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! 

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.

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.)

A YouTube playlist with recordings of all 47 sessions (some split into multiple videos) from Config. As the conference had 5 tracks on the first day and 6 tracks on the second, I didn’t attend most of those sessions and looking forward to catching up during the next few weeks.

Herbert and Jenny from Figma’s editorial team take us behind the scenes of Config 2023 with daily recaps of what it was like in the heart of the action.

Dylan’s recap of all the updates from the keynote, in a brand-new blog. ​“Our vision is to build a new kind of design tool — one that is designed for the entire product development team. Today’s launches reimagine how design and development come together in Figma. I’m excited to introduce three ways we’re doing this: making developers feel at home in Figma with Dev Mode, connecting design to the language of code with variables, and putting a step in between a 2D design and a shipped product with advanced prototyping.”

If you have time for only one thing this week, this should be it. First, Figma CEO Dylan Field introduces new features — variables, auto layout updates, and advanced prototyping. Then, CTO Kris Rasmussen talks about rethinking product building from the ground up and how the new Dev Mode is bringing design and engineering closer together. In the end, Dylan talks about file browser refresh, font previews, and what AI could look like in Figma — wrapping things up by announcing the acquisition of Diagram.

I watched every Config keynote over the years, and this year’s announcements were the most anticipated and ambitious ever. It’s incredible to see how Figma is growing in depth and breadth at the same time, now providing incredibly advanced tools while covering an entire product-building process from brainstorming to design to development. Exciting time to be a maker.

Great resource from O/M Studio: ​“Welcome to San Francisco! To celebrate Config 2023 in partnership with Figma, we curated a guide to help you get the most out of your visit to our hometown. Our San Francisco guide points you to all of our favorite restaurants, bars, shops, and activities. Friends don’t let friends drink bad coffee, right?”

Figma dropped a fun pre-Config teaser that gives clues about 5 upcoming releases after solving 5 puzzles. The clues might be more tricky than the puzzles themselves!

The official mobile app for in-person attendees is a great way to see the full conference agenda, build your schedule, access speaker profiles, the location maps, and get real-time updates.

Kyler Phillips launched a really useful unofficial guide to events and meetups taking place during Config 2023 in San Francisco. I’ll be there for a few days and try to join some of them, depending on jet lag and energy level.

If you do not plan to attend Config in person, Friends of Figma organizers offer regional watch parties to watch a live stream of the keynote and connect with the local community. A few of them are organized by Figma (Berlin, London, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo), and many more a led by the community.

Bruno Figueiredo, a Community Advocate for Figma in Portugal, came up with a fun community project — ​“lets all record our journeys from all across the globe heading into San Francisco. It doesn’t need to be perfect or look cinematic. Just grab your phone or camera and record the fun moments, the packing, the ride to the airport or the flight, the registration… all the little bits up until the moment the conference is about to start.” Can’t wait to see the end result!

Socrates Charisis shared a plausible-sounding list of his Config predictions.

Interesting findings about the state of design, tech, and product development from the year-over-year change in Config submissions trends. This year the team received a whopping 1,000 talk proposals 🤯 The general mood of submissions was markedly optimistic compared with the previous 3 years. AI, accessibility, inclusion-related, and designer-developer collaboration topics are on the rise, while mentions of ​“pandemic” and remote work are declining.

Figma announced a list of speakers at this year’s Config, and the lineup is absolutely incredible! It’s a healthy mix of design leaders, makers, and folks behind the product. The agenda is coming soon, but you can get an idea of what might be coming from these answers. It’s not too late to register for an in-person or online event!

I didn’t realize how competitive the speaker selection is at Config 2023. This year the Figma team received over 950 session proposals, and during previous years they’ve had enough time for only about 25.

Edward Chechique shares some ideas for AI features that he hopes to see at Config 2023.

This year’s Config is happening live in San Francisco and streaming worldwide on June 21–22. Registration opens on April 4th. Save the dates!