Posts in the Speaking Category

Back when we announced An Event Apart Atlanta, there was a promise of more cities to come:

Can’t make Atlanta on April 3rd? Event Apart seminars in Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles (not necessarily in that order) are up next.

The first of those three has now been announced: An Event Apart Chicago, to be held June 2nd, 2006 at the Gleacher Center right in the heart of downtown Chicago.  Not only will this show reprise the speaker lineup from our Philadelphia show, but our first foray to the Windy City will also feature Jim Coudal as a guest speaker.  He’s a respected Web designer and founder of Coudal Partners, the guy behind Jewelboxing, The Show, and The Deck, and (along with Jason Fried) opened this year’s SXSW Interactive.  He hasn’t chosen his specific topic as I write this, but as far as I’m concerned he can call it “An Hour of Jim Coudal Talking About Whatever The Hell He Wants”.

Registration is already open, so if you’re planning to attend, don’t tarry.  (In fact, just as I went to post this, the first registration came in!)  We have a hard limit on the number of seats available, so when they’re gone, they’re gone.  Much as it pained us, we had to turn away a number of people from the first two Events.  If you want to avoid paining us further, register soon.

• An Event Apart Chicago was published on Monday, March 27th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Standards categories.
• There have been five replies.

There’s been much talk of this year’s SXSW and how overwhelmingly huge it was.  I don’t have a whole lot to add to that, really.  I thought last year was out of control.  This year left it standing.

Without question, the best panel I saw was “How to Convince Your Company to Embrace Standards“.  This was not due to the topic, though that was good too, but because the panel was tightly assembled and packed with good information.  Most panels are a collection of folks who sit onstage and leisurely toss out assorted thoughts for an hour; I should know, having been on many such panels in the past.  For this one, everybody had specific points to make and made them concisely.  There was a lot of preparation, and it showed.  It very much raised the bar, as far as I’m concerned, especially since I’m thinking of proposing a panel or two for 2007.  Kudos to all involved.

Also:

• It was interesting to sit on the “How to Roll Your Own Web Conference” panel with Jason Fried and hear his experiences.  You may recall that when I wrote about event pricing, I said one way to find an event’s optimum price was to run it over and over and keep raising the price until you stopped selling all the seats.  That’s exactly what’s happening with the “Getting Real” workshop.  It will be interesting to see where they level off.  Assuming they do.

• John Allsopp‘s presentation during the WaSP Annual Meeting was an interesting experience for me.  It also covered a bit of the same ground I plan to cover in my keynote for @media.

• In two different lunches, I told people from computer book publishers that their whole business model is in danger of collapsing.  Interestingly, both (more or less) agreed.  Sadly, it seems that only one is working for a company that’s aware of this fact, and it isn’t the company you’d probably assume.

• I’ve decided I much prefer El Sol y La Luna to Las Manitas when it comes to the food.  Las Manitas, of course, wins on the basis of proximity.  Also for not deafening its patio patrons.

• No joke: I got into our rental car in Austin and the Avis Preferred hangtag said “ETA: CSS“.

Good times.

• SXSW Summary was published on Saturday, March 18th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been six replies.

After a short evening walk, Tantek and Kat and Carolyn and I arrived at 219 West in Austin, Texas for the WestCiv gathering.  The crowd inside was quite loud and densely packed, saturated with so many Web geeks that it was threatening to precipitate a site right onto the carpet.

Just as we got close to some people we knew, a staff member appeared at our elbows.  “I’m very sorry, folks, but this is a 21-and-over establishment,” he said with a distinct lack of sorrow.

So if you wondered where we were, or happened to spot us in the 90 second window before we left, or I walked past you without interacting and never got back to you… that’s why.  We weren’t blowing you off; we just ran afoul of an odd local custom.

As a result, we’ll be absent from the vast majority of the evening gatherings at SXSW.  Hope all you kids have fun.  We’ll be hanging out with the other grown-ups and getting some sleep.

• No Kidding was published on Saturday, March 11th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been eleven replies.

So tomorrow I head out to SXSW along with most of the rest of the industry, just like everybody else.  There are, as usual, about two dozen sessions I want to see, all of which conflict with each other.  I’ll be on three panels, two Sunday and one Monday (as listed over at Complex Spiral), and will be doing book signings on Sunday around lunch time.  There will be a bookstore there, but if you already have a book of mine, bring that too.

Only a few days after I return from SXSW, I’ll be shipping out again for MIX06 in Las Vegas.  They’ve been running a “Remix MIX” design competition in the spirit of the CSS Zen Garden, and I’ve consented to be one of the judges.  I’m actually looking forward to MIX for a whole bunch of reasons, but at the top of the heap has to be a chance to try out IE7 and talk to the team members in person.  That’s three-quarters of the reason I’m going.  Also, I’m curious about Microsoft’s “Atlas” framework for AJAX development, but that’s more of a bonus reason.

Besides, if you look deeply enough, you discover there are really only two “scenarios” (a.k.a. tracks) at the conference:

• Next Generation Browsing Experience
• Beyond the Browser

Yeah, I think I’d like to know what they’re thinking.  So off to Vegas I go, once I’m back from Texas.

Yee haw.

• Southwest Twice was published on Thursday, March 9th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.

Registration for AEA Atlanta has been open a week now and one-fifth of the seats are already claimed, so you might want to step up the pressure on your boss.  The early bird deadline won’t be here for another three and a half weeks, but seat availability may not last that long.  (As I’ve mentioned before, it didn’t in Philadelphia.)

Even better, the value of any one of those seats just went up.  How so?  We’ve just announced that we’ll have two (count ’em!) guest speakers joining us: Jason Santa Maria, who delivered one of the highest rated presentations in Philadelphia; and Atlanta native Todd Dominey of Dominey Design, Turner Entertainment, and What Do I Know.

What will they talk about?  You’ll have to come to Atlanta to find out.  Personally, I can’t wait.

• AEA Atlanta Heats Up was published on Monday, February 6th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Standards categories.
• There have been three replies.

Registration for AEA Atlanta is now open, so y’all sign up and come see us, y’hear?  It’ll be both a hoot and a holler.  Shoot, we can all have a Coke together.

Just make sure to sign up before March 3rd, unless you want to miss out on the $50 early bird discount.  If you need to exert a little pressure on your boss to cough up the funds, AEA Philadelphia sold out about two weeks before the early bird deadline.

Just sayin’.

• AEA Atlanta Registration Open was published on Monday, January 30th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Standards categories.
• There have been three replies.

That’s right, folks, it’s on.

An Event Apart.  Atlanta.  April.  Alliterative!

We’ve also given a tiny little peek behind the schedule curtain: Seattle, Chicago, and Los Angeles (not necessarily in that order) will be future AEA stops in 2006.  There may be one or two more in addition to that, but we can’t give away all our secrets, now, can we?  Like the actual dates we’ll be in those cities.  Nope, couldn’t possibly give out those.

Okay, the dates aren’t really secrets.  We just don’t know yet.  Scheduling a road show isn’t an exact science.  There’s a lovely and near-continual juggling act with other travel commitments, venue desirability, and venue availability.  The last thing we’d want is to say we’ll be in City A on Date X, and then have to change it later on.  That’s not simply unprofessional—it’s just plain rude.

Of course, if you’d been subscribed to the AEA RSS feed, you’d already know all this.  In fact, you probably are, and do.  Sorry for the redundancy.  Forget I said anything.

Atlanta!  Be there.  Or, you know, be at one of the future shows.  Either way, we look forward to seeing you!

(P.S.  We know that these are all U.S. cities, and there are many of you in Europe who’d like to have the show come there.  We don’t have any non-U.S. plans yet.  Yet.  One day, maybe, but for now we’re going to stick to the country we know.  It makes calculating taxes a lot simpler, plus there aren’t any awkward customs forms to fill out.)

• AEA: Atlanta Bound was published on Friday, January 27th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Standards categories.
• There have been six replies.

So if you were wondering what An Event Apart Philadelphia was like, well, you’ll have to come to a future Event.  There’s really no substitute.  We’re working hard to get some new cities lined up and announced, as was mentioned earlier today, so hopefully that little tease won’t be a tease for much longer.

But in the meantime, you can check out the little video number Ian Corey did for us, linked to from the new AEA Philadelphia page.  It’s almost two minutes long, four megabytes in size, and eight tons of fun (and requires Quicktime 7, given that it uses the spiffy new H.264 codec).  It has Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, and me.  So go check it out!

(Note to the deaf and hard of hearing:  the video is captioned for your viewing pleasure.)

• Scenes From An Event Apart was published on Thursday, January 19th, 2006.
• It was assigned to the Speaking category.
• There have been six replies.