Posts in the An Event Apart Category

Just when you thought the whole embedded-video thing couldn’t get any worse, here I come with videos featuring, well, me.

The most recent is a short clip from one of my presentations at An Event Apart back in April, debug / reboot, where I comment at my usual pace on the suppression of quotation marks in my reset styles and why I think relying on browser-generated quotation marks is a bad idea.  You also get to see my hair before it got to be the length it is now, which is even longer.  There’s a complete transcription on that page, by the way, courtesy Mr. Z.

Then there’s the vaguely silly one, in which I attempt to debug my clothing while sitting in my living room.  The main takeaway here, I think, is that my speech patterns on stage are just about the same as those in “regular life”.  Pity my family.

So there’s me in the movies.  It’s nowhere near as epic-ly mëtäl as some other folks’ videos, but I suppose we all do what we can.

• Caught In The Camera Eye was published on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart, CSS, and Speaking categories.
• There has been one reply.

I am, as ever, woefully behind on posting.  (Then again, maybe it’s not just me: Greg Hoy recently tweeted that it’s happening all over.)  I still want to follow up on line-height: normal and also on a closely related topic that emerged in the comments.  And I will.  Eventually.

Right now, though, I want to mention a few pieces of news from the conference world.  After that, it’s back to steeling myself to upgrade WordPress while stomping out the problems I have with my current install and also, I hope, finally getting it set up to do version-controlled upgrading henceforth.

Right.  The news.

• The early bird deadline for An Event Apart Boston 2008 is next Monday, so don’t wait much longer to register if you’re a fan of discounts.  If not, that’s cool too.  Maybe you like to pay more.  We’re not here to judge.

• If you’re on the opposite coast, there’s also An Event Apart San Francisco 2008, whose detailed schedule was announced this morning.  It will be two days jam packed with greatness from Heather Champ, Kelly Goto, Jeremy Keith, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Cederholm, Tantek Çelik, Jeffrey Veen, Derek Featherstone, Liz Danzico, Jason Santa Maria, Jeffrey Zeldman, and your humble servant.  You’ve still got some time to register with the early bird discount, but I wouldn’t put it off forever, because there’s no way to know when the last seat will be sold.

  (And if you aren’t subscribed to our mailing list, then you’re already behind the times:  subscribers got word of the detailed San Francisco schedule yesterday, ahead of everyone else.  Because they’re on the ins, as the kids are known to say.  Don’t let them have all the fun.  Sign up today!)

• At the beginning of June, I’ll be giving a keynote plus a bonus session to be named later at the Spring <br/> Conference in Athens, Ohio.  For years they’ve been trying to get me to come down there, and every year I had some insurmountable scheduling conflict.  It almost happened again this year, but they were really fantastic and actually worked the schedule to accommodate me, for which I can’t thank them enough.  Come on down and take a <br/> with us!

• Come mid-July, I’ll be in sunny Philadelphia for the Higher Education Web Symposium co-teaching a full-day workshop on “CSS Tips & Techniques” with the incomparable Stephanie Sullivan.

• And in the realm of the not-absolutely-guaranteed-and-therefore-underspecified:  come late September, it looks like I’ll be back in Destin, Florida; and I just might be making my way to Japan in early November.

Plus of course there’s An Event Apart Chicago 2008 in October, but you already knew about that.  The detailed schedule will be published in mid-July, and with that lineup of speakers, I’m already shivering with anticipation.

Okay, that’s all I have for the moment.  Hopefully that upgrade/fix/control thing will go less bumpily than I fear, and I can get another post out before all those shows have passed into memory.

• Tour de Frantic was published on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been nine replies.

I know it was only yesterday that I mentioned the opening of registration for An Event Apart New Orleans and the other 2008 shows, but there’s already more to share: later that same day, we announced the speakers for the other three shows of 2008.  Incredible lineups, every one.  We’re beyond excited.  Check ’em out!

• Speakers Galore was published on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been four replies.

The new year is here, and to celebrate, we’ve announced details and opened registration for An Event Apart New Orleans, to be held April 24–25, and opened early registration for the other three events of 2008:

• Boston, June 23–24
• San Francisco, August 18–19
• Chicago, October 13–14

Now you can pick the show that best fits your schedule, fiscal year, or both, and book your seats early.

One of the things we’ve always striven to create is top-notch events for (as the motto goes) people who make web sites—covering design as well as code, architecture in addition to scripting, the big picture along with the nitty-gritty.  Focusing on that vision served us and our attendees very well in 2007, and it continues in 2008.  Just check out the list of speakers and topics for New Orleans:

• Andy Clarke, author of Transcending CSS, presenting “Underpants Over My Trousers”
• Aaron Gustafson, co-author of AdvancED DOM Scripting, presenting “Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript”
• Robert Hoekman Jr., author of Designing the Obvious, conducting “On-the-Spot Usability Reviews”
• Cameron Moll, author of Mobile Web Design, presenting “Good vs. Great Design”
• Brian Oberkirch, Publisher of Like It Matters, presenting “Kick it Like Pelé”
• Jason Santa Maria, designer at Happy Cog, presenting “Good Design Ain’t Easy”
• Dave Shea, co-author of Zen of CSS Design, presenting “Living, Breathing Design”
• Stephanie Sullivan, co-author of Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3, presenting “Design Challenges, Standards Solutions”
• Jeff Veen, design manager at Google, presenting “Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps”
• Aarron Walter, author of Building Findable Web Sites, presenting “Findability Bliss Through Web Standards SEO”

And, as always, your hosts:

• Eric Meyer, author of CSS: The Definitive Guide, presenting both “The Lessons of CSS Frameworks” and “Debug / Reboot”
• Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing With Web Standards, presenting both “Understanding Web Design” and “Web Standards: The Return of the King”

You can get more details on the New Orleans event page, including descriptions of the sessions and details on how to get the special room rate at the conference hotel, the Hilton New Orleans Riverside.

While we don’t yet have speaker lists nor schedules to announce for the other three 2008 shows, we’re working to finalize them and hope to have at least some information out shortly.  I can already say that all the shows are at the same high level, though of course each event has its own unique flavor.

Those of you who attended one or more of our shows in 2007 (yes, we did have some repeats!) may be wondering if the shows will be the same, especially since we’re returning to some cities we visited last year.  The answer there is “not at all”.  Every show of 2008 is a mix of new and returning speakers, and we’ve done our best not to repeat speakers within a given city between 2007 and 2008.  The exceptions are myself and Jeffrey, of course, but we’re both doing new talks this year.  Simply put, if you loved AEA in 2007, we’re pretty confident you’ll love it even more in 2008.

• An Event Apart 2008 Lines Up was published on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Speaking categories.
• There have been five replies.

Despite my best efforts to cut back on travel, the 2007 world tour seems to be continuing apace.  In addition to my sessions at An Event Apart in San Francisco at the beginning of October, I’m due to hit (at least) three four other stages before the year is out.  Here’s the skinny:

• I’ll be doing a short bit on microformats at the Cleveland Web Standards Meetup.  If you’re in the area and interested, please do sign up for the group!  We’ve been growing quickly and, having shifted our meeting place to the Tri-C West campus, now have room for a lot more growth.  We’re also moving beyond simple gathering, with some great ideas for helping out local organizations and sharing knowledge and skills.  Even if you can’t make this month’s gathering, you should still join up so you’re in the loop.

• I’ll be delivering the keynote at the first annual CIW Partner Conference in Destin, Florida, at the end of September.  No official title for the talk as yet, but the general theme will be how we’ve gotten to where we are, what I see as the best ways to train the next generation of web designers and developers, and the best tools currently available to current designers/developers.  I may also participate in a panel, depending on exact scheduling.

• In mid-October, I’ll be on stage at the first Voices That Matter: Web Design conference in San Francisco (which will make my second trip to the city in the space of three weeks).  We’re looking to do sort of an open “Conversation With…” format with lots of audience questions and commentary, which is a little unusual for me.  Jeffrey and I did a conversational session with Brian Alvey at ‘Meet the Makers’ back in the day, but I haven’t really done a Merv Griffin since.  Should be fun!

• Then, in mid-December, I’ll be doing three hours of CSS at Web Design World Boston.  It will pretty much be like it was last year: a mix of deep dives into obscure (yet important) corners of CSS, assessments of current trends, fun with cutting-edge techniques, and open-format Q&A.  We’ll have three hours (with breaks) to play around, so that’ll leave plenty of time to wander into the weeds and come back mostly intact.

I’m starting to do some rework on the sidebar here on meyerweb, and a “coming soon” list is one of the things I have in mind.  Those of you who actually do drop by the site will probably notice the sidebar mutating over time, since I’m going to do my reworking live and in public.  That sounds so much more grandiose than the reality of fiddling with markup and making mistakes, doesn’t it?  It’s editing 2.0!

• Staging The World Over was published on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart, Cleveland, and Speaking categories.
• There have been two replies.

Chicago, Chicago.  It was my sweet home Chicago for all of a year, and admittedly that was back around the national bicentennial, but I still enjoy my visits.  I’ve just learned to accept that the traffic jams are omnipresent, and to chill accordingly.

We drove in on Friday afternoon and left Wednesday morning, tired but content. As I knew would be the case, the folks who came to AEA Chicago were filled to the brim with awesome.  We had a great time röcking out, groovin’ to the tunes, filling Fadó, wondering about Shreddies exchanges, and savoring the lunches.  I’ve gotten my pictures onto Flickr in what is, for me, close to record time, and added them to the show’s photo pool.  All with geocoding, natch.  Gotta geocode.

If you want to know what other people thought of it, Jeffrey‘s got some links—perhaps understandably, Brain Freeze’s post is one of my favorites—and Technorati will be happy to point you to what everyone’s saying.  I can tell you what I thought, though: fantastic.  I can’t wait to do it again!

• Magnificent Chicago was published on Friday, August 31st, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart category.
• There have been eleven replies.

Amongst all the travel, there’s been a metric ton of backstage work going on.  This is generally true of me these days, which is why posting has fallen off in 2007.  Unfortunately, it’s meant that I’ve been lax about keeping you folks up to date on what I’m up to—and also to keep you informed about An Event Apart, which is what accounts for most of that backstage work.

For example: last week, we announced publication of the complete schedule for AEA San Francisco, which will be 4-5 October 2007, and I didn’t say a word here.  I should have; honestly, it’s amazing.  I already want to see it.

I know, I say that every time, but it’s always true.  One of the things that makes me proudest about AEA, and that makes me continue to work hard on AEA, is that it fulfills one of the core requirements Jeffrey and I set out: to create the kind of event we’d want to attend.  I’m not satisfied with an AEA show unless I can look at it—and I mean all of it, from the schedule to all the organizational details that aren’t always obvious—and say, “I would pay money out of my own pocket to see this show”.

And so far, I’ve always been satisfied.

So we end the 2007 series with another great lineup and incredible set of talks in San Francisco, and it makes me proud all over again.  I hope you can be there to see it.

• San Francisco Schedule was published on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Projects categories.
• There have been two replies.

I don’t know about you, but I keep a “staging” file for my posts here.  It’s a text file on my hard drive where I can write posts offline, and can also keep a list of things I want to write about.  Right now, that list is longer than a typical short entry.  I suppose two weeks’ vacation (photos from which are slowly going up on Flickr) will do that to a schedule, especially with all the driving that was involved.  (And may I express my deep and unbounded loathing of the usually ambiguous and often misleading road signage in the New York City/New Jersey area?  Yes?  Thank you.  I needed that.)

So, to begin the jamcracking: AEA Chicago‘s early bird deadline is fast approaching; it’s just nine days away as I post this.  As we start gearing up for the show, we’ve re-started (and rebooted) an AEA feature called “Better Know A Speaker”.  Originally, these were testimonials from Jeffrey and me, but that turned out to be more than our schedules can accommodate.  So we’ve redone them as short interviews with speakers, which I think is far more interesting anyway.  The first of these new BKAS pieces, with Dan Cederholm, went up last week.  This week we’ve got Jeremy Keith.  In the weeks to come, we’ll cover the rest of our Chicago speakers.  The AEA news feed is of course the best way to keep up with these tidbits and other AEA info, but I’ll probably either blog or linkblog them here as well.

• Better Know was published on Wednesday, July 18th, 2007.
• It was assigned to the An Event Apart and Travel categories.
• There have been six replies.