I had the pleasure of speaking at Config 2021 and since have enjoyed being an attendee—much less pressure. Config 2023 was when I just joined Replit and this year it was a way to say farewell.

I encourage you to read Figma’s blog post on The Shortcut. Instead of me recapping, let’s focus on three topics I’m thinking a lot about after the conference.

Training data and AI

How AI is trained is the new data privacy of this decade. It’s no surprise the big controversial topic was how Figma’s generative AI design feature would be trained. By default people will be opted in to the training of Figma AI. I personally thought Figma did a great job being explicit several times up front about it. Figma is not the only company that has to face how customer data will be used to train AI.

Bold Re-designs

Re-designs are always scary, and there’s nothing higher pressure than re-designing software for designers. I haven’t used UI3 enough to have a deep critique yet. When it comes to re-designs, I think it’s always best to do it before people expect it, because when they expect it, it’s a lagging UI. I commend Figma for being proactive at it. Whether we like it or not, Figma is moving towards a general tool across multiple verticals than being a specialized UI drawing tool.

Launching a new product

Figma launched a white boarding producted called FigJam three years ago. Now they launched Figma Slides. If I recall correctly, both products started out a Maker Week¹ project. I appreciate how Figma took the approach of slides in a Figma-native way instead of exactly duplicating other slide creation software.

Where are the small conferences?

Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO, posted about Config feedback…it’s too big. I heard there were about 15,000 people at Config. To be honest, I like that it’s a huge gathering and it reminds me of how Apple’s WWDC always felt like a reunion with friends from all over the world coming. I think Config should stay big.

That said, there is a big gap of smaller and more intimate conferences put on by the community. We don’t want all of our conferences to be held be corporate companies. Many of the beloved conferences are going away because of the challenge of making the unit economics work to run it. Fortunately, Hatch Conference is building something special and I'm excited to be a part of it.

Personal highlights

One of the most difficult aspects of Config is not getting the opportunity to meet all the wonderful people there. It becomes a crapshoot with who you might run into due to the packed schedule and number of people there. What I did this year was pick a select few talks to attend and have the rest of the time catching up.

Config felt like office hours and 1:1s catching up with former team members. It was such a joy to catch up with people from One Medical, Webflow, On Deck Design, and Replit.

Talks I enjoyed

• Barron Webster: Designing for code: creative tools on hard mode

• Claire Vo: Hard truths about the future of product management

• Jiaona Zhang (JZ): How to build for, and with, Gen Z

Did you attend Config or watch online? What was the highlight for you? As an introvert, I may need a month to recover from Config. However, it was all worth it. It was an incredible event to fill the creative well—feeling motivated and inspired!