Last week I was lucky enough to be able to attend Webstock 2017 in Wellington.  For 2 days, we heard from an amazing array of speakers discussing an amazing array of topics.

If Webstock this year was about anything, it was about inclusivity, empathy, awareness and due to the fact that most speakers hailed from the United States, exasperation at the current state of affairs.  As attendees, we were asked to step back, look at the big picture, and think hard about the things that we build and create for our users.

Anil Dash delivered an excellent talk, urging us to think about the ethical obligations in our work, peppered with a healthy dose of skepticism aimed at some of the current trends on the web.

Kim Goodwin looked toward ways to improve user experience across multi-step and often multi-company processes.

Janine Gianfredi talked about the work being done by her team at the United States Digital Service to improve accessibility to government provided services.  Hopefully the folk from IRD were taking notes…

Lara Hogan discussed her work at Etsy where she’s been focussed on improving site performance and the interesting sequence of events that inadvertently resulted in the site’s highest accolade to it’s users being 4 stars and a horses head instead of the more traditional 5 stars.

There were many other speakers that delivered very interesting talks, and I definitely came away from the 2 day event with a new outlook on the work that I’m lucky enough to do.

The talk that has stayed with me however, came from Lisa Welchman, who walked onto the stage and announced that she would be unable to deliver the talk she had intended to.  The topic somehow seemed more trivial to her in light of recent events.  Instead, she talked about empathy, caring and simply getting work done to move the world forward.  After all was said and done, her closing remark “I care about you, and I love you” will hopefully be something we all took away from the conference and keep with us in the work that we do.