I don’t apply to many Call for Papers right now, because I just get so busy. If a CFP isn’t going to announce for a few months, I don’t want to apply and then have some other thing fill that gap before the decisions are made. One CFP I do tend to put an idea into, is the one for CSSconf EU. That conference has a special place in my heart. It’s a CSS conference by people who love CSS, and who also care about the people who write and create CSS. It is also held in my favourite city in the world, Berlin. A note to the wise is that it is possible to get me to agree to all kinds of things if they involve a trip to Berlin!
This year I’m very happy to announce that my proposal was chosen, and I’ll be back in Berlin at the end of May with a presentation called Hello, Subgrid. I’m going to be talking about new features of the Grid Layout specification. I don’t know if we’ll have a browser implementation of subgrid at that point, however I’ve never let lack of browser code stop me sharing an idea!
The first time I spoke about Grid Layout at CSSconf EU was in September 2014, which may seem a little premature in retrospect given that Grid didn’t escape from behind browser flags until 2017. However it was at that conference that I really understood how exciting Grid was going to be to other CSS developers. I spent the entire conference just talking to people about Grid, and I also got to meet several people from Igalia who were working on the Chrome implementation at the time. You can find the video of that talk on YouTube, it’s surprising how much of the information is still completely accurate, though I think I have got far better at teaching the spec in the intervening years.
I also spoke at CSSconf EU in 2017, this time on the subject of Where does CSS come from?. That talk was a chance to share something I am really passionate about, encouraging people to become involved in the creation of CSS, and to give feedback to the CSS Working Group and browser vendors.
I’m really looking forward to the next installment of my CSSconf EU story. If you would like to be there too, and it really is a lovely event, tickets are now on sale.