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).
- 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, and teacher for the Mozilla Developer channel.
- Talk
- CSS Is Rad
- 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
- Design Systems
- On the web
- http://bradfrost.com
- On Twitter
- @brad_frost
Sara Soueidan
Sara Soueidan is a Lebanese freelance front-end UI/UX developer working with companies across the globe, building clean, responsive front-ends for Web sites and applications focused on accessibility, progressive enhancement and performance.
She also runs workshops on front-end development and writes technical articles on her blog and for various big publications.
Sara wrote the Codrops CSS Reference, co-authored the Smashing Book 5, and has been voted the Developer of the Year in the 2015 net awards.
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
- Building Websites
- On the web
- https://css-tricks.com
- On Twitter
- @css
Mandy Michael
Mandy is a community organiser, speaker, writer and front end developer currently working as a Development Manager at Seven West Media in Western Australia. Her passion is front end technology and loves to experiment with new and old technologies to see how we can push the boundaries of what is possible on the web.
She is an avid supporter of local communities and a strong advocate for women in technology, volunteering at events across Perth and Australia including She Codes, Muses JS and various conferences and school events. Mandy is the Founder and Organiser of Fenders a local meetup for Front End Developers, co-organiser and Director of Mixin Conf. In its inaugural year she was named one of the Top 20 Women in Tech in Western Australia.
- Talk
- Front-end
- On Twitter
- @Mandy_Kerr
Gemma O’Brien
Gemma O’Brien is an Australian artist best known for her expressive, highly-detailed typography and illustration work. Although unrestricted to a single style or application, Gemma’s work is recognized for its energetic, youthful quality, and handcrafted lettering.
Many of her murals are created in front of live audiences, championing an authenticity often eluded by the digital landscape. She collaborates with global brands including Google, Tiffany & Co, Nike, Apple and The New York Times.
- Talk
- Illustration
- On the web
- https://www.gemmaobrien.com
- On Twitter
- @mrseaves
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
- Web Fonts And Font Performance
- On the web
- https://www.zachleat.com
- On Twitter
- @zachleat
Mystery Speaker
Can you guess who is going to be the Mystery Speaker this time?
