Announcing the Design & Content Conference

Written by Steve Fisher

December 15, 2014

Designers and content strategists—we’re perfect together.

At The Republic of Quality we've been dreaming. Dreaming big about an event to bring together two essential disciples in the web industry: design and content strategy. We moved from dreamin' to doin'! This summer in Vancouver we'll host, in partnership with Brian Marchand, the first ever Design & Content Conference on August 5-7, 2015! Vancouver is spectacular in the summer.

At the Design and Content conference, we’ll team up and learn from industry leaders how we craft experiences and tell stories that shape the future of the web. A day of workshops, two days of talks, and some amazing extras.

50 tickets at $200 off will be pre-released in late January. This is an exclusive offer for our mailing list, so please make sure you subscribe.

We're thrilled to bring some of the best minds and speakers in the web design and content strategy world to SFU's world-class venue. We’ve brought on event producer, Erik Westra (from Westra & Co.). Erik helped produce the first four years of Confab Events and many other sold out, successful events over the last decade. We're also partnering with Creative Mornings Vancouver to give every conference attendee a ticket to their August 7th, 2015 event.

Our speaker line-up includes:

  • Aaron Gustafson, Founder and Technical Lead at Easy Designs, author of Adaptive Web Design
  • Eileen Webb, Director of Strategy at Webmeadow Consulting
  • James White, the one-man wrecking crew behind the award winning Signalnoise Studio
  • Jared Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
  • Karen McGrane, Managing Partner, Bond Art + Science and author of Content Strategy for Mobile
  • Samantha Warren, Principal, Samantha Warren Design and creator of the widely popular design practice of Style Tiles
  • Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Content Strategy Consultant, author of Content Everywhere, and Editor In Chief at A List Apart
  • Steve Fisher (ME!), Founder, The Republic of Quality and your event host

Submit your idea

That's just the first round of speaker announcements. We've got more coming in 2015 and we're putting out a call for four local(ish) speakers. If you're in the Pacific Northwest and would like to give a 20 minute talk at the Design & Content Conference, here's what you need to do:

  1. Send us an email outlining your talk idea.
  2. Link to a video of you speaking at an event or send us a 3-5 minute video of you explaining your topic. We're not looking at production value, but we are looking for your speaking and communication style. Record something on your iPhone or HD camera—show us that personality of yours!
  3. Tweet about the event and let everyone know you're excited!
  4. Optional and helpful: write a short blog post about why you care about design and/or content strategy and how you see this conference helping those disciplines.

The deadline for submissions is Jan 15, 2015 at 11:59pm PST.

We pay our speakers fairly and hook them up with a speaker coach to prep for the event. We're in this together!

And don't forget, we'll be pre-releasing 50 tickets at $200 off in late January. They will only be announced through our mailing list, so please make sure you subscribe. These tickets will go fast.