My Trip to ConvergeSE

At the beginning of May I attended the ConvergeSE Conference in South Carolina. I chose this conference because of it’s amazing speaker lineup and it did not disappoint. With responsive web design being the new standard, it was nice to attend a conference that gave me a new perspective on the subject.

Workshops were held the first morning of the conference. I attended the Build Responsively workshop covering best practices in responsive design. I really enjoyed all of the hands-on coding examples. They helped drive the message home while keeping the presentation interesting and effective. The presenters, Ben and Jeremy (from seesparkbox.com), gave a great talk on how the web is not a fixed width, and provided a good starting point for introducing best practices and recent developments in the industry.

The remaining days of the conference were filled with thought-provoking lectures from some of the brightest minds in our industry. The conference was split into five tracks: Design, Development, Mobile, Front End, and Business. I attended all of the front end dev talks. The topics ranged from Sass/Compass to Small Screen Navigation, and all of the sessions were filled with awesome people eager to learn about cutting-edge technology.

The highlight of the conference was Fabio Carneiro’s talk on Hard Won Lessons in Responsive Email Design. Fabio did a thorough job of reviewing the common pitfalls in the development process. This topic blended well with the responsive theme of the conference. By building a stronger base using html email best practices, you set yourself up for an easier transition into flexible email designs.

Fabio wrapped up by reviewing his email template structure and how all of the css worked in his reset. He provided a working solution for many of the client quirks that developers have to battle with each day. The talk was very inspiring, and he was able to convince us that email development isn’t so bad if you know the limitations. I wrote up a Email Best Practices for UI Developers post containing all of the awesome tips he shared during the presentation.

Overall this was a great experience. The conference was able to provide highly engaging speakers in a laid back atmosphere. I would recommend this conference to anyone wanting to know more about responsive web design or front end development in general.

Email Best Practices for UI Developers

Speaker Slides:
Build Responsively
Patrick Fulton
Clarissa Peterson
Fabio Carneiro