Building a Better Web
June 11–12, 2018: Training
June 12–14, 2018: Tutorials & Conference
San Jose, CA

Schedule: Performance and UX sessions

9:00am–12:30pm Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Location: 210 B/F
Secondary topics:  Hands-on, Technical
Rachel Krause (Nielsen Norman Group)
Average rating: ****.
(4.80, 5 ratings)
To create a successful product, you need a solid understanding of your users. The key to success? Collaboration. Rachel Krause walks you through a collaborative process for creating a product users will love, from establishing users to creating a design that can be taken right into development without the need for high-fidelity mockups or detailed documentation. Read more.
9:50am–10:30am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Best practice, Technical, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Nic Jansma (Akamai), Charles Vazac (Akamai)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 6 ratings)
Nic Jansma and Charles Vazac perform an honest audit of several popular third-party libraries to understand their true cost to your site, exploring loading patterns, SPOF avoidance, JavaScript parsing, long tasks, runtime overhead, polyfill headaches, security and privacy concerns, and more. They also share tools to help you decide if a library’s risks and unseen costs are worth it. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Best practice, Technical, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Max Firtman (ITMaster Professional Training)
Average rating: ****.
(4.71, 7 ratings)
After you understand how important web performance is and have applied basic techniques, what's next? Max Firtman covers extreme web performance techniques that will blow your mind, from new compression algorithms and new image formats to client hints and HTTP/2 push. Join in to learn how to hack web performance. Read more.
3:35pm–4:15pm Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Technical
Paul Calvano (Akamai Technologies)
Average rating: ****.
(4.50, 4 ratings)
Have you ever thought about how your site’s performance compares to the web as a whole? Paul Calvano explores how the HTTP Archive works, how people are using this dataset, and some ways that Akamai has leveraged data within the HTTP Archive to help its customers. Read more.
9:50am–10:30am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Location: 210 C/G
Secondary topics:  Best practice, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Ally Long (Field Intelligence)
Average rating: ****.
(4.50, 2 ratings)
Ally Long explains how to design and build products for a different kind of digital landscape than many of us are used to: the billions of people around the world who now have access to connected smartphones but can afford only a few megabytes of data here and there, have cheap, low-powered devices and unreliable electricity, and are learning to use digital interfaces for the first time. Read more.
11:00am–11:40am Thursday, June 14, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Case study, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Average rating: ****.
(4.40, 5 ratings)
Making your site faster seems so easy in theory, but in practice, diagnosing and fixing performance issues on a large legacy codebase is like being an archaeologist excavating the remains of a lost civilization. Pick up a trowel and join Katie Sylor-Miller to learn real-life lessons on how Etsy uncovered and fixed performance issues in its mobile product page code. Read more.
3:35pm–4:15pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Hands-on, Technical, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Patrick Hamann (Fastly)
Average rating: ****.
(4.40, 5 ratings)
HTTP/2 server push gives us the ability to proactively send assets to a browser without waiting for them to be requested. Sounds great, but is this new mechanism really a silver bullet? Using new research and real-world examples, Patrick Hamann leads a deep dive into server push and attempts to answer the question we're all asking: Is it ready for production? Read more.
4:25pm–5:05pm Thursday, June 14, 2018
Location: 210 A/E
Secondary topics:  Best practice, High-level, Web Pillars Track: Performance, Security, Accessibility
Mark Zeman (SpeedCurve)
Average rating: *****
(5.00, 4 ratings)
There are a wide variety of web performance metrics, but which ones should you focus on and share across your organization? Mark Zeman explains which performance metrics best represent the user experience and walks you through techniques for improving your UX performance metrics and getting the content that users care about the most in front of them as fast as possible. Read more.