9:00am – 9:15am: Introduction

9:15am – 10:00am

Responsive Discovery

with Steve Fisher

The underpants of a great web project

Responsive web projects can be daunting, especially with big systems. Your discovery process will make or break the project. But don’t be afraid! This is your chance to find the humanity in your project: the emotional, political, cultural and functional issues that make the difference. Get cozy with your customers, stakeholders, and content authors. We are all allies in the fight to make the web a better place!

Steve Fisher is the creative team nerd-herder at Yellow Pencil in Canada. He leads the charge on coordinating research,  visual and interaction design, and content strategy. On the global stage he’s a sought-after speaker on topics like responsive web design, UX, open source, design thinking, and web process. He also loves Twitter (maybe a little too much). @hellofisher | www

10:00am – 10:45am

Aiming for Love

with Stephanie Hay

How our words and interactions build -- or break -- trust

I love stuff that’s real. It may not be sexy or perfect, but that’s what makes it lovable. And lovable things make people happy and companies grow. But being real takes time, commitment, and honesty — promising to be the easiest, best, or coolest just isn’t enough. So Steph’s going to help all of us People of the Web Responsible for Making it a Better Place to cut the crap from our content and UX, see our users as equals, and make more love all around.

Steph Hay is into BBC programs, CrossFit, and sandwiches. She makes content and UX work together for awesome clients like Happy Cog and UIE. Steph also edits Workspace Design Magazine, which she co-launched in 2010. She wants to marry Vancouver. @steph_hay | www

10:45am – 11:15am: Coffee Break

11:15am – 12:00pm

Responsive Web Design is Hard/Easy!

with Dan Mall

Be Afraid/Don't Worry!

Things sure have changed! In a multi-device world where waterfall methodologies and full page comps don’t cut it anymore, how are we expected to know how to build modern, responsive websites when everything we seems to be wrong? Fear not: Dan Mall will share a few stories about how to make sense of it all, get clients to trust you more than ever, whip Photoshop back into the right tool for the job, and get back into the groove of owning the internets.

Dan Mall is an award-winning designer from Philadelphia, an enthralled husband, and new dad. As the Founder & Design Director at SuperFriendly, Dan and his team defeat apathy and the forces of evil with heroic creative direction, design, & strategy. He’s also co-founder of Typedia and swfIR, and sings/plays keyboard for contemporary-Christian band Four24. Dan was formerly Design Director at Big Spaceship, Interactive Director at Happy Cog, and a technical editor for A List Apart. @danielmall | www

12:00pm – 12:45pm

Tall Tales from a Large Man

with Aaron Draplin

The talk that has kicked conference's asses the world over. Seriously.

Using scientific proof and state-of-the-art multimedia techniques, Aaron James Draplin of the Draplin Design Co. delivers a suckerpunch of a talk that aims to provide bonafide proof of work, the highs and lows of a ferociously independent existence and a couple tall tales from his so-called career in the cutthroat world of contemporary graphic design. Just a regular American guy with a trajectory a little dirtier than yours, his talk is open to all oncomers brave enough to show up. If you are a youngster, you may find yourself inspired to attack your design future in a different way. If you are established, you may just leave feeling grateful you don’t have anything to do with him. Hard to say. Be there!

Located in the mighty Pacific Northwest, the Draplin Design Co. proudly rolls up its sleeves on a number of projects related to the Print, Identity, Web Development, Illustration and Gocco Muscle categories. We make stuff for Coal Headwear, Union Binding Co., Richmond Fontaine, Field Notes, Esquire, Nike, Wired, Timberline, Chunklet, Incase, Giro, Cobra Dogs, Burton Snowboards, Hughes Entertainment, Megafaun, Danava, Ford Motor Company, Woolrich and even the Obama Administration, if you can believe that. We pride ourselves on a high level of craftsmanship and quality that keeps us up late into the wet Portland night. @draplin | www

12:45pm – 1:45pm: Lunch

1:45pm – 2:30pm

Colouring the Web

with Geri Coady

Things to Remember When Working With Colour

In a time where exciting things like HTML5, CSS3, and responsive design are at the top of everyone’s minds, a complex topic like colour can easily be brushed aside by designers, developers, and clients alike. When used appropriately, it can be a powerful method of communication with strong persuasive effects, but when used inappropriately, the effects can be much more serious than you think. In this session we’ll learn a variety of important things to remember when working with colour on the web — things like colour theory, message and meaning, accessibility, coding tips, and even the dreaded topic of colour management — proving that colour needs to be considered in every step of our design process.

Geri Coady is a designer and illustrator living and working in Newfoundland, Canada. She is a former Art Director at a Canadian advertising agency and is now pursuing her own clients as a full-time freelancer. As a self-admitted conference junkie, Geri has been seen both on the stage and in the crowd (where she’s likely got a camera around her neck). Geri loves chatting about nerdy things on Twitter and has shared her thoughts in publications such as .Net, Digital Arts, and 24 Ways. She has recently illustrated a children’s book for Scholastic UK. @hellogeri | www

2:30pm – 3:15pm

Value In The Invisible

with Robbie Manson

Seeing value in the invisible is what separates good makers from great makers

Good design depends on recognising the promise of ideas early on. Nurturing them and giving them form. As we do, our mantra should be to seek problems, not simply solve them. Problems are nothing more than obstacles on the road to somewhere better. And it’s the value we see in those fragile ideas that brings us together and results in our best work.

Robbie Manson is a designer at FreeAgent in Edinburgh, Scotland, trying to put the Little Guy back in control. As design lead on the FreeAgent app overhaul, mobile web experience and award-winning Earnest iOS app, he’s at home turning data into tools that help people do more of what they love. He also helped create Filums, a web app for film nuts to catalogue the films they watch, own and lend. @rougebert | www

3:15am – 3:45am: Coffee Break

3:45pm – 4:30pm

The Fine Art of Accessibility

with Derek Featherstone

Building web sites and applications is a pursuit where we learn a great deal and can be reasonably successful in a very short period of time. But to become true masters of our craft, we investigate subtleties and nuance in an effort to perfect our work, aiming for constant improvement. We specialize in areas of performance, scalability, maintenance and more. It is part of what we do as dedicated professionals who are committed to our craft. Accessibility is one of many areas where details matter. In this talk, Derek will guide you through a tour of design and development decisions that we make that ultimately play a significant role on the utility of an interface – more significant than we think. You’ll see examples that will help you question standard practice and convention as you see first hand the impact our decisions make.

Derek Featherstone is an internationally-known speaker and authority on accessibility and web design. He spends his time as the lead of Simply Accessible Inc., based in Ottawa, Canada. The team works with Fortune 500 corporations, educational institutions, public utilities, government agencies and other private sector clients. He always puts the user first and strives to make the web a better place by designing experiences that are easy to use for everyone, including people with disabilities. @feather | www

4:30pm – 5:15pm

Mobile Web Design Anti-Patterns

with Dave Shea

Mobile design is necessarily about embracing constraints, but sometimes we go too far. We strip down our content to a bare minimum in pursuit of misguided ideals about mobile context. We provide ‘useful’ mobile UI components that immediately proceed to get in a user’s way. We make improper assumptions about a user’s environment. Let’s place dozens of these mobile design anti-patterns under the microscope and talk about why they don’t work, and what we should be doing instead.

Dave Shea is the creator and cultivator of the highly influential website csszengarden.com, and co-author of The Zen of CSS Design (New Riders, 2005) with Molly Holzschlag. His current role is VP of User Experience at Mobify Inc. Previously he ran Bright Creative, a one-man studio in Vancouver, working on projects for New York University, Google, CNet, Joyent and others. He speaks internationally at conferences and workshops and was an organizer of the North American arm of Web Directions, a popular international conference series. His recent extracurricular interests have included icon design, the Processing visual language, GPS tracking his road cycling trips, and improving his home craft brewing techniques. @mezzoblue | www

5:15pm – Conclusion

7:00pm – After Party