CSS Dev Conf is skipping 2018; returning in 2019
For those unfamiliar with the situation, I have had breathing problems for most of my life, and they culminated in a sudden, unexpected hospital stay during November 2016.
Once the emergency stage had passed, Ari and I decided this might be a wake-up call: neither of us was very healthy or happy with our situation. The stress of running our own business without the proper resources to grow our staff had taken a toll on both of us. We made plans to quietly sunset the rest of our conferences and look for other employment.
CSS Dev Conference was, and is, unique though — it has been a joy to work on since the very first one in 2012, it is well-loved by attendees, and it has served as the launching pad for many of the prominent new voices in CSS and Front-End Development. We wanted to keep it going!
So, from my hospital room in Austin, we planned to go back to crowd favorite, New Orleans, in 2017, thinking the familiar venue would be easier for us, too. While CSS Dev Conf 2017 was a success and a great time — attendees literally parading through the historic French Quarter — a less stubborn, smarter person would have probably said to take it easy for the year and rest up.
I’ve already made huge strides on my health thanks to modern medicine and techniques that weren’t even available a few years ago. But planning the next conference means starting right now. Well, maybe few months before now, actually. Conferences take a lot of time to plan and manage.
Ari and I have always had clear goals for CSS Dev Conf:
1. Fresh Voices
After decades of trying to find ways to spotlight and encourage new speakers, we are proud to be the first major web conference to use double-blind voting. So many new voices have risen from CSS Dev Conf, and we think having the community vote on ideas rather than personalities or affiliations is the reason. As an industry veteran, it’s always exciting to see and meet new faces with a shared passion for the web.
2. CSS Focus First
Our goal with CSS Dev Conf is to make it a front-end developer’s conference focused on the design of the web. While other conferences were general in nature, we wanted to focus on CSS first, mining for details and techniques that the community was curious about. Since you can’t have CSS without HTML and JavaScript, we do end up covering plenty of related technologies and concepts.
3. Exciting Locations
Starting with the first Dev Conf In Honolulu, Hawaii, we decided to choose a new, unique location each year:
- Stanley Hotel outside of Denver, Colorado;
- aboard the permanently docked Queen Mary in Los Angeles;
- in the Hilton Palacio del Rio on San Antonio’s River Walk near the Alamo;
- and the family-owned Hotel Monteleone in French Quarter of New Orleans.
We imbue each event with local flavor and traditions, to avoid that “ generic conference feeling” of sitting in a windowless, characterless meeting room that could be anywhere.
4. An Atmosphere of Inclusion
We have a lot of repeat attendees. Whether they’ve joined us for the first time or the fifth, attendees tell us over and over how much fun they’ve had, how much they learned in such a short time, how they made more lasting connections with attendees and speakers, how much they enjoyed the sense of community. We work hard to create a conference without cliques or pretenses, where everyone — attendees, speakers, volunteers, and organizers — shares the discovery of new technologies and techniques in a very demanding, ever-changing discipline.
⏯ Pausing to Continue
Writing this post pains me. Frankly, I’ve put it off longer than I ought to. Taking this year off feels like I’m letting down an industry and, more important, this great community we’ve grown.
It’s time for me to take some time for myself while I am recovering and working full-time for Frontend Masters — where I’m having a blast. I need to pause and re-charge before going headlong into the future, to make sure we can keep on meeting the goals we’ve set for ourselves and the community.
Till that announcement that we’re back, have a great and healthy 2018. ♥
…and, yes, we’re already discussing locations for 2019.
Sign up for CSS Dev Conf Newsletter
Sign up for our (infrequent) newsletter for news and updates on CSS Dev Conference like the location of the next event, Early Bird tickets sales, and the Call for Speakers opening.
