SmashingConf New York 2015 – a review by Inchoo

Life at Inchoo is not all about hard work. It is also about having fun doing what you love, acquiring new skills and upgrading existing ones to get the big picture and getting the chance to learn from the experience of others. Learning from experiences of others is an important part of individual personal growth and success which benefit greatly to everyone; from said individuals, their team, Inchoo, and ultimately our clients who get to reap the fruits of one’s experiences and views. After all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Following that philosophy, Inchooers can often be seen attending and speaking at various conferences in various parts of the world. Gathering knowledge through experiences of others, traveling and getting to see the world, meeting people and eventually understanding what makes someone tick – all of that results in always fresh ideas that help us solve the problems we encounter every day.

SmashingConf

One of the conferences we attended in June was SmashingConf held at the New World Stages, Manhattan, New York City and organised by creators of Smashing Magazine. Conference was all about real-life projects, workflows and hands-on insights which were all presented on 1 track in 2 days with 15 great speakers that shared their experience about how they work and provided valuable information on designers’ life.

Image courtesy of Artician

Conference in general was focused on experiences and firsthand insight into design, user experience and front-end industry. The organisation of the event was exceptional; from quick check-ins and comfy seats to the funny host and then excellent speakers.

The speakers were just that – enthusiastic and approachable people who are in love with what they do and don’t try to hide it even when on the stage. Listening to those people, watching them live code in front of all of attendees, and finally interacting with them through Q&A sessions was a wonderful experience.

Image courtesy of Artician

Apart from great speakers and topics that ranged from psychology, design, user experience, front-end to perfectionism, performance, and life, everyone involved had lots of fun at the beginning of the conference. We were (too easily) entertained by the interactive laser show. It was a fun version of “Flappy Bird”, called “Clappy Bird”, controlled by the audience and its clapping and made by talented duo Seb-Lee Delisle and Val Head.

Since the conference was conducted in 2 days and everything was sorted in 1 track, we were able to hear brilliant stories, conclusions, and advice from all of the speakers, without being forced to opt for one lecture and to miss the other. To make things even better, Vitaly, the conference host, created collaborative notes using Google docs, which was an excellent way to keep keynotes and takeaways for every speaker, and also showed how people can team up in real time and keep track of the most important information that speaker had introduced to us.

To keep everything in one place, Smashing collected slides, transcripts, notes and much more that happened during the conference onto their Lanyrd account, so even someone who wasn’t there can take a sneak peak and learn about everything the attendees had chance to see and participate in.

Summary

Being a guest at SmashingConf has shown us how co-operation, sharing personal successes and failures, and so helping others are all great ways to connect with the community and even a better way of connecting with people. After all, collaboration is the metaphorical groundwork for both the Web and the growth of individual.