Smashing Conference Freiburg 2026
Posted in daily
Yay! I’m off to SmashingConf Freiburg! 🎉
Last year, I had to cancel my trip at the last minute, but managed to follow the conference online. This year, I’m in the train riding up to Freiburg.
My favourite events
I’m grateful to be able to take part in events such as these, meeting up with friends, being inspired by talks and presentations, discovering new tools, sharing thoughts and feelings on our industry has always been a big booster for me.
Events like SmashingConf or beyond tellerand are getting increasingly difficult to organise. Many friends in medium to large organisations are having trouble justifying attending these kind of events. They are under increasing pressure to justify via a certificate or some kind of paper, that they have acquired new skills, or validated a level of training that will supposedly benefit their organisation in the short term. It's shortsighted if you ask me.
Motivation and inspiration
Values such as curiosity, sharing, being inspired, meeting new people, and through them discovering new ways of getting things done (or not) seem not track as much as they use to. I find that inspiration and ideas spring up in the weeks, or months following an event, not necessarily immediately after. There’s like a reality distortion field that sets in when you spend a few days exchanging with like minded peers, that drops when reality hits back on your return, but the seeds remain and the happiness and motivation I bring back remains. As a freelancer, these kind of event are essential for me.
More soon 😎
Make friends, not followers
Michael Flarup wrote about the comeback of small conferences in his newsletter that echoes another reason why I like attending these kind of events so much:
A conference is one of the few places where a scattered online community briefly becomes real.
There’s a realness that comes from meeting your peers face to face. All of the fluff that so often surrounds online discourse falls away. There is no hype, just passion. No engagement hook, just curiosity.
Instead of making followers, you make friends.
