You should go to conferences

Those of you who know me (or who have been reading my posts for a while) will know that I'm often at conferences. I tend to speak at around four a year, plus attending one or two on top of that. I also know a great many people who never go to conferences, and I think they're missing out. Conferences are a fantastic way to not only broaden your horizons when it comes to your job and your skills, but also meet excellent people who might lead you to a new role, or new experiences.

Through the talks I've seen over the past few years, I've learnt so much about what's possible in CSS nowadays, learnt from others' stories and experiences, got inspired to stick popovers everywhere, levelled up my knowledge of web performance, and so much more. As a developer, I also benefit from e.g. the UX and design talks at mixed conferences that give me more of an insight into how those processes work and how best practices evolve, because we don't and shouldn't work in silos.

The talks are obviously very important, but one of the best things about conferences is the "hallway track" – that is, meeting and chatting to like-minded folks. Organisers will often encourage the "Pac-Man rule" - standing in a circle with a gap to always allow new people to join in. The afterparty is a great opportunity to socialise and meet people who do what you do. Even if you go to a conference with a group of people from your company, I encourage you to chat to others and see what other companies are up to. Maybe they're facing the same challenges as you are; maybe they've come up with a creative solution to something you've been thinking about. Maybe you've got something to teach them.

It's obviously not a cheap thing to do (though some are not too expensive in the grand scheme of things), and especially if you're self-employed it can be a lot of money to spend. You can always ask folks who spoke at or attended particular conferences in previous years what they thought of the event to make sure it's worth your time.

A lot of conferences also offer scholarship tickets to folks who wouldn't otherwise be able to attend for monetary reasons, as well as to encourage a more inclusive and diverse attendance.

If you're not totally on board with in-person events, that's fine too – most if not all events these days have a livestream you can watch instead. There is usually a conference Slack or virtual platform where you can chat to other livestream attendees.

Buy your tickets early

Since the pandemic, things have been a lot more challenging for conference organisers. Everything's more expensive, meaning the cost of running the events is higher. Companies have been tightening their belts and it becomes harder for attendees to get the budget for conference tickets. Organisers of conferences I've spoken at recently have reflected that people are buying tickets later and later, making it really unclear whether they're actually going to sell enough tickets to go ahead. Marc, who organises Beyond Tellerrand, wrote about this earlier in the year. Though speakers generally invoice after the event, the money from ticket sales needs to be coming in earlier for organisers to be able to afford things like hotels, venue hire and catering. Sadly, Front Conference was unable to go ahead this year because they didn't sell enough tickets ahead of time. I was lucky enough to speak last year, and it was a fantastic event with some really incredible speakers.

(It should be said here that some bigger, more commercial conferences are, well, extortionate: my learning budget is a generous £1000 a year but Lead Dev/StaffPlus London was so expensive that I actually had to beg and borrow a bit of someone else's learning budget to cover the ticket. I was too late for the early bird or group tickets for StaffPlus. It's a shame, because that's one of the conferences I get the most value from these days. But the majority of conferences I've seen – especially the community-run ones – are somewhat less pricey.)

The other benefit of buying tickets earlier (besides, you know, the conference actually being able to take place) is that you can often take advantage of early bird discounts, getting your ticket cheaper than you would otherwise.

Promoting conferences has also become much more difficult now that social media is so fragmented. Twitter had a great reach which just doesn't exist any more.

Conferences need sponsors!

Conferences rely on corporate sponsorship to keep ticket prices reasonable. As well as venue hire (which can be super expensive), there's generally some kind of catering costs, speaker travel and accommodations (many conferences also pay their speakers an honorarium to reflect the hard work that goes into speaking), live captioning, streaming, AV, etc. There's usually an afterparty which will likely cost to hire as well.

Generally conferences offer sponsorship packages of different tiers – for example, All Day Hey! offers a package that lets you sponsor the coffee for attendees, which is nice.

If you can, consider asking your company to sponsor a conference. It's great for B2B companies to get the word out about their product, and it can be good for hiring as well!

Some of my favourite smaller web conferences

This is a living list (updated sporadically) based off of my experiences speaking and attending, as well as recommendations from some friendly folks on Mastodon. This list is by no means exhaustive, and if there's a conference you've attended that you really love, please let me know and I'll add it to the list with your personal recommendation!

My vague price indicators:
£: up to £150
££: £150-300
£££: £300-600
££££: £600+

Events with a range indicate early bird pricing vs full pricing.

UK

• State of the Browser (London, web/accessibility, 1 day, £) An absolute bargain. PLUS you get to have coffee in the glorious Barbican conservatory.
• FFConf (Brighton, web/UX, 1 day, ££). A family-run web event and general lovely vibes.
• All Day Hey! (Leeds, web/design/UI/UX, 1 day, £). Similar vibes to FFConf, but with northern accents.
• Middlesbrough Frontend (Middlesbrough, web/JS, 1 day, £). A newish conference which is small but mighty, and run by some very dedicated folks.
• Front End North (Sheffield, web, 1 day, TBC). Back for 2025! Organised by a small and lovely team, and guaranteed to be an excellent event.
• Pixel Pioneers (Bristol, web/design, 1 day, £-££). Small but perfectly formed (and carefully curated) conference on the lovely Bristol waterfront.
• WebDevConf (Bristol, web, 1 day, £). Similar vibes to SOTB/All Day Hey (and in fact they are conference "friends").
• iOSDevUK (Aberystwyth, iOS, 1 day + workshops extra, ££). Recommended by Rhys: "My first iOS conference, and just so incredibly welcoming. I knew basically nobody going there, and met so many lovely people there last year – going back this year and seeing so many again was a delight."

Europe

• Beyond Tellerrand (Berlin/Düsseldorf, web/art/creativity/all sorts, 2 days + workshops extra, ££-£££). Two events a year, in Berlin and Düsseldorf. How does one even begin to describe Beyond Tellerrand? A melting pot of web, code, art, stories and experiences. I laughed, I cried. Check out my blog post from Düsseldorf 2023.
• CSS Day (Amsterdam, web, 2 days, ££££) I got invited to speak here in 2023, and it was absolutely mindblowing to see all the new developments in CSS. Awesome venue – an old church! – and excellent folks.
• Smashing Conference (Antwerp, design/UX; Freiburg, web/UI/UX; 2 days, £££) I just came back from Smashing Freiburg, and had a fantastic time. The organisers are some of the loveliest people I've ever known, and every talk was of an exceptional standard. What a great event, and a lovely setting too.
• Front Conference (Zurich, web/design/UX, 2 days, £££ at early bird price) – TBC if this returns for 2025. I really, really hope it does. Dual-track conference, one design/UX and one web/tech, with an excellently curated lineup. Zurich is a beautiful place, as well.
• WeyWeyWeb (Málaga, web, 2 days, ££ - group tickets available). The beautiful town of Málaga plays host to a small but lovingly put-together conference. A great chance to wear only a light jacket in November.
• JSHeroes (Cluj-Napoca, Romania, web/JS, 2 days, £-££). I've not been myself, but I have it on good authority this is a lovely community-led event.
• PyCon Italia (Bologna, Python, 3 days + workshops extra, TBC) Recommended by Florian. They offer two-tier pricing so it's cheaper for folks who are paying their own way. Florian says: "great community, terrific vibes, beautiful locations, exceptional speaker wrangling."
• PerfNow (Amsterdam, web performance, 2 days, ££££) Sia says: "Single track, one topic, great speakers, cool venue".
• Future Frontend (Espoo, Finland, web, 2 days, £££). Sylwia says: "The organizers put a lot of care into the speaker selection, and the sessions are grouped into thematic clusters which is interesting (so you have for example a block on green tech or music tech). There are lots of local speakers which is great. Everything is very well-organized and folks attending it are lovely. It’s a good conference to both learn a lot (it’s not devrel pitches), meet some nice folks, and enjoy the Finnish never-ending summer days."
• NordicJS (Stockholm, web/JS) – Jonas says "Nordic.js have been really fun in every year I’ve attended!"

Rest of world

• Smashing Conference (New York, web/UX, 2 days + workshops extra, £££) See above!
• JSConf (different countries) - I was lucky enough to go to the last CSSConf/JSconf EU in Berlin in 2019 and it was incredible. Lucky for us there are still a variety of JSConfs in different places including Budapest, Honolulu and Guadalajara!
• Clarity Conf (online in PST, design systems, £££) – recommended by Mike.
• FITC (Toronto, design/content/UX, 2 days, ££££) recommended by Gregory
• WordCamp (various locations, Wordpress, £) Community-run conferences for WordPress developers, worldwide, everywhere from Costa Rica to Kerala.
• ??? – would love to hear of more conferences outside of Europe that I should be mentioning here!