A design conference, for any serious developer or web designer, is the climax of the year. The number of conferences held every year around the globe keeps increasing, spanning the ‘Edge Of The Web’ conference held in Australia and the ‘SXSW’ and ‘An Event Apart’ series in the US to ‘DLD’ and ‘jQuery Europe’ in Germany. Irrespective of your background, and where you come from, you have something to gain from design conferences. Whether you want to network, share insights or gain knowledge from a design conference, there are so many out there to look out for.
Here is an amazing list of top design conferences across the world to consider, with the majority scheduled to take place annually. Visit the web page of a conference to access more details.
10 Top Design Conferences
- Industry Conference
Gavin Elliot, a popular and incredible organizer of the DIBI Conference that took place in 2010 and 2011, is the mastermind of the Industry Conference. 8 web professionals with diverse backgrounds give practical talks during the event, allowing you to implement knowledge gained in your personal projects or work.
- New Adventures in Web Design
This is a single-track design conference in the historic Nottingham English city. Industry legends Andy Clarke, Sarah Parmenter and Steph Hay offer master-class workshops atop the great speakers that were lined up for 2013.
- Port80
Held for the first time in 2013 and organized by Joel Hughes, Port80 is the first design conference in Wales, Australia. Many local host events are held alongside this annual conference; these low-cost events take place thrice in a year.
- Altitude
Held in the Spinnaker Tower of Portsmouth, Altitude is a distinct conference set about 100 meters above the sea level. Paul Boag, a web entrepreneur, during the conference, interviews top four leaders sourced from four distinct fields, namely: accessibility, development, iOS design and design. This gives conference attendees an insightful and broad industry view.
- SXSW Interactive
This conference is one of the most popular globally, showcasing cutting-edge film, music and interactive/digital technologies every year. Newcomers can find this event daunting in terms of scope and scale. Therefore, it’s important for new designers to prepare well in advance for the SXSW Interactive event.
- Le Web
Designers, dubbed Digital ‘Hippies’, meet at this global conference, Le Web, to openly share their creations and ideas without profit-gains being a major focus.
- Converge SE
Developers and designers meet at the Converge SE conference, held in various venues across Columbia, to explore ‘web mysteries’ in sessions that last half and full days. Grey Hoy, Chris Coyier and James White gave inspirational talks in 2013 to conference attendees.
- Interaction
The Interaction conference is held in the largest design center in Toronto, Canada. Founded over a decade ago, the conference features sessions, workshops, ‘Idea Markets’ and panel discussions, among other great activities to celebrate the diverse community of designers.
- The IUI Conference
This is a highly selective program that was founded in 1997 with a focus on quality. Excellent speakers are featured in the IUI conference to inspire designers attending the event to take part in Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI) research.
- An Event Apart
Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer are the founders of this event. Developers and designers are exposed to great learning experiences they need to create great web experiences. The An Event Apart conference is held all over the US with attendees having access to various sessions and speakers; the former occurs in a single room.
With these great design conferences, your expertise and knowledge in developing tech-savvy web platforms and products or solutions is taken a notch higher.