Community

In 2011 almost all User Interface Engineers (UIEs) at Facebook were on a single team, and there was a simple monthly team meeting. However, the leaders of the group found that it was more effective and scalable to embed UIEs directly with product teams - and so over time frontend engineers became distributed across the company. Many teams only had one, or at most two, frontend engineers, which led to many of them feeling isolated.

This was the origin of the annual UIE Summit. We tried to bring all UIEs together for an offsite and talks to build a shared identity within the company. Unfortunately, it was discontinued for a few years due to lack of organizers.

At the time I was responsible for frontend hiring in London and a few internal hackathons, and I somehow stumbled into reviving this conference. Luckily, people loved it! Each year, about 120-150 UIEs, which was roughly two-thirds of all UIEs at the company globally, attended in-person.

I’ve since been asked many times what I thought made this conference special. Here is my take:

Exclusivity: This is a weapon best used sparingly, but quite often building an identity goes hand in hand with some sense of exclusivity. Only frontend engineers were meant to attend, as it was for them.
Vision: We did ask people to propose talks, but I defined a vision related to company or high-level UI goals and asked people across the company to talk about a specific topic.
Broad & Deep: I tried to pick topics that were broadly relevant, but deep in design, tech or UX. For example, we’d seamlessly move from a talk about React’s core to a talk about how the Messenger team made gradient backgrounds work in chat bubbles before browser support was available. Attendees could learn about deep tech while simultaneously being inspired. I always tried to have one talk that was “out there”, and one talk related to “good engineering”.
Preparation: I spent weeks preparing for this single day. Speakers presented their talks to a committee a week beforehand. We then gave feedback to ensure each talk fit into the conference and that all talks flowed together.
Memorable Moments: We tried to give attendees memorable moments and some genuine connection to the event. For example, I started a silly tradition to make a video intro about how I got to the event just on time to moderate it. This became a tradition that was kept and expanded by future organizers – one time they even rented a DeLorean for it!

Finally, I kept the event low-budget and a bit scrappy. In my experience overproduced conferences all just kind of mix together, while a few tiny mistakes (made with love) make it more meaningful.

It wasn’t so much about telling people to use a specific browser API or new CSS prop, but rather about capturing the energy and shared sense of purpose that cannot be reproduced through recorded talks. It felt like a real community.