The catwalk

A black site where the speakers walk toward you one at a time in a strobe-white band, the session title stacked beside them at poster size and the next walker waiting at the far end of the runway, and you can pull one off into a card. The runway is the agenda: every walk has a time, the band runs at the pace of the day, and asking the mind is a camera flash that re-orders the line.

The story

"Free Your Mind" has two ancestors and both are bodies on a flat field. This site honours the second one: En Vogue's 1992 video, a hard black catwalk, strobe white, a song about being judged by appearance. The summit's own material fits a runway exactly. A session is a walk; a speaker is a walker; the programme is a running order; the lineup is the line waiting behind the curtain; the ticket is the door. Nothing had to be invented: ETS already has 77 real faces, 50 timed slots and a theme that is a dare.

The first screen is one walk, and it says whose. Top left, where the eye enters, the lockup reads ETS27 Free Your Mind, with Energy Thought Summit · 14th edition beside it. Directly under it is the slate of the walk on the runway: Keynote, Mon 09:25 (the time in red), Hugh Forrest, SXSW. Then the title, "How to hack your experience", stacked at 280 px in a heavy condensed italic that leans forward like someone walking fast. Where the middle line crosses the band it inverts to black, which is the whole strobe idea in one typographic move. Hugh stands in the band in a flash frame; the next walker (Jason Ryan, 10:30) waits small at the far end of the band, the side the incoming walker enters from. A rail of Monday's walk times sits at the left edge and never moves; the red one is the walk on the runway now, and any time on it puts that walk on the runway. Austin's local time ticks in the dateline. The bottom edge is the runway's floor: one rule with three verbs on it, walk ↓, ask and tickets →.

Further down, in order: one answer the mind already composed, the theme as a breath screen, the line (a receding queue of twelve walkers and the complete roster), the running order (the four days as numerals in the band with their weekdays beside them, then the sheet), the door (two prices, each carrying its tier, and AUSTIN in the band), and a lab-notebook footer.

Every person on the page spoke at ETS26 and is labelled as sample data; nobody is confirmed for ETS27. There are no stock photos, no renders and no generated faces.

Typography

Two families, both from Google Fonts, two variable files in total.

• Sofia Sans Extra Condensed, italic only (ital,wght@1,1..1000), is the voice. Display at 330 px, weight 1000, uppercase, letter-spacing −0.005 em, set in a line box of 0.85 of the type size so that one line of type is exactly one band. The runway fits the viewport: the largest size whose three-line stack fits between the two black strips sets the band (about 280 px and a 238 px band at 1440 × 900). Each walk's title is then fitted to the width, measuring each line in the real font and scaling once: the keynote lands at 280 px and the other Monday walks between 233 and 280 px. Two-line titles put their second line in the light unless that costs more than a tenth of the size. The theme, the day numerals, the prices and AUSTIN are static at 330 px. The text voice is 32 px: weight 1000 for headings, the slate, the weekdays, the tier names and the printed verbs (walk ↓, ask, tickets →), and weight 300, a true hairline of the same italic, for the say lines, the theme statement, the venue line and the footer sentences.
• Martian Mono (wdth,wght@75..112,100..800) is the instrument: 12 px (11 px on the phone), weight 400, tracking +0.04 to +0.06 em. Width 112 for the strips and dates; width 75 for the running-order sheet, the roster, the captions, the rail header and the next-up label, where density matters. Every mono string on the page is a time, a date, a price, a count, a name in a list or a source. Prose is never set in the mono.

Three sizes per screen on the desktop: 330, 32 and 12 (the fitted hero runs 233 to 280). On the phone: 118 (the rotated hero fits a 440 px column, about 95 px), 22 and 11.

Colour world

• Black #000000, true black, because a strobe needs it.
• Strobe white #FFFFFF, the band and the type. It is the brightest white on the page by construction: every photograph is graded so its highlights stop at 238.
• One red #FF1F1F, only for the walk on the runway now (the slate's time, the rail's time, the running order's row, "now walking").
• Grey #8D8D8D for secondary mono and #555555 / #5A5A5A for dimmed notes and the quiet rail; these are values of the ink, not colours.

No gradient, no texture, no blur, no glow. Colour exists only inside the photographs.

The walkers: one flash

Every walker is shot the same way. The 17 portraits on the runway and in the two queues are ETS26 speaker photos, cut out locally (BiRefNet matting, nothing generated), set on a black ground, scaled to one face size (the face box 36 % of the frame height) and one eye-line (40 % from the top), and graded with one levels map per subject (black point 10, white point 238) and saturation −10 %, never black and white. Hair edges are defringed toward the ground, and where a source photo cuts a shoulder or a chest the figure falls off into the dark, the way a flash does. The result is a flash frame: a lit face in a black window inside the white band. Sources that were a beige office, a blue studio or a blown-out white wall now read as one shoot. Files: walkers/*.webp, 640 × 800, about 25 KB each.

Layout grammar

Every screen is a black field with one white band across it, hard-edged and full bleed: 238 px in the hero at 1440 × 900, 280 px for display lines, and 300 px where it holds a line of walkers. People stand in the band in flash frames; type that crosses the band inverts (mix-blend-mode: difference), so the same white letters read black inside the light. Type and portraits never overlap.

The chrome is a letterbox: two black strips that content passes under, so nothing ever prints over anything. The top strip (64 px) carries the lockup and Energy Thought Summit · 14th edition on the left, and the dateline (Austin, Texas, local time, May 3–6, 2027) and the strobe control on the right. The bottom strip (100 px) carries one rule 56 px above the edge with the three verbs on it. The 56 px under the rule hold only the rotating "asked here" line, so a consent banner can cover that band and the verbs survive. The rail of Monday's walk times (84 px, at the left edge) is the only blended chrome; it ends above the band, dims once the runway scrolls away, and keeps its red.

Content gutter at 110 px (past the rail), edge at 24 px. Nothing is ever centre-stacked.

• The runway (hero): slate, title, band. The walker stands at the band's left in a 190 × 238 flash frame; the next walker waits at the far end in an 84 × 105 frame with its time and name above it; "now walking · sample data" sits on the band floor under the light line.
• The answer: numbered heading, hairline say line, a band of five walkers receding by 0.8 a step (the line re-ordered, not a row of tiles), a caption under each, a mono source footnote.
• The theme: a breath screen, one viewport tall, which the page settles on. FREE YOUR in white, MIND black in the band, the statement in the hairline beside it.
• The line: heading, say line, twelve walkers receding into the distance with captions under the first five, then the four-column roster.
• The running order: no heading. A mono slate, then the band with 3 4 5 6 and each weekday and date beside its numeral (they read as dates, not a stat row), then four columns, one per day, with the quiet slots folded into one grey "also" row.
• The door: $849 and $299, each with its tier and deadline at 32 px directly under it; the band with AUSTIN and, beside it, the venue facts, one hairline line about the return to Austin, the Eventbrite terms and "tickets → the door is open".
• The footer: two hairline sentences (nobody is confirmed yet; the phrase has walked before) and a mono notebook of snapshot, data, portraits, contact, type and the strobe control.

Phone (390): the hero title rotates 90° into three columns that read upward, fitted to 440 px of height; the band becomes a 180 px strip holding the walker, the slate, "now walking" and "walk ↓ the line". Tickets → sits top right in the strip and the strobe control lives in the footer. The rule carries ask alone at full width, with one asked question under it. The theme rotates into two fitted columns. The answer and the line scroll sideways, each caption inside the scroller under its own frame. The roster has two columns, each day of the running order opens with its own band, and the prices stack, each with its tier.

Motion and life

• The runway runs: every 12 s the next walk steps in. The incoming walker slides into the flash frame along the band (0.7 s, one ease) and the title cuts; the slate, the next walker, the rail's red time and the running order's red row move with it. Eight Monday walks cycle; the first frame is the keynote. Any time on the rail puts that walk on the runway.
• The strobe belongs to the mind: asking fires one 70 ms frame of white, then the page re-orders. It never loops. "Strobe on / off" is a real control in the top strip and the footer; prefers-reduced-motion turns the cycle and the flash off; a hidden tab pauses everything.
• Austin's local time ticks to the second in the dateline: the only live number, zero decoration.
• The walk verb names the next stop on the standard route as you scroll: the line, in order; then the running order; then the door; then back to the runway.
• "Pull →" turns the walker into its card in place (name, role, time, the full title, everyone on the walk, sample-data flag); tap again to put them back.
• No fades, no parallax, no cursor follower, no marquee. The caret on the composer blinks. Round one's scroll-bound rail tick is gone: it mapped scroll position to time of day and stopped being true below the hero.

The fork and the mind

The fork is three verbs printed on one rule along the bottom edge, the floor of the runway, all at 32 px in the same family. walk ↓ is the standard route, the line in order, and its object names the next stop. ask is the mind: a caret and a hairline input on the rule, with no box, no pill and no send button. tickets → is the door. Under the rule, one question another visitor asked rotates every 7 s ("asked here · who walks tuesday"); tapping it asks it again. There are no suggestion chips.

An answer is a change in the material, then a section in the grid. The mockup carries one already: "01 · Who speaks about AI on the grid". It has a numbered heading, a hairline say line, five walkers pulled to the front of the line and receding in walking order (Talvis Love, Joyce Deuley, Raiford Smith, Matt Rettagliata, Jeffrey Banks) with day, time and session under each, and a mono source footnote (ETS26 agenda snapshot 2026-10-13, track "AI, data and digital", sample data). Asking from the rule flashes the strobe, rewrites the heading with the question and walks to it. Thinking is the flash and the line re-ordering; there is no avatar, no bubble, no shimmer, no sparkle.

Fix round, 2026-10-15

Three jurors scored round one from pixels (wow 7, novelty 6 to 7, craft 6, fit 6 to 7). The round-one page and its shots are kept unchanged in v1/. What changed and why:

• The chrome got a lane. Opaque top and bottom strips replace the difference-blended corners, so nothing prints over content at any scroll stop. The bottom 56 px are left to a consent banner. The rail ends above the band, and the clock moved into the dateline next to its city, where it cannot be read as the runway's time.
• The first screen names the event and makes the title read as a talk: the 32 px lockup and Energy Thought Summit · 14th edition at the eye's entry point, and the slate (type, day, red time, walker) directly above the title.
• Every portrait was re-cut and graded to one flash (see The walkers). Jeff Jerome's 137 px podium snapshot is replaced in the answer by Joyce Deuley from the same track; Jody Allison now walks The CXth Sense (the JodyBot session) and Janie Gonzalez walks Beyond the Firewall, so the runway is no longer eight men.
• The answer band follows the line's own rule (receding), so the page's only row of equal frames is gone (tells 22 and 26).
• The prices carry their tier names at 32 px under each numeral, and the day numerals carry their weekdays in the band (tell 24).
• The mono carries only data; all prose moved to the hairline (tell 4).
• The three suggestion buttons became one "asked here" line (tell 34).
• The tempo changes between sections: a heading-led answer, a breath-screen theme, a heading-led line, a band-led running order, a display-led door and a hairline footer (tell 28).
• The fork pairs the verbs of one family on one rule, and the band's empty half now holds the next walker, waiting at the far end.
• Phone: the clipped rotated theme, the blank first portrait, the misaligned queue captions and the truncated suggestions are fixed.
• The page no longer overflows horizontally (the queue ran 51 px too wide).

What to build next

• Real re-ordering: the question matches speakers, sessions and tracks; matches come to the front of the line, the rest dim in the running order, and older answers stay as numbered sections.
• During the event, "now walking" follows the real programme clock from Whova; before it, the cycle runs on Austin time, one walk per day-part.
• The pulled card becomes the speaker route, with a same-document view transition carrying the flash frame from the band into the chrome, so the switch is a camera move, not a page load; the running order becomes /agenda in the same sheet with track filters.
• The flash pipeline (matte, one eye-line, one face size, one grade, defringe, fall-off) moves into the CMS so every new walker arrives graded.
• Hand-set line breaks per session in the CMS; the fit stays automatic, the breaks stay editorial.
• An accessibility pass on the strobe: one frame per user action, never a loop, off under reduced motion (already so), with a visible control (already so).

Risks

• Lookbook cosplay: people as models and no event in it. This is held off by times everywhere, the slate, the rail, the running order and the queues in walking order. The flash frames make the walkers one shoot, and that shoot must stay a programme, not a campaign.
• Mono as the metadata voice is a listed tell. The reason is stated above and must stay true; the moment the mono carries copy instead of data it reads as garnish.
• The difference blend must never cross a photograph. The fit reserves the walker's column and the next walker's corner, so even the longest light line stops short of both.
• The theme's snap is proximity only; if it fights trackpad users, it goes.
• The strobe is a photosensitivity risk if it ever loops. It is one frame per action and off under reduced motion, and that constraint must survive the build.
• The re-cut ETS26 portraits are for the mockup only; production needs the speakers' consent and the rights to the source photos.

Known gaps

• The roster is still a wall of names in four columns (two on the phone); it wants day structure.
• The answer is one composed example; asking rewrites its heading but does not re-order anything yet.
• concept.html in this folder is generated by concepts/tools/gallery.py and is stale until the gallery is rebuilt.
• The shared preview server (python3 -m http.server, listen backlog of 5) drops connections when several renders run at once. The page retries a dropped portrait once and never paints its alt text inside a frame.