AUGUST 25-27, 2020
Schedule
We’re excited to share the schedule for 5to9.
Most sessions will be recorded and available to attendees after the event.
Please note that this schedule is subject to change.
⏰ Schedule below is displayed in your local timezone of
Freelancing & Services
In partnership with
10:30 AM EDT
Conference Kickoff
Alongwith our partners and supporters, Preet Singh, Founder, DesignX Community will kick off the 5to9 Conference and share an overview of the 3 days of programming.
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Panel - Venturing out on your own
To kick off our freelancing theme for the day, we have three leaders talking about how they ventured out on their own - sharing their respective and quite diverse journeys as an established independent designer, and founder of an agency.
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Creating a paid newsletter subscription
👉 Rosie Sherry, Community Builder, Indie Hackers
Alongside her full time job and other community initiatives, many will look at Rosie's relatively quick growth to $5k annualized revenue and drool with wanting in on the action. She will tell you about all the stuff that is under that iceberg. All the stuff that you don't see.
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Productizing Your Services From The Start
👉 Tyler Gillespie, Thinking Time Chief, Applause Lab
As you transition into working for yourself as a Freelancer or Consultant it is vital you avoid certain service business traps. These traps can drastically hurt your future success if you aren't intentional about fixing them. Having built and sold many service businesses, and consulted with hundreds of others I want to share with you some core concepts to start thinking about when it comes to productizing your service business from the start to avoid many of the deadly potholes you will face down the line.
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Icebreaker Sessions 🙌
Meet other freelancers and sidepreneurs to pitch your project to. Find collaborators and co-founders, or potential customers.
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🔥 How The Futur Started as a Side Project
👉 Chris Do, CEO and Chief Strategist, Blind & Founder, The Futur
Chris Do doesn't need any formal introductions to the creative community. However, many followers and fans might not know that Chris started The Futur as a side project while running his agency. In this fireside chat, Chris shares stories and the journey that got him to be the massive influencer and educator he is today.
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Building an Inbound Funnel as a Freelancer
👉 Stefan Palios , Founder and Publisher, Remotely Media
Almost 100% of Stefan's business is inbound, and he hasn't sent a cold email pitch in over a year. In this talk, he unravels the mechanics around how he built his funnel.
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Mid-day yoga break 🧘♀️
Take some time to stretch and move your body. No experience necessary, and no mat required.
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Freelancing While Employed
👉 Mohammed Asaduallah, CEO, Benji
Becoming your own boss isn't for everyone. Some of us just want to test the waters or have a creative outlet to learn new skills. Mohammed will share insights and actionable steps that you can take to start freelancing while working full-time.
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Content Creators AMA
From Youtube videos to Podcasts, hear why these speakers got into creating content for the community, the impact their side projects have had on their careers, curating audience, building a following, and get answers to your burning questions.
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🍻 social
Bring your own drinks & make some new friends!
Building a 5to9 Project
In partnership with
10:30 AM EDT
Welcome & introduction
Preet Singh, Founder of DesignX Community, will kick off day 2 by sharing any updates, giving an overview of the day ahead and introducing our speakers.
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Designing Design Tools
👉 Gleb Sabirzyanov, Indie Maker
Gleb designs and develops products for designers, specifically Figma Plugins. (Yes, it is very meta.) Making something for others in your area of expertise is a great way to start a side-hustle.
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Finding the Right Idea
In 2005 Ameet co-founded Five Mobile, a premier product design and development firm. Zynga later acquired the company in 2008, where he became a GM. Daryna took her side project from an idea to a fast-growing startup at YCombinator and beyond. Robleh founded Tiny Hearts, an award-winning app studio based in Toronto that was acquired by Shopify, and still continues to build and ship side projects while managing product at Shopify during the 9to5 🚀 Learn how you can identify the right idea to pursue and build for your 5to9.
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12 side projects in 12 months
👉 Kezie Todd, Associate UX Designer, Puppet
Last year, Kezie completed 12 side projects in 12 months. One year on, she'll break down the lessons learned to show how to draw insights from seemingly unrelated projects.
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🙌 Shopify: Demo
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Case Study: Bringing the Urdu Language to iOS Devices
👉 Mudassir Azeemi, UX Designer, Wells Fargo
Mudassir will share his journey which includes a startup failure that cost him $50,000 of loss, but also led to him inspiring Apple to bring Urdu's original typography to their devices.
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Panel: Selling on the Webs
👉 Michelle Dalzon, Founder, The Black-Owned Market (theBOM)
👉 Haris Mahmood, Senior Engineer, Shopify
👉 Alison Post, Senior UX Researcher, Shopify
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🧘♀️ Mid-day yoga break
Take some time to stretch and move your body. No experience necessary, and no mat required.
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How Learning to Sew Made Me a Better a Leader
👉 Maria Pereda, Director of Design, Clio
Maria will share her successes, failures, and unexpected learnings making her own clothes - like how it's helped her become a more empathetic leader.
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Work life balance without discounting your income
👉 Josiah Duinkerk, Founder & CEO, Annut Design & Development
How to take into account the social aspect of life (Children, relationship, mental-physical health) when creating a strategy to increase your streams of income in these uncertain times. I juggle on average 2 to 3 projects for top companies like Adidas, Randtstad, De Persgroep, ANWB. As Corona has caused many freelancers to lose their projects, I would like to share my experience to inspire on ways we can continue to provide for ourselves and the ones we love.
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How do you connect with the people who use your product?
👉 Benjamin Hersh, Design Lead / Manager, Dropbox
Benjamin will share simple guiding principles to help you design better with words. He finds lessons and inspiration in neuroscience, fairy tales, and examples from across the web.
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🍻 social
Bring your own drinks & make some new friends!
Growing Side Projects
In partnership with
10:30 AM EDT
Welcome & introduction
Preet Singh, Founder of DesignX Community, will share any updates, outline the day ahead, and introduce our speakers for the final day of the conference.
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Automation in Side Projects
👉 Stephanie Eckles , Author, ModernCSS.dev
Steph used the static site generator 11ty to build a community-driven site and launch it in just a week's worth of 5to9 time. Learn about the features of 11ty that made that possible and how you can create an automated, community-driven site with minimum oversight.
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Succeed By Making People Hate Your Brand
👉 Stephen Gates, Head Design Evangelist, InVision
You need to build a brand and content that is strong and unique enough that some people will hate it. Stephen Gates will explain why people hating your brand is important, how to build a strong brand, and shares secrets he's learned from creating his award-winning podcast and YouTube channel.
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Automation and partnerships
👉 Robert Jacobi, Solution Ambassador
Automation and partnerships can turn your 5 to 9 into a 9 to 5. Learn about the tools and relationships that help you provide value like a small business. Expand your portfolio, expands your skills, expand your business.
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Growing & Scaling Side Projects
👉 Carly Ayres, UX Community & Culture, Google Design, Google & Founder, 100sUnder100
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🙌 Icebreaker Sessions
Meet other freelancers and sidepreneurs to pitch your project to. Find collaborators and co-founders, or potential customers.
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How You Can Build Your Side Project Using Editor X
👉 Gali Erez, Head of Product Editor X, Wix.com
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Panel: Community Building as Side Projects
Starting and scaling leading communities, leveraging tech and community for social impact, turning your passion for communities into a career and bringing together 6000+ members in a virtual community - these community leaders and experts will share their journeys and experiences around building communities as a side project.
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Mid-day yoga break 🧘♀️
Take some time to stretch and move your body. No experience necessary, and no mat required.
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How to Get Your Side Hustle Featured in the Media
👉 Jacky Habib, Freelance Journalist
From helping you build authority to sending leads your way, getting press can make a huge difference in your side hustle. You'll walk away from this talk with a plan on how to get featured in traditional media, blogs, and podcasts.
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Closing Keynote
👉 Aaron Draplin, Draplin Design Co.
If you know Aaron Draplin, you don't need a talk brief to come attend this talk. If you don't know him, you again don't need a talk brief. Just don't miss this talk in either case ✨
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🎯 Closing social
Bring your own drinks & make some new friends!
About The Conference
5to9 Conference is a virtual 3-day conference, focused on exploring how folks can leverage the power of side projects to diversify their income streams, launch their passion projects and more.
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An Initiative of DesignX Community Inc.