Webrocker Blog

Ten years ago, the first Border:None Conference happened in Nuremberg. And ten years later, Joschi and Marc had the idea to invite back all the speakers, with the topic of how and what changed in those ten years.

Ten years ago, this was a one day event. This time, Joschi and Marc decided that, also as a sign of what changed over the time, and because the panel back then was only white men, this time a more diverse set of speakers is on, and they added a second conference day.

Yesterday was the first day, and it may surprise some people, but there was not one talk about technical web stuff - closest to "that" talk came Jeremy Keiths reflection on how the web has won the tortoise and hare race regarding features for typography, media and layout, which was a nice closing talk for a day full of thoughts about the greater state of things and people. As Jeremy said during his talk: the greatest challenges the web now faces are not technical. Indeed.
While all talks of that first day were a blast, for me personally Tobias Baldaufs highly highly personal talk about what brought him to this day and the traces that the traumatas of at least two world wars carry over to us as well was THAT talk. Oomp. Gut punch. Goose bumbs.

Today was the second day, and again, the talks were about a variaty of things, but not as web-centered as you might think, but about (personal) changes, and to some extend extreme activities to counter burn out.

Closest to a "traditional" conference talk was Smashing Mags's Vitaly about "Design KPIs" and ways to "sell" the value our work can bring to those who think in business terms mostly.

Mollys talk about impairements and accessibility is a must for anyone who is designing/developing for the people who are using the web.

Vasilis closed the day with a highly entertaining talk about the rather sad state of our industry, where there still is no job for the creative/code hybrids (Editors note: the "true" web designers)

[…] designers who know how to code, who really understand how the web works, who can actually design things for the web, with the web as a medium, who understand the invisible details, who know about the UX of HTML, who know what’s possible with modern HTML and CSS. Yet when they start working they have to choose: you either join our design team and are forced to use a tool that doesn’t get it, or you join the development team and are forced to use a ridiculous framework and make crap. […] Dear web industry, what the fuck is wrong with you? Please fix this. Understand how your tools are lacking. Fix your tools. Hire people who understand this stuff. Let them do their jobs. Let them design the web.

If you want to get an impression of the vibe of the conference, look up the hashtag #bono23 on your social network of choice. This was truly "Border:None" and the idea to reflect on those last ten years and the changes over that decade in "the web" and for the people that spoke there ten years ago was a good one. I think/hope that some of the talks will be published and can be watched online, I will add links here if this happens.

Tomorrow and the day after will be the IndieWebCamp Nuremberg, and I'm looking forward for even more brain food, although I'm a bit over mental capacity already to be honest. :-)

Ten years from now, will there be another iteration of "Border:None"?

Stay tuned.

An afterthought - I wonder how attendees who were at this conference for the first time felt about the sense of "Klassenfahrt" that I experienced. There were a lot of people who where there ten years ago, a lot of (to me) familiar faces I had the pleasure to meet several times over the last ten years. And although this is a very welcoming crowd, maybe this feeling of "they all know each other" is a bit exclusive for newcomers? A kind of club thing? I don't know, but I hope that "we" now are as welcoming as "they" were for me back then, ten years ago when I first was exposed to this wonderful crowd of people.