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Jan 9, 2025 | figma.com | Carly Ayres |Mallory Dean

There are places you know you belong: your desk, your home, the team meeting where you know what small talk to expect and who will ask the most questions (in my experience, it’s usually me). Then there are the spaces where you know you don’t belong. For me, those are fine-dining restaurants, my partner’s dojo, and Eng Crits where they start talking about Codemods and JS modularization. Finally, there are the places where you hope to belong, but sometimes feel like an imposter.

Jan 9, 2025 | figma.com | Peter Yang |Andrew Hogan |Yuhki Yamashita

As we enter the new year, you’re probably already in execution mode, working through carefully plotted 6-to-12 month roadmaps. Your team has done the heavy lifting of synthesizing research and user feedback, aligning with other teams, and ensuring that your plan is adequately resourced. Now, it’s time to go from scoping to shipping. There are Gantt charts to make, kickoffs to have, and launch strategies to create. But before you get consumed by the tactics and to-dos, take a step back.

Jan 9, 2025 | figma.com | Amber Bravo |Alia Fite

In 1985, Italian writer Italo Calvino outlined five qualities for literature’s future, enumerated in a series of planned lectures before his death. His wife Esther titled the posthumous collection Six Memos for the Next Millennium, choosing “memo”—a word she said “delighted” him—to describe these brief messages to the future. Short for memorandum, a memo is a written communication primarily used in business—a way of conveying ideas or information between colleagues and organizations.

Jan 9, 2025 | figma.com | Aaron Britt |Ana Boyer |Kaitie Chambers

For a decade, I worked at the edges of disciplines—not quite a writer, not quite a designer, not quite a strategist. In startup land, this wasn’t unusual. These teams needed people who could context-switch between growth experiments and UX copywriting, or jump from onboarding new users to brainstorming a marketing campaign.

Nov 14, 2024 | figma.com | Jessica Svendsen |Chad Colby |Dylan Field |Jenny Xie

Early bird tickets to Config Global in San Francisco, and Config London are now available. As we shape the lineup for Config 2025 and open our call for speaker proposals, we’ve asked some of our favorite speakers to share which talks left them buzzing. This best-of-the-best list also serves as a rubric for future presenters eyeing the Config stage. Whether you’re mulling over submitting a proposal or simply seeking creative inspiration to revitalize your work—buckle up.