Source: Medium.design - Medium | Read More
Medium Day 2026 is wrapped, but through the power of the internet, you can still partake. All of our sessions are recorded and available for free, on-demand, until Halloween night PST. Yes, “Halloween night” is a time and date, arguably more contextual than saying Oct 31, 2026 11:45 PM EST.
If you’re here on the Medium Design blog, chances are you want to re-watch our Trunk Show or know how it went. Well, no one messed up. Everyone finished their slides on time. Absolutely no awkward silences were had. I believe we also had no one ask, “Can everyone see my screen?” To me, that’s a huge success. Next year, we’ll do even more.
The audience made it a blast. We had prolific bloggers on the platform join the session — it’s always fun to see how people are in realtime versus their published stories. A big goal of mine for this session this year was to demonstrate to the audience just how human this team is. We take our work seriously and really do read through all the feedback emails that come through, all the feature requests, and genuinely empathize with each pain point and need. We’re also striving to build what we think comes next, beyond all that, in the world of reading and writing on the internet. I think it was good to give people transparency and context into how the product development process balances those two tensions in the Q&A.
To prove a point—did you know that our team nickname for the user feedback slack feed was “The Dark Mode Channel”?
We’re searching a new name for that one. Check out your profile menu, friends. We even put some new merch on the store to celebrate that one.
Other reasons to re-watch the Trunk Show:
In all seriousness, watch the Trunk Show to get the story behind the story of these latest drops on our Medium Blog. 👉Link here.👈
Even at a conference that doesn’t brand itself as a tech conference, AI was everywhere at Medium Day. We had lots of sessions speak to the role that AI plays in people’s writing practice and how people are evolving away from a “the default is social” idea of the web to more community-oriented, private spaces. But we had a few excellent sessions from people in tech too. The encompassing theme was not backlash, but intention.
Here’s my favorite talk from a non-Median, Ana Sofia Gonzalez:
The Intentful method: A designer’s framework for using AI to accelerate your potential
On the design team, we had Nouf Aljowaysir pair up with J. Kim to bring you a behind the scenes look on how we build story recommendations you can trust:
Building story recommendations you can trust
Scott Batson, one of the engineers we collaborate with the most on the design team, gave a talk on all the new workflows we’ve shipped recently in service of making it easier for editors of publications to recruit, vet, and collaborate with writers.
Improving the lives of publication editors
The thing underneath all of these sessions, the Keynote, and the State of Writing Report is the same idea echoed from different perspectives: that in a world where readers assume what they’re reading might be AI, being visibly, specifically human is the differentiator. We’re not writing and reading because we’re nostalgic for an era of the web past. We’re not writing and reading because it’s going to land us that perfect role at the perfect company either, anymore. We’re doing it because it’s one of the only ways left to think out loud and mean it. To show you we’re human. Turns out that’s exactly what people are still hungry for.
If you’re a designer and missed Medium Day, here are your must-watch recordings was originally published in Medium.design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.