WDC 2025
Published by Maureen Holland
The first line from my notes is “Does anyone wanna hear some a cappella screamo?” Yes, I enjoyed this conference.
Luke Murphy knows how to roll with technical difficulties. They did not, in fact, perform a cappella screamo, but they did a great job MC-ing the event. Kudos also to Alex Older, the other half of Bristol’s Web Dev Conf organizing team. It was a good time.
The time loop: How 2024 Became 2004 (and why we should embrace it), Tey Bannerman
Joy + Discipline = Unfair Advantage
Tey noticed a pattern on his Github contributions. Well, a gaping void, really. He was doing great corporate work but wasn’t motivated to build anything for himself anymore. LLMs unlocked that feeling of “I can just create stuff” again.
Start small. Hold yourself accountable (or find an accountability buddy). Make stuff that makes you happy.
📚 Book recommendation: David Epstein’s Range
A Website To End All Websites, Henry Desroches
Yes, that Henry Desroches.
On today’s web, social platforms are designed for engagement instead of connection: “pens for trapping us and our little piggy attentions.” Henry wants more tooling for “freedom, creativity, independence, and will.”
More blogs and RSS and webmentions. More ActivityPub and AT Protocol, and bridges between these services. More personal sites.
📚 Book recommendation: Ivan Illich’s Tools for conviviality
Design for Developers, Lex Lofthouse
Lex demonstrated the power of guiding your design work with the following principles:
- Hierarchy
- Proximity
- Contrast
- Balance
Good anchors for non-designers like myself. Good touchstones for experienced designers like Lex.
Also, typography is powerful:
Couple of cool typographic tools I’ve now bookmarked:
Lightning talk: Rapid-fire advice from a burned out gobshite, Scott Riley
I was lucky to catch a fuller rendition of Scott’s talk earlier this year at State of the Browser (and his Piccallili course, Mindful Design is now on sale!). Here’s a few quotes from this most lightning of lightning talks:
Friends don’t let friends use obliques or faux bold
Keep a project diary
Delete your backlog every three months
📚 Book recommendation: Elliot Jay Stock’s Universal Principles of Typography
Death, and how tech forgot about mortality, Michael Kibedi
A particularly memorable slide: all Michael’s sources of inspiration on this topic.
I learned about the grief tech sector through this talk. I don’t feel particularly good about it. Goddamn, people accessing these services are going to be in a vulnerable state and I have pretty much zero faith that the industry will treat their data with respect.
Whatever sector you’re in, restore my faith in humanity by considering the following questions from Michael:
- What should our service do when a user dies?
- How will users get their data if our service ends?
- Will our user’s data be accessible in fifty years?
📚 Book recommendation: Tamara Kneese’s Death Glitch
An Introduction to the World Wide Web for Very Senior Programmers, Salma Alam-Naylor
There’s always one talk I know I’ll never be able to do justice to in writing. This is the one.
I want to call it a tone poem to the dawn of HTML 2.0 in 1995, but I don’t know what a tone poem is. That’s somewhat fitting, as I did not understand most of the references in this talk. That said, Salma is a born presenter and I was happy to be along for the ride.
Lightning talk: How to fix a Gameboy, Remy Sharp
Do I have a gameboy? No. But I know where I can get one if I want one. Remy’s talk was a great reminder of the value of a consumer’s right to repair.
Places to start your investigation:
- Power
- Sound
- Cartridge
- Screen
Tools you might need:
- Isopropyl alcohol
- Tri-wing screwdriver
- Soldering iron
- Multimeter
Design engineering – from design to engineer, Jhey Tompkins
Don’t put the polish before the foundations.
Jhey emphasized getting the semantics and functionality right before exploring the razzle-dazzle stuff. He encouraged going on side quests to build out your understanding of web capabilities.
Once you have a lot of little things mastered, then you can string all this seemingly random knowledge into a truly knock-out effect.
Wrapping up
The Watershed may have been my favourite venue so far. I kind of want to go back just to see a movie there.
I was pleased with myself for remembering to book accommodation the night before the conference so I wasn’t on a train for 7 hours in addition to socializing for 8 hours. Made a huge difference. (Reminder to future self: the accommodation cost is worth it)