June 26th, 6–9 PM. ​“Fireside with founding designers at Instacart, Nike, Maven, and IFTTT.” 

June 25th, 5:30–8:30 PM at GitHub’s SF office. ​“You’ll hear from GitHub designers, developers, and researchers, about their work on design systems, accessibility, brand, and AI.” 

June 24th, 5:30–8:30 PM. ​“Join Design Buddies & Product Disrupt at a pre-Config social mixer at Bunny House! Make new friends and share what you’re working on. Hosted by Grace Ling and Darshan Gajara.” 

June 25, 7:30–9:30 AM. ​“Make new connections while stretching your legs, soaking in the gorgeous bay views, and sipping on espresso. Molly Hellmuth and Socrates Charisis will guide you along a coastal trail with views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Afterward, we’ll enjoy some well-deserved coffee on the beach courtesy of Wix Studio!” 

“In this video, Jory Raphael and Noah Jacobus from Font Awesome will guide you through the crafting of their Config presentation, from initial napkin sketches to final polished slides. They share valuable insights, best practices, and tips for compelling storytelling, while sharing how they made their presentation uniquely ​‘Awesome’.”

Figma shared the Config 2024 lineup with more than 75 speakers from around the globe — it’s absolutely bonkers this year, with folks from Teenage Engineering, The Browser Company, Humane, GitHub, Perplexity, Not Boring Software, Artifact, Ableton, Cron, Linear, Work Louder, Vercel, and many many more. This year’s conference tracks will be organized in a few stages, with separate conversations hosted around design systems, development and code, quality, leadership, etc. Can’t wait!

An event by Dann Petty on Config Day 0? Count me in! Love the idea of making friends before the conference — that will dramatically change the experience of the next 2 days.

If you’re hosting or participating in a community event or meetup during Config 2024, please submit it to Kyler Phillips’ unofficial guide!

Config is back in Moscone Center, San Francisco on June 26–27, 2024 — save the date! Earliest bird tickets cost $175 (75% off!) and save you a guaranteed seat. Config 2023 was an incredible event, so I’ve already got my ticket and hope to make it back next year. The call for speakers is open until the end of this year and the next event will be focused on the five themes — building products, design craft, design systems, development and code, and innovation.

Five industry leaders discuss leading products through design and ​“getting rid of the classic product management function”, as told by Brian Chesky during his fireside chat with Dylan Field at Config. A very impressive lineup of contributors to this piece — Lenny Rachitsky, Julie Zhuo (Facebook), Steve Johnson (Netflix), Sho Kuwamoto and Yuhki Yamashita from Figma.

In episode #461, Brian and Marshall ​“supply some cold (but thoughtful!) takes on everything released during last month’s WWDC and Config 2023.”

It was really cool to relive the conference through Charli’s vlog. I’ve been covering her work for years, and we briefly met in person at Zeplin’s after-party. Now I have a huge FOMO from missing the Design Life podcast meetup, as I headed out to the airport. (Fun fact: I discovered Femke’s work through her vlog from the first Config in 2020, and she is Charli’s co-host of the podcast.)

In-person attendees of Config 2023 found a copy of a playful zine in their swag bags. Figma collaborated with It’s Nice That on The Playbook to showcase the benefits of spontaneous thinking and curiosity through design. Inside, there is a piece on ​“how to embrace (and enjoy) endless iteration” by Chief Product Officer Yuhki Yamashita, as well as an investigation into what it truly means to be a collaborative engineer by Chief Technology Officer Kris Rasmussen. If you prefer getting hands-on rather than sitting down with an essay, there are also a host of activities to tackle.

Shivani used an AI service to make Config 2023 recordings searchable and generate summaries and takeaways. While AI summarization can be hit or miss, searching by a keyword through all talks is surprisingly useful!

Great summary of Brian Chesky’s conversation with Dylan Field on approaching everything at Airbnb through a design lens.

It almost feels like FigJam with its endless board was made for large spatial recaps like this! Great idea and a fun format made by Juarez Filho.

Dan Mall is an expert in design systems and a fellow designer from Philadelphia. Dan organized a post-Config basketball game, hosted a special dinner, and even captained the winning team at the Figmatch design competition. His recap focuses on what makes in-person conferences really special.

Lilibeth Bustos Linares is a teacher at Memorisely and co-organizer of a wonderful morning hike with Zander Whitehurst a day before the Config. Thanks to jet lag I was able to get up at 5:30 am and join the group at 6:30 am. It was wonderful to walk the Historic Trail of San Francisco and chat with so many designers from around the world! 

Damien Correll, Creative Director at Figma, shares some thoughts on the Config brand. Creating an identity for a brief event is an interesting challenge, and Figma’s brand studio does an incredible job every time. The pictograms were my favorite part — they are in lively motion on the screen but feel monumental IRL as wooden cutouts or a statue at Moscone, almost at odds with the temporal nature of the brand.

Joey Banks’ recap of everything announced at Config. (I was lucky to meet Joey and share the scene with him at Config, and his deep knowledge of Figma and expertise in design systems are second to none. Highly recommend subscribing to his Baseline newsletter.)