- DDD Perth 2026
I attended DDD Perth for the second time today. This time, not just as an attendee, but also as a first-time speaker!
I caught a few talks, but there were two standouts of those I saw:
- Matthew Pierce presented Rethinking Web: Can we do more with less? about web platform features that can be embraced in place of frameworks, abstractions, and libraries,
- Sierra McDowell presented The pursuit of spending $0 - building a zero-cost cloud data platform which was a fun, free-tier-exploiting-tale.
One of the issues with a multi-track conference is that there are too many brilliant talks going on simultaneously, and one can’t be in five places at once!
I made a point to be very outgoing and talked to so many people. A few people recognised me from my work and name, which remains an extremely surreal experience, and I got to have interesting hallway chats with such a variety of folks with different skills.
My talk was titled ‘Newly Acquired Powers of the Web Platform’, and I ran through a handful of fantastic new features of the web platform. HTML and CSS have seen so many new additions in recent years, so I ran through text-wrap: balance, flex-wrap: balance, corner-shape, text-box, sibling functions, color-mix(), contrast-color(), invoker commands, scroll-driven and scroll-triggered animations, and view transitions, while cramming mentions of a few more additions in too. Jam-packed! I’d have included more if I wasn’t already on the edge of my time limit.
I had some nerves, though they were mostly pertaining to if my laptop and custom web-based slide deck system would work fine on the AV system of the venue. Rather than replicate the output of the code I was talking about in PowerPoint or similar, it felt proper to use the web directly. Thankfully, everything ran smoothly, and I managed through the presentation without issue. I was late out at the speaker’s dinner at the venue-adjacent pub last night and early rising to get prepared and to the conference, so I only got three and a half hours in the early hours of this morning. Perhaps not optimal, but I managed.
The industry is in a shaky state at the moment, so to have a brilliant community conference with 1000-odd attendees like DDD Perth is a welcome sight. I’m feeling very inspired. My talk is recorded and will be published online at a later date.
All my many thanks go to the volunteers, organisers, other speakers, sponsors, and everyone else that made the event possible.