Must-see conference talks for creatives and freelancers

There are lots of great conferences around for designers as well as developers. However it’s often hard to attend every conference you’re interested in. I know this first hand as I live in one of the most isolated cities in the world: Perth Australia. We’re pretty much far away from everything and traveling thousands of kilometres to get to a conference in the US or Europe can get quite expensive (and time consuming). Therefore, it is always great when conference talks are being streamed online or recorded, so I can watch leisurely from my own home.

Some conferences are very well known in the design and/or tech industry, while others not so much. This blog post highlights some YouTube channels that provide interesting talks to watch and listen to form the comfort of your office desk - or living room. Enjoy!

Awwwards

The Awwwards YouTube channel (yes, it’s related to the popular inspiration website awwwards.com) provides a large amount of talks on topics such as user experience and user interface design, freelancing, entrepreneurship and digital design. Some of the speakers include Chris Do (Blind, The Futur), Demian Borba (Product Manager Adobe XD) or Pablo Stanley (InVision). Dig in!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYWGYef22gx8PaXZMLHAQsw/featured

ConvertKit - Craft & Commerce Conference

MailChimp’s competitor ConvertKit organises the annual Craft & Commerce conference at which online creators and business owners talk about what made them successful, and how to start or grow your online venture. Some of the speakers include Pat Flynn, Matt Ragland and Casey Neistat and there are videos from all previous ConvertKit conferences online including 2017, 2018 and 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7uOQK6nAYXbrB2pDeirBFA/playlists

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AIGADesign Conference & Symposium

AIGA is a US association for designers which holds yearly conferences all about design. And guess what? Sessions and talks are recorded and uploaded to the organisation's YouTube channel! Some of the talk topics include "designing for social change", "Mastermind, unlocking your true potential" and "Enterprise design thinking". Definitely check out these talks to see if there's something you can take on board and add to your skillset.

https://www.youtube.com/user/AIGAdesign/playlists

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MixinConf

You might ask yourself: “MixinConf? Never heard of it…”. And that’s alright. MixinConf was a one-off web design and development conference in my hometown of Perth, Australia. While the conference itself took place in October 2016, I believe many of the talks given are still very valuable today and worth a listen! Speakers included Una Kravets (Developer Advocate at Google), Andy Clarke (Art Director) and Joel Califa (Snr Product Designer at GitHub).

And while we’re talking about web design and development talks taking place in Perth, Australia - also check out the YouTube channel of Fenders (short for Front End Developers) Perth. Any talks held during the Fenders Meetups are uploaded to this YouTube channel and centre (obviously) around technology, accessibility and other less techy topics including mental health.

MixinConf

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbGFQdOpbchg4gQcrgq2ACg/featured

Fenders Perth

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaIxZHIOGcSZcpObHjKBgUA

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That’s it for this post. In the future I might curate I small selection of TED talks that are great to watch for designers and developers alike. Stay tuned!