The talk
A new class of user
Saturday, 10 October 2026, 2:45 pm to 3:30 pm / Auditorium
Whether you like it or not, AI agents are here and they are roaming the web working on behalf of real people. They read web content, search, navigate, and fill in forms; some are even empowered to use credit cards and buy things. As web developers, how do we respond to this? What does it mean to build for the web when the user may not be human?
This talk is intended to start the conversation around who we are serving as web developers. Do we need a new "agent-first" design paradigm or can we simply pretend nothing has changed? As our entire industry goes through a huge upheaval, what are the choices we can make that ensure the web continues to be for everyone as we expand the scope of "everyone"?
About Phil
Phil is a developer experience engineer for Resend, a Google Developer Expert, and an AAIF Ambassador living in Melbourne, Australia. He's been working in developer relations for more than a decade, speaking at conferences since 2012, and writing JavaScript since before jQuery. Away from the keyboard, Phil enjoys travel, live music, and hanging out with his mini sausage dog, Ruby.
