Schedule

Web Annotation—now a W3C standard—aims to establish a conversation layer on top of the web. By theoretically allowing anyone to annotate any web page content, it's an ennobling premise and thoroughly web-like: democratic, open and standardized. But with this freedom comes challenges. Content publishers are faced with an anxiety-inducing lack of control over what people say about their content. And nothing in the standard itself protects against conversations devolving into troll-hijacked chaos. The evolution of Web Annotation mirrors that of the Web itself, in miniature, facing off with some of the same big themes of identity, security, authority and freedom.

When impostor syndrome got to be too much for Gavin Elliott, he had to confront his own deep, sophisticated mental health challenges. In a personal talk, Gavin shares how he learned to handle anxiety and imposter syndrome in a society that’s uncomfortable discussing it. As he says: “Being honest about how we feel doesn’t make us weak — we can overcome our impostor.” This talk will discuss mental health support, recognising impostor syndrome, the effect it has on our personal and professional lives, how to deal with it and ultimately overcome your impostor.

Laura explains how her team introduced accessibility to the Financial Times website, FT.com—and their journey from being generally oblivious about accessibility to making it a core part of their process across multiple divisions. Laura shares the the roadblocks encountered and lessons learned along the way as well as practical solutions you can implement in your project today, regardless of available time, resources, or support.

Animations have been around the web for some time already; badly implemented can be deadly to the website’s performance and the user’s delight. Let’s learn together what are the best techniques to get our animations smooth and how the browser renders our page to know where to look for optimizations.

Did you know that a simple website can make your device vibrate, take pictures with the camera, get your location, recognise and synthesise speech, record and process audio with effects, make payments or even connect to wireless devices and play virtual reality experiences? Nowadays the web can do incredible things that we didn't even dream of just a few years ago. In this talk we'll get a sense of the current possibilities of the web platform by taking a look at some of the most interesting present and future Web APIs. Unleash your imagination!

What if, instead going for practicality, we used IoT to create fleeting moments of interaction and beauty? What would happen if others could interact with my clothing via a web app? I was curious to answer these questions when I tackled my latest hardware project. I’ll share my story of building interactive fashion, the obstacles I’ve faced as an IoT newbie, and the solutions I've found to overcome them.

As we start to get comfortable with new ES6 features of JavaScript, both the language and the web platform is charging forward with many new features. This talk will cover some of the best things that are brand new to JavaScript as well as things that we can look forward to in the coming months and years. Strap yourself in for a fast-paced talk full of hot tips as we rocket ourselves into the future of JavaScript.