No matter where you see yourself in the vast design/frontend/backend spectrum, one thing is for sure: there is always so much more to discover.

This edition of up.front is about people who decided to dig deeper and expand their knowledge beyond the usage of out-of-the-box solutions or the general expectations on them, their role, or their tech-stack.

We look forward to three exciting talks for the first up.front of the year. See you there!

• 

  Ilona Demidenko Beyond The Limitations of Frontend - Onto Fullstack Journey!

  As a frontend developer, there are quite a few closed doors in the house of application development for you. For example, if both of your backend colleagues are on vacation, then you might be stuck and not able to deliver full features to your customers anymore. Same goes the other way around, of course. Once you feel quite good and confident in your current specialization, it makes sense to learn more areas in your stack so that you won\’t be blocked like that, and you can do all the work required from A to Z. This will also make your skill set more valuable in companies that want to move faster. In this talk, you are going to learn what Full Stack Developer really is, and how can a frontend developer transition to being one.

  Ilona is a Frontend Software Engineer at Zenjob GmbH. Her professional interests include web development and web design, focusing on ReactJS applications. She likes to work hard for things that are worth it.

  • ilonacodes.com
  • @ilonacodes
• 

  Oscar Braunert How We Ditched iFrames and Learned to Love Video

  This talk will walk you through the infrastructural decisions and complications Oscar and his team encountered while refactoring the video experience on kitchenstories.com
  You will learn about HLS, poster images and why small gestures can go a long way (in life and opening overlays).

  Oscar is a frontend developer, lover of typography and not very talented in summing up what he his.

  • ovl.design
  • @_ovlb
• 

  Florian Stolzenhain From Content to Frontend: What Lurks Beneath the View?

  Paradigms! It’s what programmers apply when thinking up software. Florian will highlight some gaps in the popular model-view-controller pattern from a frontend perspective and how to cleverly sidestep these by verbalizing and reflecting on your work in teams.

  Florian has been called a hippie on several occassions and has since decided that Peace, Love and Understanding aren’t the worst of paradigms to work with.

  • stolzenhain.net

Our last meetup for 2018 😱 Join us for three talks and get winter-proof for all things visual trends, secure API designs, and browsers. Also, attention companies: This is your last chance to secure a recruiting slot at Up.front before we and all the talent out there go into hibernation.

• 

  Francesco Bianchi Navigating Visual Trends

  The visual design landscape is in constant motion. Every year new trends emerge shaping new visual aesthetics, UI animations, and navigation patterns. As designers we are unavoidably influenced by them –consciously or not – and often dragged into the discussion about whether to adopt or avoid them. Taking part in this discussion is not only a matter of creativity but implies a broader view that includes questions such as: what do these trends mean in terms of the user experience? How are they perceived outside the design community? And finally, what are the guiding principles while tackling and analyzing these trends?

  Francesco Bianchi is a Visual-Interaction designer at Edenspiekermann Berlin, a global design and consulting firm driven by brand, content and technology. Previously, Francesco worked also at Leftloft (Milan) and Landor (Hamburg). He graduated in Politecnico di Milano and participated in the Data-Shack Program at Harvard University. His work explores and combines different fields, from user experience to graphic design, coding and data visualization.

  • @BiaFrancesco
  • francesco-bianchi.com
• 

  Yulia Startsev RFC-Party #3552

  This will be a lightning talk about RFC #3552 and will cover security recommendations for API designs. It will be very fast, covering the most important topics, just enough to get people feeling empowered to read it themselves.

  Yulia is a developer tools developer at Firefox. She is also a representative at TC39 for Mozilla. She likes standards.

  • @ioctaptceb
  • hag.codes
• 

  Julius Sohn & Julius Gehrig Refresh – A Fresh Approach to the Web Browser

  There’s a new email client out there every other week. But there’s little to no new thought given to one of the most used apps out there: The browser. In this talk Julius and Julius walk us through how they approached their research and their process in designing and prototyping their bachelor thesis project Refresh.

  Julius and Julius met in their first semester at the university of applied sciences Berlin. Since then they have worked together on countless uni projects including their joint thesis ‘Refresh’ published in 2018.

  • @juliusgehrig
  • @juliussohn

Up.front happens every month (except during our summer and winter breaks), usually on the second Tuesday of the month. The next Up.front meetups are scheduled for:

• #86 Tue, Mar 12 2019
• #87 Tue, Apr 9 2019
• #88 ???

We are always looking for interesting topics and new perspectives. If you are interested in speaking at Up.front, you are welcome to submit a talk.