The web we will still be maintaining in 2037
Priya Ramanathan
Why the code you ship this year is a ten-year promise, and how to keep it without slowing down.
Build for the long run
Two days, three streams. Filter by stream, search by topic or speaker, open any session for the details, and star sessions to build your own plan.
Programme
Keynotes and closing plenaries bring everyone together; in between, three streams run side by side. All times are AEST (Melbourne time).
WDAA DevConf 2027 · Thu 19 – Fri 20 August 2027 · Yarra Wharf Conference Centre, Southbank · Times in AEST
Registration and barista coffee
Priya Ramanathan
Why the code you ship this year is a ten-year promise, and how to keep it without slowing down.
Morning tea
Mei Lin Tan
How one studio restructured its design tokens so a full rebrand took two weeks instead of two quarters.
Tom Kowalczyk
Moving tenant isolation from application code into the database, with the performance traps to avoid.
Grace Whitlock
A practical plan for the first three months after you stop being measured on your own commits.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Changeover
Hannah Ibrahim and Sione Taufa
Bring a laptop and audit a realistic checkout with a screen reader, keyboard and the new WCAG 2.2 criteria.
Ravi Menon
The patterns that stopped a freight platform from sending the same delivery notice four times.
Callum Fraser, Amara Eze, Kirsten Holm and Arjun Pillai
Three hiring managers and a moderator on how junior roles, interviews and training are changing.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Lunch
Luca Bianchi-Ward
A year of running React Server Components on a high-traffic retail site, with the wins and the regrets.
Elena Petrova
Build a working blue-green deploy with health checks and automatic rollback on your own laptop.
Zoe Papadakis
Day rates, fixed quotes and retainers compared, with real numbers from eight years of independent work.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Afternoon tea
Yuki Morimoto
When animation helps people understand an interface, when it gets in the way, and how to honour reduced-motion settings.
Ben Achterberg
Logs, metrics and traces that tell you what broke, for less than the cost of one developer's coffee each month.
Nadia Haddad
A one-page structure for technical proposals that gets decisions made in a single review.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Changeover
Leilani Kahale, Sam Whitcombe, Noor Siddiqui, Oliver Dunne and Fatima Rahman
Five members, five minutes each, on something they shipped and what they would change next time.
Welcome drinks on the terrace
Doors open and coffee
Daniel Okafor
What changed when a 60-person engineering team adopted coding assistants, measured over eighteen months.
Morning tea
Jess Callaghan
Turning Core Web Vitals into a budget written in business terms, then keeping everyone to it.
Arjun Pillai
One schema definition generating validation, documentation and a typed client, and what that saved in support tickets.
Marcus Feeney
How to keep a team focused and your manager informed when the roadmap will not sit still.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Changeover
Mei Lin Tan and Hannah Ibrahim
Design, build and test an accessible disclosure and tabs component, from tokens to screen-reader checks.
Tom Kowalczyk
Cache keys, vary headers and the personalisation bug that showed one customer another's account page.
Callum Fraser
What the first two years of management were really like, including the parts nobody warned him about.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Lunch
Sione Taufa
Research-backed fixes that lifted completion of a patient intake form from 54 to 81 per cent.
Elena Petrova, Ravi Menon, Fatima Rahman and Noor Siddiqui
Costs, evaluations and failure modes from three teams running language-model features for real customers.
Kirsten Holm
Practise mentoring conversations in small groups using a simple structure you can reuse at work.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Afternoon tea
Oliver Dunne
Which modern CSS features have earned a place in a large codebase, and which ones caused more trouble than they saved.
Sam Whitcombe
How an insurance group moved a fifteen-year-old quoting system to a new stack without a big-bang cut-over.
Leilani Kahale
From picking a topic to handling the first question, a step-by-step guide for first-time speakers.
No matching sessions in this slot.
Changeover
Amara Eze, Priya Ramanathan, Daniel Okafor, Zoe Papadakis and Jess Callaghan
Four practitioners and a moderator on skills, hiring, regulation and what a good career in web looks like by 2032.
No sessions match. Try another word or show all streams.
Opening keynote · Keynote
Most of what we build outlives the team that built it. Priya looks at a decade of incident reviews, migrations and rewrites at a large hosting provider and pulls out the habits that made old systems pleasant to change and the shortcuts that made them painful. Expect concrete practices rather than predictions.
Principal Engineer, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: Panel: The next five years of web work in Australia (Day 2, )
Closing plenary · Lightning talks
A fast closing session drawn from member submissions: a council booking system, an open-source date picker, a migration off a legacy CMS, a public transport accessibility audit and an internal tool that saved a support team a day a week. Each speaker covers what they built, what broke and what they learned.
Developer Advocate, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: Speaking at your first meetup (Day 2, )
Principal Engineer, Riverbend Insurance Group
Also speaking: Migrating a monolith one route at a time (Day 2, )
Data Engineer, Bluegum Analytics
Also speaking: Panel: Running AI features in production (Day 2, )
Front-end Architect, Mallee & Finch
Also speaking: CSS in 2027: container queries, cascade layers and :has() in real projects (Day 2, )
Machine Learning Engineer, Bluewater Learning
Also speaking: Panel: Running AI features in production (Day 2, )
Front-end and design · Talk
When a client rebranded mid-project, Paperbark Studio found its tokens were named after colours rather than purposes. Mei Lin walks through the three-tier token structure they moved to, the tooling that keeps design files and code in sync, and the naming arguments worth having early.
Design Systems Lead, Paperbark Studio
Also speaking: Workshop: an accessible design-system component from scratch (Day 2, )
Back-end and platform · Talk
Tom explains how a payments platform moved tenant checks out of hundreds of query sites and into row-level security policies. He covers policy design, testing policies like any other code, indexing for policy predicates and the connection-pooling details that catch teams out.
Staff Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Also speaking: Caching at the edge without serving the wrong user's data (Day 2, )
Careers and leadership · Talk
Grace has coached a dozen new tech leads at a civic technology agency. She shares the 90-day plan they now use: what to learn in the first fortnight, which meetings to keep, how to delegate work you could do faster yourself, and how to tell whether it is going well.
Engineering Manager, Northgate Civic Tech
Front-end and design · Workshop
Limited to 30 seats, first come, first served on the day. Starring this session does not hold a seat.
Working in pairs, you will audit a deliberately flawed checkout flow, log findings against WCAG 2.2 success criteria and prioritise fixes. Hannah and Sione cover the criteria added in 2.2, including focus appearance, target size and accessible authentication, and how to write findings developers act on.
Accessibility Specialist, Grevillea Health
Also speaking: Workshop: an accessible design-system component from scratch (Day 2, )
Back-end and platform · Talk
Ravi tells the story of a notification system that duplicated, dropped and reordered messages, and the fixes that settled it: idempotency keys, outbox tables, sensible retry policies and dead-letter queues somebody actually reads. The examples use plain Postgres and a managed queue.
Platform Engineer, Kookaburra Freight Co
Also speaking: Panel: Running AI features in production (Day 2, )
Careers and leadership · Panel
Tasks that once taught juniors the job are increasingly handled by tools. Callum Fraser asks a panel of hiring managers how they now assess juniors, what a first year looks like, and what the industry risks if it stops training new people. Questions from the floor are welcome.
Engineering Manager, Westerly Energy Retail
Also speaking: From developer to engineering manager: an honest account (Day 2, )
Engineering Director, Westerly Energy Retail
Also speaking: Panel: The next five years of web work in Australia (Day 2, )
Learning and Development Lead, Tallowood Digital
Also speaking: Workshop: mentoring conversations that work (Day 2, )
Senior Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Also speaking: Type-safe APIs from schema to client (Day 2, )
Front-end and design · Case study
Luca's team moved a retail storefront to server components last year. He shares the measured changes in bundle size and time to interactive, the caching bugs that reached production, and the boundaries between server and client code they would draw differently next time.
Senior Front-end Engineer, Mallee & Finch
Back-end and platform · Workshop
Limited to 24 seats, first come, first served on the day. Starring this session does not hold a seat.
Using containers and a small sample app, you will build a pipeline that deploys a new version alongside the old one, checks its health and switches traffic only when it is ready. Elena then breaks it on purpose so you can see the rollback work. Laptops with Docker installed are required.
DevOps Lead, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: Panel: Running AI features in production (Day 2, )
Careers and leadership · Talk
Zoe has run an independent web practice for eight years. She compares day rates, fixed-price quotes and retainers using her own anonymised numbers, explains how she scopes work to protect her margins, and shares the contract clauses that saved her the most trouble.
Independent consultant, Papadakis Web
Also speaking: Panel: The next five years of web work in Australia (Day 2, )
Front-end and design · Talk
Yuki shows before-and-after examples from a media publisher's apps where motion clarified state changes, and others where it caused discomfort. The talk covers the prefers-reduced-motion media query, view transitions and a simple review checklist for motion in design critiques.
Interaction Designer, Coastline Media
Back-end and platform · Talk
Ben runs engineering at a twelve-person company. He describes the small observability stack that caught their last three outages early: structured logs, a handful of service-level indicators, sampled tracing and alerts tied to customer impact rather than CPU graphs.
CTO, Tallowood Digital
Careers and leadership · Talk
Nadia reviews dozens of technical proposals a quarter at an insurance group. She shares the one-page structure her teams adopted, the questions that should be answered before any diagram is drawn, and how to run a review meeting that ends with a decision.
Principal Engineer, Riverbend Insurance Group
Opening keynote · Keynote
Daniel shares the numbers his team collected after rolling out AI coding assistants: review times, defect rates, onboarding speed and where developers stopped trusting the tools. He argues that the teams getting value are the ones that invested in review culture and tests first.
VP Engineering, Bluewater Learning
Also speaking: Panel: The next five years of web work in Australia (Day 2, )
Closing plenary · Panel
To close the conference, Amara Eze puts the questions members sent in during both days to a panel spanning platform engineering, product leadership, freelancing and performance. Topics include accessibility regulation, the changing junior role and which skills are worth investing in now.
Engineering Director, Westerly Energy Retail
Also speaking: Panel: Hiring juniors when the entry-level work is automated (Day 1, )
Principal Engineer, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: The web we will still be maintaining in 2037 (Day 1, )
VP Engineering, Bluewater Learning
Also speaking: Assistants in the editor: keeping judgement in the loop (Day 2, )
Independent consultant, Papadakis Web
Also speaking: Pricing your freelance work without underselling (Day 1, )
Web Performance Lead, Coastline Media
Also speaking: The performance budget your marketing team will sign (Day 2, )
Front-end and design · Talk
Jess explains how her team linked page speed to enquiry rates and used it to agree a performance budget with marketing. She covers measuring field data, budgeting third-party scripts and the automated checks that stop the budget quietly eroding release by release.
Web Performance Lead, Coastline Media
Also speaking: Panel: The next five years of web work in Australia (Day 2, )
Back-end and platform · Talk
Arjun shows how his team made a single schema the source of truth for request validation, OpenAPI documentation and generated client types. He covers versioning, the tests that catch drift between code and docs, and the cultural shift needed to keep the schema first.
Senior Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Also speaking: Panel: Hiring juniors when the entry-level work is automated (Day 1, )
Careers and leadership · Talk
Marcus leads delivery at a digital agency where client priorities shift often. He shares the weekly update format, the trade-off conversation and the simple priority log that helped his teams push back constructively and stopped work being thrown away.
Head of Delivery, Saltbush Digital
Front-end and design · Workshop
Limited to 30 seats, first come, first served on the day. Starring this session does not hold a seat.
In this hands-on session you will build a tabs component with the correct roles, keyboard behaviour and focus handling, style it with design tokens, and test it with a screen reader. Mei Lin and Hannah bring the design and accessibility perspectives together. Laptops required.
Design Systems Lead, Paperbark Studio
Also speaking: Design tokens that survive a rebrand (Day 1, )
Accessibility Specialist, Grevillea Health
Also speaking: Hands-on: auditing a checkout flow against WCAG 2.2 (Day 1, )
Back-end and platform · Talk
Tom returns with the post-incident review of a caching bug that briefly served personalised pages to the wrong users. He explains how cache keys and vary headers really behave at the edge, how to split public and private content, and the tests that now guard against a repeat.
Staff Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Also speaking: Postgres row-level security for multi-tenant apps (Day 1, )
Careers and leadership · Talk
Callum describes his move from senior developer to managing a team of nine: the loss of flow, the first difficult performance conversation, learning to measure his week differently, and why he nearly went back. He ends with questions to ask yourself before making the move.
Engineering Manager, Westerly Energy Retail
Also speaking: Panel: Hiring juniors when the entry-level work is automated (Day 1, )
Front-end and design · Talk
Sione redesigned a health provider's online intake form after watching patients struggle with it. He covers question order, error messages that help, autocomplete attributes, saving progress and the usability testing method that found the biggest problems in a single afternoon.
UX Engineer, Grevillea Health
Also speaking: Hands-on: auditing a checkout flow against WCAG 2.2 (Day 1, )
Back-end and platform · Panel
Elena Petrova moderates a candid discussion with engineers who have shipped AI features in logistics, analytics and education. They compare how they evaluate output quality, control costs, handle outages from model providers and decide when a feature should not use a model at all.
DevOps Lead, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: Workshop: a zero-downtime deploy pipeline in an hour (Day 1, )
Platform Engineer, Kookaburra Freight Co
Also speaking: Event-driven without the drama: queues, retries and idempotency (Day 1, )
Machine Learning Engineer, Bluewater Learning
Also speaking: Member showcase: five projects shipped this year (Day 1, )
Data Engineer, Bluegum Analytics
Also speaking: Member showcase: five projects shipped this year (Day 1, )
Careers and leadership · Workshop
Limited to 20 seats, first come, first served on the day. Starring this session does not hold a seat.
Kirsten introduces a short structure for mentoring conversations and then runs three rounds of practice in groups of three, rotating mentor, mentee and observer. You leave with feedback on your own approach and a one-page guide for setting up mentoring in your team or through the WDAA mentoring programme.
Learning and Development Lead, Tallowood Digital
Also speaking: Panel: Hiring juniors when the entry-level work is automated (Day 1, )
Front-end and design · Talk
Oliver audited a large product's stylesheets after two years of adopting modern CSS. He shows where container queries replaced fragile breakpoint logic, how cascade layers ended specificity battles with third-party styles, and the :has() selectors that turned out to be performance problems.
Front-end Architect, Mallee & Finch
Also speaking: Member showcase: five projects shipped this year (Day 1, )
Back-end and platform · Case study
Sam led a three-year migration using the strangler-fig pattern: a routing layer in front of the old system, new routes released one at a time and data synchronised in both directions until each part could be switched off. He shares the timeline, the setbacks and the metrics that kept the business on side.
Principal Engineer, Riverbend Insurance Group
Also speaking: Member showcase: five projects shipped this year (Day 1, )
Careers and leadership · Talk
Leilani runs a speaker mentoring scheme for a developer community. She covers choosing a topic you know well enough, structuring a fifteen-minute talk, rehearsing without a script and managing nerves, then invites a few volunteers to try a sixty-second pitch for their own talk.
Developer Advocate, Saltpan Cloud
Also speaking: Member showcase: five projects shipped this year (Day 1, )
Plan your days
Star sessions in the programme to build a personal plan for both days. This is a planning tool only: it does not register you or reserve a place, and your choices stay in this browser. Nothing is sent to WDAA.
Turn on JavaScript to star sessions and build your schedule. The full programme above works without it.
Your browser is not letting this page save, so your stars will be lost when you leave.
Principal Engineer, Saltpan Cloud
Melbourne
Priya has spent fourteen years on hosting and platform teams and leads Saltpan Cloud's reliability practice.
VP Engineering, Bluewater Learning
Brisbane
Daniel leads a 60-person engineering team building online learning products for schools and universities.
Design Systems Lead, Paperbark Studio
Sydney
Mei Lin builds and maintains design systems for public sector and retail clients.
Staff Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Melbourne
Tom works on data isolation and caching for a payments platform used by small businesses.
Engineering Manager, Northgate Civic Tech
Canberra
Grace manages delivery teams building digital services for local and state government.
Accessibility Specialist, Grevillea Health
Adelaide
Hannah audits and fixes patient-facing health services and trains product teams in accessible design.
UX Engineer, Grevillea Health
Adelaide
Sione designs and builds forms and booking flows for a network of community health clinics.
Platform Engineer, Kookaburra Freight Co
Perth
Ravi looks after messaging, queues and integrations for a national freight business.
Engineering Manager, Westerly Energy Retail
Melbourne
Callum moved from senior developer to managing a team of nine and writes about the transition.
Engineering Director, Westerly Energy Retail
Melbourne
Amara leads engineering for a mid-sized energy retailer and sits on the WDAA board.
Learning and Development Lead, Tallowood Digital
Hobart
Kirsten designs onboarding and mentoring programmes for technology teams.
Senior Engineer, Driftwood Pay
Sydney
Arjun works on public APIs and developer experience, and hires graduate engineers each year.
Senior Front-end Engineer, Mallee & Finch
Melbourne
Luca builds high-traffic retail storefronts and has run server components in production since 2026.
DevOps Lead, Saltpan Cloud
Melbourne
Elena builds deployment pipelines and runs internal workshops on safe release practices.
Independent consultant, Papadakis Web
Geelong
Zoe has run an independent web development practice for eight years, mostly for not-for-profits.
Interaction Designer, Coastline Media
Sydney
Yuki designs interaction and motion for a digital news publisher's web and mobile apps.
CTO, Tallowood Digital
Hobart
Ben runs engineering at a twelve-person software company and keeps its cloud bill small.
Principal Engineer, Riverbend Insurance Group
Sydney
Nadia reviews technical proposals across a large engineering organisation and mentors senior engineers.
Web Performance Lead, Coastline Media
Sydney
Jess leads web performance for a publisher whose pages reach millions of readers a month.
Head of Delivery, Saltbush Digital
Brisbane
Marcus leads delivery at a digital agency working with retail and tourism clients.
Front-end Architect, Mallee & Finch
Melbourne
Oliver looks after the CSS architecture and component library for a large commerce product.
Principal Engineer, Riverbend Insurance Group
Sydney
Sam led the three-year migration of a legacy quoting system to a modern stack.
Developer Advocate, Saltpan Cloud
Melbourne
Leilani runs a speaker mentoring scheme and helps first-time speakers get on stage.
Data Engineer, Bluegum Analytics
Perth
Noor builds data pipelines and language-model features for analytics customers.
Machine Learning Engineer, Bluewater Learning
Brisbane
Fatima builds and evaluates AI tutoring features used by secondary school students.
Demo data: these sponsors are fictional.
Partner with DevConf