The Future Friends Conference

ffconf is held at the historic Duke of Yorks picturehouse in Brighton, UK. The event is in its 11th year, and is lovingly curated and run by Remy & Julie Sharp.

The event aims to inspire, inform and educate people who work on the web who want to make the web a better place. You'll see talks on community, performance, tools, debugging, business, IoT, Just JavaScript and more.

Also see our historical archive of videos, audio and slides.

Sessions you'll see

TitleTopics
Engaging Empathy#betterment, #community
What does it take to become a developer in 2020?#betterment, #community
Getting more from Git#development & ops
8 Unbelievable Things You Never Knew About Tracking#big web ideas
From Milliseconds to Millions: A Look at the Numbers Powering Web Performance#betterment
Effortless Performance Debugging#javascript, #performance
Taking The Web Off The Screen#javascript, #creativity
Adventures in reinventing interfaces#javascript, #iot, #fun

Are our speaker photos hard to make out? That's on purpose, we don't announce our speakers right away, but if you would rather know you can drop us an email and we'll tell you

  1. 09:0009:40

    Registration

  2. 09:4009:50

    Opening remarks

  3. 09:5010:30
    Sharon Steed

    Engaging Empathy

    My talk

    Empathy and vulnerability aren't necessarily two words associated with professional success, but they're invaluable to achieving long-term goals leaders set for their companies. Lets both define what those look like at work and how to engage them for optimized collaboration.

    My origin

    I always loved the tech industry but I couldn't code and never worked at a tech company. So I started speaking at conferences about what I knew: stuttering, marketing and vulnerability. One day, I got invited to speak at a tech conf (Hi @jremsikjr 👋🏾)

  4. 10:3011:10
    Amina Adewusi

    What does it take to become a developer in 2020?

    My talk

    Amina shares her story about what it takes to become a developer after teaching herself how to code, juggling a full-time job and baby.

    My origin

    I taught myself how to code soon after becoming a mother. I realised that continuing my job travelling around the world was a slightly optimistic view of my mothering abilities! After googling "work from home" I discovered software engineering and decided to give it a go.

  5. 11:1011:40

    Coffee break (30 mins)

  6. 11:4012:20
    Alice Bartlett

    Getting more from Git

    My talk

    Git is like a Swiss Army Knife for telling the story of your project. Yet most of us are only using the big knife and maybe the scissors to fudge our code into version control. In this talk we're going to learn about some more advanced Git commands and some history too.

    My origin

    Needed a 5th option to study at AS level. Asked the person next to me. Started with the Computing A level now we here.

  7. 12:2013:00
    Laura Kalbag

    8 Unbelievable Things You Never Knew About Tracking

    My talk

    The web, and big tech at large, is tracking our every move, habit, and facial expression. As developers who are also users, we both contribute to the surveillance system and are exploited by it. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    My origin

    In my teens I made fan sites for local bands and a showcase for my own creepy goth art. Slicing pictures of websites into table layouts even though they’d been uncool for a couple of years already, because I just did what the first search result told me.

  8. 13:0014:30

    Lunch break (90 mins)

    Recommendations at ffconf.org/food.
    Travelling alone? Meet new friends with tables booked at Al Campo or stay at the cinema and order a pizza!

  9. 14:3015:10
    Harry Roberts

    From Milliseconds to Millions: A Look at the Numbers Powering Web Performance

    My talk

    We all know performance is big business, but how big? Let's take a look at some of the numbers powering the web performance industry, from both sides of the table. What do performance improvements mean for my clients, and how do we translate that into a working relationship

    My origin

    I'm a failed designer who learned it the hard way: I was much better at coding my portfolio site than I was at designing it. I decided to admit defeat and stick with keyboards and clearfixes.

  10. 15:1015:50
    Anna Migas

    Effortless Performance Debugging

    My talk

    During the session we will talk about the causes of painful performance and look into simple and actionable steps how to make a website more performant with a little effort.

    My origin

    I wanted to study English, but my final test results weren't good enough. I was looking through all majors I could apply for at Uni and found out HCI-like degree course

  11. 15:5016:15

    Ice cream break (25 mins)

  12. 16:1516:55
    Charlotte Dann

    Taking The Web Off The Screen

    My talk

    The rise of generative art has brought a whole new wave of creativity to the web; this talk is about the myriad of ways we can use all that coding knowledge to make cool art in the physical realm.

    My origin

    Got carried away tweaking Tumblr themes, discovered it hurt my fingers less than my other teen hobby of weaving chainmaille, been tip tapping ever since.

  13. 16:5517:35
    Suz Hinton

    Adventures in reinventing interfaces

    My talk

    Computers and other electronic devices existed for a long time before the web made its debut. Can modern web interfaces help invigorate the small computing space, while driving a new set of creative developers to invent better and more playful experiences?

    My origin

    My dad brought home our first family computer, a second-hand Commodore 64, when all of my friends were already using PCs with Windows 3.1. I fell in love with programming from that first day of typing commands in BASIC.

  14. 17:3517:50

    Closing remarks

  15. 17:50Late

    After Party

    OhSo Social
    Order some food (until 9PM), join in our board games and enjoy a drink on us (wide range of non-alcoholic and hot drinks also available).
    OhSo Social is situated right on the seafront, look out for the green doughnut!
    250a King’s Rd, Brighton BN1 1NB

Workshop
Remy Sharp

Modern Universal React dev with Next.js

Next.js is a framework for building React applications with automatic server side rendering support, which results in improved performance over "vanilla" React. The framework also offers zero configuration, automatic code splitting and prefech out of the box.

Full detailsBuy tickets

Workshop tickets include a ffconf pass ticket for the conference on Friday.

Our inclusion statement

ffconf takes diversity and inclusion seriously. We know that a diverse line-up is important for the inclusion of marginalised people in the tech community.

We want people to attend because of the content we provide, not who's presenting it. As such, we only reveal our speakers at the day of the conference.

This statement is our approach to make our commitment to diversity and inclusion as transparent as possible. We are striving to do better each year.

In the previous 4 years, ffconf's speaker distribution included over 50% women and POC and each year we intend to maintain diversity in our speakers. And we are proudly holding our event in Brighton.

This isn't something we should be proud of, because it should be the norm, but it is what we've got and we'd like to share that with you.

You can also apply for our scholarship, open until the 16th of September.

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