Somewhere Between Here and There...

Having spoken at the very first beyond tellerrand — and attended the second — Simon is no stranger to Düsseldorf. Now he's back again for our 5th birthday, to share his memories of our humble event and also reflect on everything that ever happened on the internet. Literally everything. Well, some of it. Maybe the web design part. He’s not sure yet.

The Plural of Chromium is Chromia

Where web developers expect Chrome to offer a single platform for web sites and web apps, and that all Android 4.3+ users use Chrome as their default browser, reality is diverging at a fast clip. Google Chrome has never been the default browser on any system, except for Google's own Nexus and the Motorolas that were created while Google owned the company. Most important Android vendors, such as Samsung, HTC, and LG, are now using their own Chromium-based browsers as defaults. So far PPK identified eleven of them, and they're all subtly different.

What's going on? Why does everyone want its own Chromium? Why doesn't Google step in and force Google Chrome on everybody? And what's the deal with that other Android default browser, Android WebKit?

In this presentation PPK explains exactly this.

Content Amid Chaos

Organizations are messy places: politics thwart progress, departmental squabbles are status quo, and decision-making often takes months. This chaos makes its way right to our websites, filling them with crap users don't want, need, or sometimes even understand. We’re practicing content strategy now, so what gives? Why are we still designing around all this clutter and corporate-speak? Because strategy documents and style rules alone won’t make people actually produce content that meets users’ needs and aligns with our designs. In this talk, you’ll hear what will: embracing (okay, tolerating) content chaos, instead of anguishing over imperfections. You'll learn strategic approaches for defining meaningful content problems in your organisation—and solving them one at a time.

Enhance!

We’re working on increasingly complex websites. There’s a temptation to match this growth with increasingly complex solutions. But there’s a real value in keeping things simple...or at least starting things simple. If you can build a solid robust foundation, there’s a good chance that your work will be future-friendly. Prepare to have your brain subtly rewired as we look beneath the surface-level implementation details of the web to reveal the semantic structure below. Whether you’re publishing content or building the latest hot app, the principle of progressive enhancement will change the way you think about your work.

Collaborating Across UX & Design

Irene Pereyra, User Experience Director and Anton Repponen, Creative Director, will walk-through an in-depth ‘behind the scenes’ of the challenges they have faced while working on large redesigns and other interactive projects in a chronological manner: from how the projects started, to the successes and hurdles faced along the way, and ultimately to launch.

Delivering Responsibly

Building responsively allows us to create flexible user interfaces that support the widest possible audience with a single front-end codebase. But in embracing the ever-increasing contexts in which our sites are used, performance and accessibility must remain our highest priorities; we must continually question each code addition, and improve our delivery and application techniques to ensure they’re best serving users’ needs.

This talk will explore the challenges of creating fast and broadly-accessible websites and offer approaches that dramatically improve performance, usability, access, and sustainability.

Momentum: Crafting a Creative Culture

We have arrived in an age of design. No longer relegated to a function of the marketing department or tacked on to an engineering process, Designers are increasingly taking leadership positions in the top companies in tech. But how do we manage creative teams to achieve their full potential? I'll share stories from my years of leading product development — both successful and not — to show that investing in culture might be the best competitive edge you can gain.