Engaging Empathy

Everything around us moves so quickly; we are inundated with content, news, ideas and opinions with a ferocious consistency. As we go through our days filled with meetings, emails, conference calls and the tasks of our role, it gets more and more challenging to truly connect with those around us, especially our coworkers. That connection is what drives optimal collaboration, productive communication, and an overall sense of positivity on teams. So how do we achieve that? How do we connect with others in an environment that seems to only drive division? And how do we truly engage with one another in a way that fosters a culture of innovation, openness and inclusion? With vulnerability and, especially, with empathy.

Empathy and vulnerability aren’t necessarily two words associated with professional success, but they are invaluable to achieving the long-term goals managers and leaders set for their teams and companies as a whole. This talk dives into each of those topics. We’ll define what real-word empathy is and why it’s imperative in offices; explain why vulnerability is the gateway to opportunity; and finally, we’ll discuss how to truly connect with those around us by engaging empathy at work.

CSS at the Intersection

Throughout the talk I discuss the mental models we construct in tech, the cognitive dissonance we experience when confronted with new ideas, specifically about CSS.

We know CSS has a separate mental model because we keep hearing the same debate rage on: “Is CSS broken or awesome?” This talk is about enabling teams to communicate and accommodate these different mental models. I share examples of effective tools, and how they change the way designers and developers interact.

Dynamic Typography with Variable Fonts

Modern developments in CSS make it easier than ever to create robust, scalable, elegant typographic systems on the web. Add variable fonts and the design, technical, and performance benefits are really exciting. We’ll look at how to combine them with other CSS capabilities like custom properties, calculations, and grid to create a whole new way to think about design and development. We’ll see how they work together by using some variable fonts in layouts that work across screen dimensions, accessibility needs, design requirements, and even network speeds—better than you thought possible.

I’ll also be showing the road ahead for web font performance with a sneak peak at what the W3C Web Font Working Group is researching, including a live demo of Google’s proof-of-concept showcasing the font serving speed increase potential.

Taking the Web off the Screen

Most web developers don’t get the joyous experience of touching and feeling the things they’ve created. Interest in generative art on the web is at an all-time high, but predominantly confined to screens and pixels, without much room for tactility.

Through her unwavering enthusiasm for making physical things, Charlotte will demonstrate a myriad of ways you can use your coding prowess to make art in the physical realm.

Peace, Hellfire & Unicorns

Seb Lester charts his life in letters from student days to working for some of the biggest companies in the world to current art and design projects. The presentation includes a section on designing a logo for a NASA space mission. Lester discusses new passions and obsessions, how he ended up with two million followers on social media, and how he became the first visual artist to be offered a one year contract by Apple.

Spinning Aubergines, Talking Genitals and the Oldest Women in the World

An honest account of my creative process both technical and conceptual. From my love of music video, animated documentary and the mixing of traditional and digital animation techniques to the formation of my first short film “Private Parts”. This animated documentary (involving real voice recorded interviews are visualised as talking vaginas and penises) was a real turning point for my career. I will explain where my desire to make it came from and the process. In the summer of 2017 my little sister was hospitalised with Anorexia for the 3rd time, after 8 years of struggling with the disease. I will discuss how witnessing her struggling got me thinking about beauty ideals and examine how fast the definition of beauty changes resulting in my film for International Women’s Day 2018 “What is Beauty?”. I will finish with a screening of my latest film “Ugly”.