https://rachelandrew.co.uk
- On Twitter
- @rachelandrew
Paul Boag
Paul Boag is a leader in conversion optimisation, digital strategy and user experience design. He has been working with diverse organisations such as The European Commission, PUMA and Doctors Without Borders for over 25 years. Through consultancy and training, he helps organisations better connect with today’s digital consumers.
Paul is also a well-respected figure in the digital sector. Author of six books, including Click, Digital Adaptation and User Experience Revolution. Finally, he is a prolific writer for numerous publications, including his blog, and regularly speaks internationally.
- On the web
- https://boagworld.com
- On Twitter
- @boagworld
Vitaly Friedman
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.
- Talk
- Interface Design Challenge!
- Talk
- Interface Design Challenge!
- On the web
- https://smashingmagazine.com
- On Twitter
- @smashingmag
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.
