Be The Browser’s Mentor, Not Its Micromanager

I started last year with “I’m not going to bother speaking at conferences this year” and ended up speaking at 4…

I switched up my attitude because Josh invited me to speak at the legendary All Day Hey! in Leeds. I couldn’t refuse speaking there—especially in my home city (I’m from Bradford but spent way more time in Leeds in my youth).

I needed to write a new talk, so I thought I’d finally formalise what I’ve been obsessed with over the last few years: doing as little work as possible and instead, letting the browser do it for me. Browsers are smart as hell now: why do all the work yourself when they can, right?

I like to do stuff with a real-life context, so I designed a website and built it. You can see it here. The original plan was to break the site down and build key sections live, but luckily, sense took over and I opted for code screenshots and video-based demos of the sections instead.

The reason for this is I am an incredibly nervous speaker. You might not notice while I speak, but I am a trembling mess before and after I go on stage. Live-coding is very risky—especially when you get nerve-induced brain fog like I do. I didn’t want the added pressure and I’m so glad I did that, because showing code samples allowed me to explain them thoroughly to the audience, which I think turned out much better.

Anyway, there’s no point in me describing the talk. I’ll instead link you out to the recordings of each. They all vary because I wrote the talk in a modular fashion. Events vary in how long your speaker slot is, so I wrote the talk to support multiple lengths.

If there’s ever a pro tip from me, this is the one: write your talk in chunks then rehearse the shit out of it so you know how long each chunk is. Then you can show or hide those chunks in your presentation.

All Day Hey! – May 2022

The first recording is All Day Hey! where I was very fortunate to be the closing keynote. I absolutely crapped myself because I had the whole event to build up nerves (I prefer to be early in the day for this reason). I think it went well tho!

SmashingConf Freiburg 🇩🇪 – September 2022

The second was SmashingConf in Freiburg. It was an absolute honour to speak at this event. The SmashingConf series is legendary and I finally got to visit Germany. A win-win.

WDC – October 2022

I love the WDC conference. It’s organised by really good people. The event had a great community vibe and the speakers on the lineup complimented each other really well. There was lots of anti-Tory sentiment to the talks too, which was great.

Content warning: swearing.

State Of The Browser – October 2022

This was a great event. I actually stepped in as a substitute speaker because another speaker fell ill with COVID. Dave, one of the organisers sent me a message while I was on holiday to ask me to step in, and because I’m a big fan of that event, I was more than happy to step in.

I’ll update this with a video when it’s available.

Wrapping up

What’s the takeaway from this whole thing? Well, I’m glad I went against my initial attitude of “no speaking” because I had a blast at these events. I got to hang out with pals I hadn’t seen for years and also meet some incredible people.

A huge thanks to all the organisers who looked after me while I was at their event too. Special thanks to Marc for rescuing me in Germany when the trains were in chaos. That was a hell of a stressful day!

This year, I’ll hopefully speak at events again. I was thinking about doing more of a design talk this year, but I’m leaning towards one on client discovery processes and project planning. If that sounds like it’ll be a good fit for your event, give me a shout!