Engineering Kiosk Rhine-Ruhr Meetup

CSS State Machine & Performance over Perfection

Wed, Apr 29 · 6:00 PM CEST

Sia Consulting GmbH, Schwerinstraße 40, Düsseldorf, DE

After a great kickoff in February, we’re excited to welcome you to the second Engineering Kiosk Rhine-Ruhr Meetup on April 29th!

We’re continuing what this meetup is all about: high-quality talks, thoughtful discussions, and a strong community of engineers who care about their craft.

If you joined us last time, you know the vibe. If not, now’s the perfect moment to jump in.

All details and updates:
https://engineeringkiosk.dev/meetup/rhine-ruhr/

Join the conversation on Discord:
https://engineeringkiosk.dev/join-discord
Channel: #engkiosk-rhine-ruhr

🎙️ Agenda:

• 18:00 - 18:50: Arrival, grab a drink, and socialize
• 19:00 - ~19:45: Talk 🇬🇧: CSS State Machine by Brecht De Ruyte
• break
• ~20:00 - ~20:45: Talk 🇬🇧: Performance over Perfection by Alaa Reuschenbach & Lucas Dohmen
• 20:45 - Open End: Socializing

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1️⃣ Talk no. 1: CSS State Machine
Speaker: Brecht De Ruyte
Language: 🇬🇧 English

For years, managing UI state on the web meant reaching for JavaScript. But in 2026, CSS has quietly become a state machine of its own. Pseudo-classes track interaction. Media queries read environment and user preferences. :has() observes the DOM tree. Container queries respond to size, style, scroll position, and even anchor placement. Scroll-driven and scroll-triggered animations react to where the user is on the page. And with sibling-index(), CSS can now respond to what's happening next door.
In this atypical "overview" talk, you'll get a practical tour of the CSS features that let you keep and respond to state — from things you can ship today to the cutting-edge stuff landing in browsers right now. Welcome CSS, to the state machine.

About Brecht:
Brecht De Ruyte is a Belgium-based, self-taught front-end developer with a deep-rooted passion for UX and design. By day, he crafts digital experiences at iO; by night, he helps shape the future of the web as a Google Developer Expert and a contributor to the W3C Open UI community. A guest author for Smashing Magazine, Brecht shares his technical deep-dives and UI experiments at utilitybend.com

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2️⃣ Talk no. 2: Performance over Perfection
Speaker: Alaa Reuschenbach & Lucas Dohmen
Language: 🇬🇧 English

Web performance is no longer a luxury—it’s a business imperative: Faster pages boost revenue, improve conversion rates, lift SEO rankings, enhance accessibility and even benefit everyday user productivity.
But the truth is that performance is a continuous discipline, not a one‑off project: Rather than chasing an impossible perfect score, the most valuable gains come from tiny, measurable tweaks that users notice instantly.
In this session we walk through a live, real‑world case study that shows how a handful of practical adjustments can deliver a noticeable speed boost without months of up-front refactoring. You’ll learn:

• Which performance pitfalls surface most often in production code
• How to read and interpret real user metrics that matter
• A toolbox of quick‑win techniques that can be applied today
• When a short‑term fix is appropriate versus when a deeper architectural review is required

By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for diagnosing performance bottlenecks, prioritizing the highest‑impact changes and implementing them in a sustainable, incremental fashion—so your own site can start delivering faster, smoother experiences right away.

About Alaa & Lucas:
Alaa specializes in squeezing hidden speed gains out of complex e‑commerce platforms. He excels at breaking down technical concepts in an understandable way and enjoys sharing his knowledge with the community. When he’s not refactoring code, you’ll find him in the driver’s seat of a racing simulator—because, just like in code, every millisecond counts. 🏎️

Lucas has 20 years of experience building and scaling heavily used web applications. Most recently he led the web team at komoot, where he spearheaded a performance overhaul that delivered measurable speed improvements for 45 million users globally. As co‑author of the The Rails Way series, conference speaker, and podcaster, Lucas is passionate about turning deep technical knowledge into practical, sustainable solutions.

+++ How to get there +++
Sia Consulting GmbH
Schwerinstraße 40, 40477 Düsseldorf

See https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kwywk7mYqEwYrKNS9

🚊 / 🚌 public transportation stops close by

• subway stop ERGO-Platz/Klever Str. U
• tram stop Dreieck
• tram stop Venloer Straße
• bus stop Kolpingplatz

🚗 Parking

The venue does not offer parking spots, but 400 meters away there is a public parking at Klever Straße 20 that costs €3 per hour.

+++ Important to know +++
Attendance is free. Drinks will be provided for free as well! We won't have food. And we would love to see you there :)

• Language of the event: English
• WiFi: Available
• Costs: Free
• Drinks: Available
• Food: No