I’m giving a talk at next week’s Boston WordPress meetup! If you’re around on Monday night — that’s 27 April 2026, for you Julian calendar sickos — I hope you’ll be able to join us. I’ll be giving a short talk on design systems: how they’ve changed the way digital teams work, and how we might need to rethink them. It’s a fun talk, and I’m excited to be there.
I’ve been rehearsing the talk this week, and was struck by…well, how weird it felt to rehearse a talk. That’s when I realized that next week’s meetup will be the first in-person talk I’ve given since 2019. Twenty-nineteen! Seven entire years! An eternity ago. Public speaking used to be, like, a whole entire thing I used to do. And now it’s just…not. I’ve given plenty of remote talks since then, mind you. (And they’re still plenty of work!) But as much fun as a virtual event is, I’ve missed getting a chance to meet attendees, hear what they’re working on, and what they’re excited about.
A lot of this is due to a changing world. The amount of travel I did fell off sharply back in 2020, and my house acquired some new health concerns back in 2021 that’ve made it harder to attend public events amid an ongoing pandemic. And the industry hasn’t escaped unscathed, either: many of the conferences I used to speak at simply don’t exist anymore.
This is all to say that amid all that change — and my nerves — I’m so glad to see that local, community-focused events are still going strong. And I’m honored to be in the room at the next Boston WordPress meetup. I’ll be masked up, sure, and probably a little more rusty than I used to be. But if you’re able to come, I hope you’ll say hi. It’d be great to meet you.
This has been “Retour.” a post from Ethan’s journal.