Posts in the Personal Category

Limited seating is now available for An Event Apart Seattle 2007, June 21-22, at Bell Harbor International Conference Center on breathtaking Puget Sound. Spend two days with leading designers, developers, and accessibility experts including (in alphabetical order)…

• Tim Bray, father of XML, director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems, and Tim Berners-Lee W3C appointee;
• Andy Budd, user experience lead at Clearleft, co-founder of d.Construct, and author of CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions;
• Mike Davidson, founder and CEO of Newsvine, former art director and manager of media product development for ESPN and the Walt Disney Internet Group;
• Shawn Henry, director of education outreach for W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), research appointee at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and author of Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design;
• Shaun Inman, award-winning designer and developer, inventor of Inman Flash Replacement and the curiously successful stats package Mint;
• Jeffrey Veen, designer manager at Google, founding partner of Adaptive Path, and W3C invited expert on CSS before most of us knew the acronym;
• Khoi Vinh, design director at NYTimes.com, author of Subtraction.com, and former partner at Behavior LLC;

…plus Jason Santa Maria, Eric Meyer, and Jeffrey Zeldman. A complete schedule is available for your perusal. The two days of design, code, and best practices, including lunch on both days and parties on both nights, go for $795 (reg. $895) if you register by May 21, 2007. An Event Apart Seattle 2007 will be our only show in the northwest this year. Seating is limited to 300 attendees and will sell out fast—they’re already going like hot cakes—so nudge that bean counter and come join us!

• AEA Seattle 2007 Now Open was published on Friday, March 16th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been three replies.

Something for you 2007 SXSW Interactive attendees: if you need to get to the rooms-in-exile (8, 9, and 10), you can skip the line for the elevator.  Here’s how:

1. Get yourself to the ground floor.
2. Walk past the Lego®-infested play area and the fruit smoothie stand into the deserted hallway on the west side of the center, along Trinity Street.
3. Keep walking.  Just about the time you become convinced that you’ve gone entirely the wrong way, there will be an escalator.  Take it up.
4. And there you are.  There will be a badge checkpoint, although quite possibly one without a badge checker.  There wasn’t one at 9:55am this morning.

When you leave said rooms, you can go back by the same escalator or use the staircase near the elevators.  I’d recommend using the stairs to come up, except they’re locked to entry from the ground floor and I haven’t gotten my hands on any duct tape yet.  Ten community karma points to the person who hacks around this problem as well, though they’re a little bit harder to spot than the escalator.  Pass it on.

• Getting To the Other Part of SXSWi was published on Sunday, March 11th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Personal category.
• There have been three replies.

For me, SXSW 2007 was over almost as soon as it started.  That’s because my one and only panel, “A Decade of Style”, was in the first Saturday morning slot.  It seemed to go pretty well, thanks to the great folks who agreed to be on the panel and some sharp audience questions.  Now I have nought to do but attend the sessions that seem the most interesting and catch up with some folks I haven’t seen in quite a while.

It’s great being here, and I love seeing everyone, but in all honesty I’m starting to think about leaving a day or three early.  I miss my wife and daughter.  A lot.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone I inadvertently ignored, insulted, or misidentified on Friday.  I was dead tired, having had to get up at 3:30am to catch the first leg of my trip to Austin.  As I’m sure you know, when the alarm goes off at 3:30am, it isn’t ringing at the end of a full night’s sleep.  In my case, not even close.

So I spent yesterday in kind of a moderate-functioning daze, and kept mistaking people for other people.  Three times (that I know of) I put the wrong name to a face, and these are people I’ve known for a while.  Seriously, at one point I identified Brian Alvey as Aaron Gustafson.  After I introduced him to someone else as Aaron, I then proceeded to talk with him about what he’s been doing at AOL and about his house in the suburbs of New York City.  After he excused himself to go grab something to eat, someone asked me who it was, and I told them it was Aaron and that I worked with him on A List Apart.  I swear this all made perfect sense to me at the time.  There was absolutely no sense of mental discontinuity whatsoever.

It was only two hours later, when I ran into Aaron at the Big Bag pickup desk, that I realized what had happened.  What went through my head was pretty much, “Hey, you’re… not who I was talking to earlier.”

So if I did something like that to you, I’m really sorry.  I got a ton of sleep last night and am now back to my usual level of not being able to remember people’s names.

• South by… What Was I Saying? was published on Sunday, March 11th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been five replies.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news to any potential AEA Boston attendees, but we sold the last available seat just before noon yesterday.  You can still get in touch to request a spot on our waiting list. if you like.  If not, there’s always the Seattle show coming in June, with tentative plans for two more shows by the end of 2007.

Some of you may recall that I prophesied, a few weeks back, that we’d sell out on February 28th—and so we did.  Go me.  I feel like a regular Edgar Cayce.

• AEA Boston Full Up was published on Thursday, March 1st, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been three replies.

• MakeMeASpeaker

  This wiki is intended to be a place where those who are interested in becoming speakers (particularly, but not exclusively, in the web world) can come to get advice, mentoring and help. It is also intended to be a meeting place for those who are interested in helping others become speakers.

  On the same site: an evolving (and evolvable) page containing Advice.

• UltraNormal: How to Get to Speak at Web Conferences

  …some practical suggestions for folks who want to gain some confidence in their own speaking abilities and how I worked up to presenting at conferences… I’ve spoken at a bunch of conferences over the past year, and well, this might help someone.

• Bloggy Hell: Calling future speakers!

  Below are a list of some of the events which encourage people to get up and speak about what they love. The list is Australian-centric, mainly because that is the circles I hang with, but I would love to hear of similar things going on around the world…

• Speaking Assistance was published on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Web categories.
• There have been four replies.

• mezzoblue: Homogeneity?

  There’s really nothing in the post I don’t want to quote, but this bit in particular jumped out at me:

  …as a conference organizer, you tend to be conservative. You need to ensure a speaker list that will fill seats. This isn’t “we want to maximize profit” filling of seats either, this is “holy crap we just signed a contract that would put us out multiple tens of thousands of dollars if we don’t hit certain numbers”. When you book larger venues, you make commitments and really put yourself on the line financially. Those who haven’t run conferences simply can’t understand what a nerve-wracking experience this is.

• Brian Oberkirch: Identity Is a Mashup

  This is an ongoing debate (as it has to be) though the argumentation tends toward the self-righteous, self-evident mode: look at all these white boys on the roster. What are they thinking? I think we can do better. I think we have to do better.

  On that post, a comment by Derek Powazek

  One of the reasons I got very excited about the internet when I discovered it in the 90s was because, finally, here was a place where race, gender, and religion truly did not matter. Where you could succeed or fail on the strength of your ideas alone – not what color you were or what junk was in your pants.

  I still believe this to be true.

• Hamm on Wry: Post Gender Preferences

  I don’t see how being male, female, white, black, brown, purple, queer, asexual, cancerous, capricorn or a carrot would matter if you happen to also be a professional in the web-standards-meets-development world. I would, honestly, attend a speech given by a carrot if that carrot was recognized as a leader in the field. That’s what professional speeches are all about.

• Jason Friesen {dot} ca: Diversity Wars

  To me, this is the key to being race- and gender-neutral — actually not caring about a person’s race or gender, but simply whether they can contribute what is needed in a given situation.

• Adactio: The diversity division

  I firmly believe that conferences shouldn’t simply be mirrors for the Web business, reflecting whatever is current and accepted. A good conference can act as a force on the industry. Conference organisers have a great opportunity here and I think it’s a shame to see it wasted.

• Digital Web Magazine: Beyond the A-List, Diversity in the Web Community

  I am going to go out on a limb here and use smart mob mentality here. If you know of a web professional who is talented, has done some remarkable things, and should be speaking at some web design conferences by all means let us know…

• Meri Williams: Conference Diversity .. the Permathread Returns

  You never know, we might just change the world.

• Diverse Links was published on Monday, February 26th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Culture and Web categories.
• There have been twenty-two replies.

I had most of a followup to yesterday’s post written, all reasonable and spiked with some humor and maybe a little dry, which I suppose is what most people have come to expect from me in general, and then it fell apart in concert with my inner stability.

I’ve definitely incurred a lesson in “post in haste, repent in leisure”.  The internal aftereffects of the post have been extensive and unexpected.  I don’t have them all sorted out yet; it may take months.  I don’t even have names for all the things that have roiled up.  I may be undergoing a drastic phase change in my thinking, or I may just be grieving something I didn’t know I mourned, or perhaps I’m raging against a world I sometimes feel powerless to alter.  I don’t know.  I do know that if I’d known this would be the effect of posting, I’d never have done it—which is one of the best arguments in the world for having done it.

I’ll not mince words: I screwed up pretty badly yesterday.  The real question is how.  I’m not sure I’ll know the answer for a long time.  Was my mistake in speaking honestly?  Was it in how I wrote it all down?  Was it in the rhetorical approach I took?  Was (is) the flaw intrinsic to me?  Am I the very problem I so much want to eliminate?

If I have erred and caused harm by that error I apologize.  I am as ever human, mistakes and all, flaws aplenty, and while that’s an explanation, it’s not an excuse.  It is never, ever an excuse.

I am deeply sorry today, but not for what I was trying to say.  I might be sorry for how I said it, or for a number of other things.  I know I’m sorry for causing hurt in others.  That was the last thing I wanted.  I was trying to make a positive statement, trying to detail what I find to be an empowering concept.  A lot of people were supportive, but a number of people, many of whom I respect and some that I care for and a few that I love, were disappointed by what I had to say.  I disappointed them, some very badly, which means I’ve let them down.  And I really, really hate letting people down.

And here’s the worst part, the absolutely darkest most awful painful part of the entire situation: I let them down by being myself.

That tears.  It rips ragged claws of paradox across my throat, up my jawline, through my brow.

In my head, I know that the recipe for failure is trying to please everyone, but my heart doesn’t buy it.  I’m human, and no matter how impossible the task I want to be what everyone wants me to be.  Which I can’t be.  I can only be myself.  I can only hope to improve myself.  And I can only do that according to what I truly believe, down at my core, because one person’s improvement is another person’s step backward, and changing oneself to meet the expectations of others is a fool’s game at best.

I am who I am, and it will not be to everyone’s liking.  I will never see the world in the ways that everyone wishes me to see it.  This is an essential truth, something that should be obvious to anyone, the sort of thing one should never think of trying to contradict.

And yet.

I know that there were a number of people who understood what I was saying and agreed with me, who in some cases were proud of me, and that they are no less important than those who didn’t understand or who did understand and were disappointed.  I should concentrate on that balance, see the whole mixture, but I’m just not wired that way.  For whatever reason, my genetics or my upbringing or whatever it is, I can’t help but focus on the negatives.  In this case, on those I let down.

There’s no reason for sympathy here.  I knew the third rail was fully electrified, and I chose to tap dance upon it.  The outcomes of that choice will serve to teach me, if I listen—but what I will learn is still very much an unknown.  I only hope that, in the end, it confers a net positive effect on me and the world around me.

• Diverse Reactions was published on Saturday, February 24th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the Culture and Web categories.
• There have been no replies.

An Event Apart is coming back to Seattle in June 2007, and the only major differences are that it will be two days instead of one, and this time we’ve got a roster of nine fantastic speakers.

Of all the Event Apart venues of 2006, I think the Bell Harbor International Conference Center was probably my favorite.  Every place we visited last year had its own unique charms and flaws, but at Bell Harbor I really felt like the charms were maximized and the flaws minimized.  So we’re bringing AEA back to Bell Harbor on June 21st and 22nd, as we announced this morning.

Nine speakers seems to be our target for these two-day events, and fully two thirds of our Seattle lineup will be different than our Boston lineup.  (The repeats are me, Jeffrey, and Jason.)  For your edification, we’ll be presenting:

• Tim Bray, father of XML and possessor of many fine hats
• Jeff Veen, Wired alumnus and very tall person, now at Google
• Andy Budd, leading member of the Brit Pack and our first international speaker
• Khoi Vinh, dog lover and Design Director at NYTimes.com
• Shaun Inman, the brains behind Mint, IFR, IPC, CSS-SSC, and a whole lot more
• Local hero Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine and web standards provocateur
• Shawn Lawton Henry of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)

Oh yeah.

That’s all completely awesome, but there is a catch.  There’s always a catch, isn’t there?  The catch is that the seating available at Bell Harbor is strictly limited.  Once we sell all the seats they have, that’s it, all done, finito.  The seating capacity at Bell Harbor is about two-thirds that of our Boston show, and Boston is on track to sell out.  Registration for Seattle will open March 15th, so now is the time to prepare.  See you in Seattle!

• Back in Seattle Again was published on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been six replies.