Schedule

All sessions and timings are subject to change. We will update the schedule as soon as we confirm talks and side events.

Thursday, 9 June 2022 (Warm-up event)

Friday, 10 June 2022 (Conference)

  • 8:45

    Details

    Doors Open and Registration

    Pick up your conference pass, grab a tea or coffee and start mingling and exploring the sponsors' stands!

  • 9:20

    Details

    Welcome

    Phil Hawksworth is back to MC the conference and take you through the day!

    Phil-compressed.png#asset:1191

  • 9:30

    Talk Details

    Gavin Strange

    Less Thinkering, More Tinkering

    A neon-soaked passion-filled presentation of all things creativity, trying to strike the elusive balance between uncurbed enthusiasm and pragmatic process. Director and designer Gavin Strange plots his creative journey through his time in the design and film industry – picking it apart and extracting the lessons and learnings from it all. It’s loud, silly, and hopefully energising.

    The aim of the game is to convince YOU to make more of the stuff that makes YOUR heart sing.

  • 10:15

    Talk Details

    Bianca Berning

    Variable Fonts – WTF?

    Back in 2016, it was announced that OpenType Font Variations, better known as variable fonts, would be added to the OpenType specification. Since then many type designers have created hundreds of variable fonts. The designs have been both experimental and highly functional, testing not only the boundaries of the technology but also improving web performance.

    Bianca’s presentation will explore the functional and creative possibilities of variable font technology and illustrate how this area of type design has developed over the past six years.

    Read our interview with Bianca.

  • 10:55

    Morning Break

  • 11:15

    Talk Details

    Léonie Watson

    Accessibility: The Land That Time to Interactive Forgot

    We tend to think of performance in terms of latency, code optimisation, and things like the critical rendering path, but what happens when the browser creates an accessibility tree as well as the DOM?

    The answer is of course "it depends...".

    Different browsers take different approaches, but they all have an impact on performance and the Time To Interactive in particular. In this talk we'll consider the purpose of the accessibility tree, the ways its constructed in different browsers, and the ultimate impact that has on both performance and experience for people who use assistive technologies like screen readers.

  • 11:55

    Talk Details

    Luke Murphy

    Lightning Talk: Design Tokens – Searching for a Source of Truth

    Design tokens are one of the most exciting things to come out of the design systems world recently, with the promise to unify the worlds of design and engineering. But what are design tokens and how can they actually help (or hinder) our process? What is happening around standardising them, so we can effectively use them in all our orgs? And perhaps most important, what do we need to change, both technically and culturally, to make sure they can be as effective as possible?

  • 12:05

    Talk Details

    Hannah Smith

    How to Make Digital Services More Sustainable

    Humanity is facing an unprecedented crisis from the effects of climate change. The science is clear: The world is warming, and the breakdown of our climate has begun. There’s no denying this is scary stuff and requires all industries to take action, including the tech sector.

    Many people are still under the notion that digital is intrinsically green and even good for the environment. But if the internet was a country it would be the seventh biggest emitter of carbon in the world, and it's thought to produce more carbon emissions than the aviation industry. The cloud isn’t as fluffy and harmless as we’re led to believe...

    In this talk, we’ll discuss how:

    • digital technologies cause climate impacts
    • anyone – designers, developers, directors etc – can take meaningful action to improve the sustainability of the tech they build, manage, and use
    • to spot greenwashing in the sector.

    Slides / Interview

  • 12:45

    Details

    Lunch

    See our location guide for recommendations on where to grab a bite to eat.

  • 14:00

    Talk Details

    Jhey Tompkins

    Supercharge Your Skills with Creative Coding

    As developers, we're learning new skills all the time. But how can we stay creative while progressing our careers? In this talk, we'll discuss how we can discover new tools and techniques while having fun. We'll learn how making literally hundreds of demos to unearth new ways of doing things can lead to an entirely new way of working, and most importantly, how to not take things too seriously.

    Read our interview with Jhey.

  • 14:45

    Talk Details

    Chris How

    You Got to Fight for the Right to Delight

    Delight is the currency of design. As creators of products and services, we add the most value for the people who use what we make by creating delight.

    Delight. A word that is overused, misunderstood and under threat.

    It is under threat from the very ways we approach our work. In this talk, I’ll go to battle with the four horsemen of the fast-approaching design apocalypse: lean; agile; analytics; and designOps.

    The paradox of these practices is they should free up the time and energy for teams to tackle more interesting problems and create more exciting outputs. But the way these practices are often used by digital teams inadvertently stifles the very thing they set out to enable. We are in danger of creating more things that are meh! and fewer that are wow!

    This talk will cover the nature of delight (with some surprising digital and non-digital examples). It will offer some practical tips on how you can add and measure delight in your designs. It will make a compelling case for delight and hopefully get you to join a design resistance movement to fight for the right to delight.

    Read our interview with Chris.

  • 15:25

    Afternoon Break

  • 15:50

    Talk Details

    Stuart Langridge

    You Really Don't Need All That JavaScript, I Promise

    JavaScript is your behaviour layer; the way to add interactivity to your sites, to provide a slick and delightful user experience, to make everything fast and easy and clean. But at some point everything changed: the tail started to wag the dog instead and development became Javascript-first.

    We'll talk about how you maybe shouldn't rely on JS as much as you're told to, and some practical strategies for how to build sites without reaching for a JavaScript framework as first, last, and only tool for making the web happen.

    Read our interview with Stuart.

  • 16:35

    Talk Details

    Rachel Andrew

    What's New in CSS?

    It’s an exciting time to be a CSS developer. New features land with every browser update, and many more are in testing, being developed behind browser flags for you to try out. In this talk you’ll discover what is ready now, and what is just around the corner.

    Slides

  • 17:15

    Details

    End and Drinks!

    Join us at The Golden Guinea for a free drink on us!

  • Talk Details

    COVID-19 Policy

    Pixel Pioneers is an inclusive event, and that means we're committed to run a safe event for you. We therefore ask that you're fully vaccinated or take a lateral flow test before entering the venue. Please do not attend the conference if you feel unwell, have COVID-19 symptoms, or have had recent contact with somebody who has. We also advise to wear a mask around the venue wherever it makes sense.

    We will continue to monitor the government guidance and update this policy should anything change.

Don’t miss a thing!

Stay up to date with the latest Pixel Pioneers event news and blog posts. Our regular newsletter is packed with practical and inspiring content, handpicked by Oliver Lindberg, and it’s here that you will also find out first about any discounts and offers that we have lined up for you.

Huge thanks to our partners

  • 20i
  • TetraLogical
  • Interaction Design Foundation
  • GURU
  • State of the Browser
  • proto.io
  • DevITjobs
Partner with us

Without the stellar support of our partners, it wouldn’t be possible to run these events, and even if it was, the experience just wouldn’t be the same. If you’re interested in getting involved, just drop us an email and we’ll discuss how we can team up.

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