I had the great privilege to be able to attend the Squares Conference in Grapevine, Texas. This is a fun and informative conference for people in the digital development world. If you have anything to do with design, development, or any online marketing strategery, this is the conference for you.
Structure
The conference itself was two days long on a Thursday and Friday. It lasted an average workday from about 9-5. There were about a dozen speakers over those 2 days. Beyond the conference, there was a workshop on the Wednesday before the official conference started that I did not attend. They also had after parties at different locations of which I also did not attend. Note that lunch was not provided but this was actually a good thing because downtown Grapevine has a lot of good places to eat.
Speakers
The speakers were great. The topics were broad at times but this is understandable because it was a diverse audience in the industry. Some of my favorites were simply about enjoying life and pushing yourself on the creative inner you. The person I enjoyed the most was Chris Lema. He was also at WordCamp DFW 2015. They had other technical speakers that were great. I would say that Val Head and Dan Denney were the ones that I liked the most. Val taught me a lot about CSS animations and the cool tools of Chrome. Dan taught me a lot about the intricacies of the email world.
Overall
I plan on going back for the 2017 conference. The good part about the long wait is that Squares is a sister of another conference in the fall for designers called Circles, which is the original conference that is held for designers. I consider myself more of a developer but It’s not often that I get to be at a conference in my local community and who doesn’t like design?!