Paul Conroy
CTO at Square1.io
Dublin, Ireland
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As CTO of Square1, a leading digital agency in Dublin, I bring 20+ years of experience building high-traffic applications across Europe. I’ve led teams, shaped products, and navigated the challenges of transitioning from developer to manager. An international speaker, I’m passionate about sharing insights on technical leadership and the evolving world of software development.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Boosting Frontend Speed: Quick Wins for Backend Developers
Page speed is a critical part of modern web application performance. From the speed of generating a response on the server, to how it ultimately gets rendered in the user's device, there are a number of areas we need to stay on top of. However, many devs are more comfortable with the backend side of things - happier working with APIs and CLIs than fighting CSS oddities, JS race conditions or images jumping around as a page loads. And that's before we even get to the fun of node js and npm versioning issues! As a result, many backend devs tend to shy away from performance issues caused on the frontend of the application.
Fortunately there are a number of "quick wins" available to backend devs to significantly boost frontend speed! In this talk, I cover a number of techniques to improve things like:
* Image loading
* Font rendering
* Video players
* Display ad performance
All of these can be improved by backend devs without getting bogged down in frontend tooling or frameworks, and make a rapid improvement to page speed scores. We'll also cover the metrics we can use to objectively measure the impact of our changes.
Digital Cat-and-Mouse: Strategies to Outsmart Scrapers, Phishers, and Thieves
As app developers, defending our digital assets goes far beyond firewalls and passwords. With scrapers, phishers, and content thieves at every turn, creative defences are often our best tool. Whether it’s trying to sell 10 Downing St or spotting the Eiffel Tower in Dublin, this talk will explore inventive techniques to outsmart threats in real-world scenarios.
We'll share stories from the trenches and discuss technical strategies to stay one step ahead of competitors and bad actors alike. As with all good stories, there were plenty of mistakes made along the way! You’ll leave with actionable tactics to protect your assets, outwit your competition, and stay ahead in this ever-evolving landscape.
No Servers, Just Sheets: Zero-Infrastructure APIs using Google Sheets and Cloudflare Workers
You've probably heard of Google Sheets. You may also know about Cloudflare Workers. But you might not expect them to team up as a serverless, globally-distributed JSON API platform. Perfect for internal tools, fast prototypes, or zero-maintenance content feeds, this technique lowers the barrier to publishing live data.
In this talk, we’ll explore how to turn a humble spreadsheet into a live data source and use Workers to cache, shape, and serve it at the edge - all with minimal code and no infrastructure requirements.
Avoiding Déjà Vu: Building Resilient APIs with Idempotency
When users click "Submit" twice, what happens next could make or break your application. Idempotency ensures repeated API calls produce consistent results, saving systems from duplicate charges, mismanaged resources, and confused customers. This talk explains idempotency’s role in building reliable APIs, with practical examples to show you how to implement it effectively in your application.
We’ll share real-world stories of what happens when idempotency goes wrong (or doesn’t exist), and go through how some of the largest companies in the world choose to implement this technique. Whether you’re a seasoned API developer or new to the concept, you’ll leave with actionable insights and techniques to make your APIs smarter and more user-friendly.
Modern PHP Features You’re Probably Not Using (But Should Be)
You’ve read the release notes. You’ve seen the blog posts. But how many of PHP’s modern features have actually made it into your day-to-day code? Sure, you’ve heard about enums. You might’ve even dabbled with match expressions or readonly properties. But chances are, you’re still writing modern PHP with a very 7.x mindset.
This talk is your invitation to ditch the boilerplate and embrace the features modern PHP has given us. We’ll walk through a set of underused gems - from union types and readonly classes, to cleaner control flow, and smarter typing.
Expect before/after code, real-world scenarios, and the occasional “wait, you can do that now?” moment. Whether you're modernising a legacy app or just looking to write less code that does more, this session will leave you with a better understanding of how these features combine to make your code safer, more expressive, and easier to maintain.
This Is Not What They Were Built For: Building the Wrong Thing with the Right APIs
We’ve all bent tools to fit weird use cases. What if Stripe could serve DNS records through its metadata system? Or Google Sheets could quietly power a live JSON API backend? This talk is a love letter to creative misuse: the kind of off-label engineering that starts as a "huh, I wonder if.." and ends with a surprisingly stable prototype.
These aren’t just one-off stunts - they’re revealing case studies in what makes an API flexible, forgiving, and fun to build with. We’ll dive into a pair of real-world experiments that take popular platforms far outside their comfort zones, and we’ll explore what these weird successes teach us about developer experience, rapid prototyping, and why good APIs sometimes invite bad ideas.
Equal parts absurd and insightful, this talk is for anyone who’s ever duct-taped a side project into existence, wondered “what if?”, or gotten carried away by the sheer joy of making things work - even when they shouldn’t. You'll walk away inspired to ship faster, or at a minimum just appreciate how elegant design can enable the unexpected!
CyberWiseCon / Dev Days Europe
Digital Cat-and-Mouse: Strategies to Outsmart Scrapers, Phishers, and Thieves
As app developers, defending our digital assets goes far beyond firewalls and passwords. With scrapers, phishers, and content thieves at every turn, creative defenses are often our best tool. Whether it’s trying to sell 10 Downing Street or spotting the Eiffel Tower in Dublin, this talk will explore inventive techniques to outsmart threats in real-world scenarios.
We'll share stories from the trenches and discuss technical strategies to stay one step ahead of competitors and bad actors alike. As with all good stories, plenty of mistakes were made along the way! You’ll leave with actionable tactics to protect your assets, outwit your competition, and stay ahead in this ever-evolving landscape.
Dutch PHP Conference 2025 Sessionize Event
International PHP Conference, Munich
Boosting Frontend Speed: Quick Wins For Backend Developers
For those of us who work mostly as backend developers, being asked to fix issues on the frontend can be a bit scary. Node version issues, misbehaving CSS, strange JS async behaviour - it's a long way from the comfort of CLIs, APIs, and backend dev. But sometimes we will be told "our website is slow", and need to do something about it! Unfortunately, this often means stepping into the world of frontend. But fear not! There are a number of quick wins available to us as backend developers* to improve page speed, without getting tangled up in the usual fun of frontend build and deployment processes. While covering the quick wins available, we'll also cover the challenges of policing dangerous drivers, the impact of TV graphics on web design, and times when it might be better to send your team snowboarding for 6 months instead of coding! You'll come away with concrete examples of quick changes you can make to improve the page speed of your application, without having to venture too far into the land of frontend dev!* - backend developers, and also those of us who have "Full stack" on our CVs, but are honestly happier working on the backend!
PHPers Summit, Poznan
Boosting Frontend Speed: Quick Wins For Backend Developers
For those of us who work mostly as backend developers, being asked to fix issues on the frontend can be a bit scary. Node version issues, misbehaving CSS, strange JS async behaviour - it's a long way from the comfort of CLIs, APIs, and backend dev. But sometimes we will be told "our website is slow", and need to do something about it! Unfortunately, this often means stepping into the world of frontend. But fear not! There are a number of quick wins available to us as backend developers* to improve page speed, without getting tangled up in the usual fun of frontend build and deployment processes. While covering the quick wins available, we'll also cover the challenges of policing dangerous drivers, the impact of TV graphics on web design, and times when it might be better to send your team snowboarding for 6 months instead of coding! You'll come away with concrete examples of quick changes you can make to improve the page speed of your application, without having to venture too far into the land of frontend dev!* - backend developers, and also those of us who have "Full stack" on our CVs, but are honestly happier working on the backend!
PHPUK
Boosting Frontend Speed: Quick Wins For Backend Developers
Page speed is a critical part of modern web application performance. From the speed of generating a response on the server, to how it ultimately gets rendered in the user's device, there are a number of areas we need to stay on top of. However, many devs are more comfortable with the backend side of things - happier working with APIs and CLIs than fighting CSS oddities, JS race conditions or images jumping around as a page loads. And that's before we even get to the fun of node js and npm versioning issues! As a result, many backend devs tend to shy away from performance issues caused on the frontend of the application.
Fortunately there are a number of "quick wins" available to backend devs to significantly boost frontend speed! In this talk, I cover a number of techniques to improve things like:
* Image loading
* Font rendering
* Video players
* Display ad performance
All of these can be improved by backend devs without getting bogged down in frontend tooling or frameworks, and make a rapid improvement to page speed scores. We'll also cover the metrics we can use to objectively measure the impact of our changes.
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