Clarity

Design Systems as a full-time job were beginning to become a norm. But there weren’t too many resources or events dedicated to people like us.

I found myself using the word “clarity” a lot in my work. So in 2014, I bought clarityconf.com. But the first event wasn’t until 2016. It allowed time to consider and plan what the event experience should be.

I organized the conference mostly by myself, with a few volunteers and vendors that I directed which included designers, a sketch note artist, videographers, photographer, and more.

The event had almost 300 attendees.

The next year, I had almost 400 attendees, but I worked with the same venue and many of the same people.

I added an additional day of full-day workshops to the schedule for attendees to choose from.

The third year, the attendee count grew to 500 and the event was in New York City. This was to meet the customer demands of an east-coast event. So I hired a part-time assistant. I workshopped with a consultant to develop the mission statement and principles. And I continued directing creative volunteers and vendors.

Back in SF, the event grew to 700 people. In addition to the assistant, volunteers, and vendors, I worked closer with sponsors to improve the attendee/sponsor experience. I negotiated a three-year top-tier sponsorship with InVision, and I partnered with Adobe to host a full day of workshops at their offices.

Initially expecting 800+ attendees, I switched to investing in an event production team to achieve that scale and a higher quality. However, with the pandemic, plans changed (from in-person to online and attendance forecasted to 500). We’ve met every week since February and have created what we expect to be a high-quality, engaging experience.

I’ve built an engaged community of design systems practitioners that has grown steadily each year for 5 years. While 2020 has challenges, the community is still active, excited, and engaged.