When James Devonport and Kieran Ball organized their first UK no-code conference in 2024, they cobbled together various tools to manage 170 attendees. One year later, their rebranded
Create With conference doubled to 350 attendees — and this time, they powered everything through a custom platform built entirely on Bubble — including a mobile app they launched in just three days. The result: a 95% adoption rate for an app category that’s traditionally “one of the most hated apps in the world.”
From finance to founders of the UK’s premier no-code conference
Kieran Ball discovered no-code in 2019 while working in finance. After years of building in his spare time and eventually becoming a full-time freelance Bubble Developer, he noticed something missing: While conferences like No Code Summit thrived in Paris, the UK had nothing similar.
“After going to a few conferences and meeting a load of our online friends in real life for the first time, we were like, ‘Why is there nothing in the UK?’” Kieran recalls. “And then naively we just kind of said, ‘Oh, let’s try and organize a conference.’”
That optimism led to No Code UK in 2024, attracting 160 attendees. They managed the event using a patchwork of different tools — an approach that worked but left much to be desired.
“Everything was in different places. There was no single source of truth,” Kieran explains.
Rebuilding everything on Bubble — starting with AI
For their 2025 conference, rebranded as Create With, the founders decided to practice what they preached by building their entire conference infrastructure on Bubble.
They began deliberately with Bubble’s AI generator, spending 10 minutes crafting a detailed prompt. “The first version it came out with was really good, and there’s still quite a few elements of it on the site,” James says. “It really did help with a lot of that kind of more tedious stuff when you’re setting up a new app — making basic pages and basic layouts and things in the database and option sets.”
“Using Bubble has just been kind of magical."
From that foundation, they built out a comprehensive platform including event scheduling, ticket sales, a learning management system for courses, and a membership dashboard with perks. The entire site could sync automatically with their mobile app, something no off-the-shelf solution offered.
“Using Bubble has just been kind of magical,” Kieran says. “We can say, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?’ and then within half an hour it’s there and it’s working.”
Building a mobile app in three days
About a month before the conference, Create With got access to Bubble’s mobile beta. Despite the tight timeline, they saw an opportunity.
“Because we already had the website done and a lot of it was already there, it was really quick for us to build the app,” James explains. “I think we had the first version done within 3 days and then was on the app store within two weeks.”
The mobile app was optimized specifically for the in-conference experience. James could copy many of Kieran’s web designs directly into the mobile version with minimal tweaks. The app featured AI-powered matchmaking that analyzed attendee profiles to recommend connections, generating 1,500 matches throughout the conference. It also provided AI session recommendations based on attendee preferences and integrated with custom label printers to create QR-enabled smart badges.
To hear more about these features and how they were built, watch this app tour interview with James:
“We looked at a couple of other event app platforms and they’re all insanely expensive,” James says. “We would just never have been able to use those.”
Breaking conference tech expectations
The results exceeded all expectations. Of 350 attendees, 95% actively used the mobile app — remarkable for conference technology. The conference doubled in size from 170 to 350 attendees year-over-year while achieving 95% cost savings compared to traditional event platforms.
“We got like zero complaints, which is also mind-blowing,” Kieran notes. “Conference apps traditionally are one of the most hated apps in the world.”
The app’s data also provided valuable insights. By tracking which sessions attendees favorited, Create With could measure interest levels for each talk without needing to scan people into rooms. The platform now supports over 400 registered users who access courses, tutorials, and member perks year-round.
Expanding beyond conferences
Since the conference, Create With has continued growing their Bubble platform to support international meetups across Europe. Their platform scales effortlessly from managing a 350-person conference to intimate 30-person gatherings in Madrid and Barcelona.
“There’s no other kind of off-the-shelf event platforms that have the flexibility that we need,” Kieran explains.
Looking ahead, James envisions making networking even more gamified: “We’re going to have attendees scan each other’s badges and make it almost a game where you have to go find your matches.”
For a company built on spreading the message that anyone can build software, Create With has become the perfect case study — using Bubble to create conference technology that outperforms expensive enterprise solutions at 5% of the cost.
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