Harry Roberts is speaking at Web Day Out

I was going to save this announcement for later, but I’m just too excited: Harry Roberts will be speaking at Web Day Out!

Goddamn, that’s one fine line-up, and it isn’t even complete yet! Get your ticket if you haven’t already.

There’s a bit of a story behind the talk that Harry is going to give…

Earlier this year, Harry posted a most excellent screed in which he said:

The web as a platform is a safe bet. It’s un-versioned by design. That’s the commitment the web makes to you—take advantage of it.

• Opt into web platform features incrementally;
• Embrace progressive enhancement to build fast, reliable applications that adapt to your customers’ context;
• Write code that leans into the browser, not away from it.

Yes! Exactly!

Thing is, Harry posted this on LinkedIn. My indieweb sensibilities were affronted. So I harangued him:

You should blog this, Harry

My pestering paid off with an excellent blog post on Harry’s own site called Build for the Web, Build on the Web, Build with the Web:

The beauty of opting into web platform features as they become available is that your site becomes contextual. The same codebase adapts into its environment, playing to its strengths, rather than trying to build and ship your own environment from the ground up. Meet your users where they are.

That’s a pretty neat summation of the agenda for Web Day Out. So I thought, “Hmm …if I was able to pester Harry to turn a LinkedIn post into a really good blog post, I wonder if I could pester him to turn that blog post into a talk?”

I threw down the gauntlet. Harry accepted the challenge.

I’m sure you’re already familiar with Harry’s excellent work, but if you’re not, he’s basically Mr. Web Performance. That’s why I’m so excited to have him speak at Web Day Out—I want to hear the business case for leaning into what web browsers can do today, and he is most certainly the best person to bring receipts.

You won’t want to miss this, so be sure to get your ticket now; it’s only £225+VAT.

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