READING TIME CA. 2 MINUTES

For two days, Beyond Tellerrand is all about design, UX and front-end development, or more generally: inspiration, creativity and innovation. Developers and designers from all over the world came together in Berlin at the beginning of November to learn from young rebels and old hands of the web and to have their horizons broadened by people who have nothing to do with the internet.

Unlike many others, the conference only has one track, which saves visitors from having to choose. The individual speakers were carefully selected and all offered a high level of information and entertainment value. Of the total of thirteen talks, five in particular remained vividly in my memory. Jake Archibald, who works as a Developer Advocate for Google Chrome, spoke about numerous simple ways to optimize loading times in his talk Modern Progressive Enhancement. Among other things, he advised the asynchronous loading of scripts, the use of service worker scripts and the omission of web fonts as a requirement for initial rendering. Brad Frost spoke about the fact that style guide best practices are not limited to design, but can and should also include the language of the website and the code style. He also recommended reducing the design to the smallest possible building blocks that can be put together to form larger compositions. This makes it easy to avoid design faux pas such as inconsistent button designs.

Two talks dealt with the physical web and its impact on the future interaction between people and the internet. In Building the Physical Web together, Scott Jenson described the various possible applications, from beacons in vending machines and parking meters to dog collars, and clearly differentiated the physical web from QR codes and the Internet of Things. In her talk How to Win at Mobile Accessibility, Marcy Sutton explained the requirements that accessibility places on the mobile internet. From the support of screen readers and the correct use of HTML semantics to the appropriate size of buttons ("Optimize for fat fingers!"), Sutton presented a series of hurdles that make it clear that accessibility still has a long way to go. A real highlight - and completely unrelated to the topic of the web - was Chip Kidd's talk. Under the title "! or ?" (meaning "Clarity or Mystery"), he examined how much mystery design can tolerate without becoming unclear and how much exaggerated clarity can damage design. He also vividly demonstrated that the closest you can get to solving a problem is when you have fully understood the problem.

But the talks were not the only highlights. The location in the Admiralspalast with its elaborate lighting concept underlined the pleasant atmosphere. The warm-up event in Microsoft's Digital Eatery, the numerous breaks and the social event provided a great setting for exciting conversations and new acquaintances. Probably the most commented gimmick of the conference, however, was the "sketchnotes in music" by DJ Tobi Lessnow, who converted recordings of the individual speakers into music during the breaks between the talks.

All in all, the conference was a success in my eyes and I would be very happy to be able to explore again what is hidden behind the edge of the plate.