An Event Apart

Why webfolk should attend conferences

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

Today, An Event Apart came to my turf, the Twin Cities. Last year, I attended An Event Apart Minneapolis: it rocked. Mind-blowing sessions, whip-smart attendees and some of the most accomplished speakers in the industry. This year, due to a number of reasons, An Event Apart Minneapolis was an event from which I am apart.

I tuned into A Feed Apart, which collects tweets using the #aea hashtag used at the event. There you can find a ton of great little nuggets to read, encapsulating some of the most potent ideas expressed at An Event Apart.

Reading these tweets and attending An Event Apart are not the same thing.

What I learned at An Event Apart Minneapolis

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

Recently, I attended An Event Apart in Minneapolis, convenient since I am a homegrown Minnesotan.

I really can think of no better way to turn your brain into swiss cheese than by attending An Event Apart. Each session had its own brilliance that on its own would make you rethink the way you do things. When your mind gets blown six separate times, two days in a row, your head hurts afterwards.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Ethan Marcotte, "A Dao of Flexibility"

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

Quite frankly, you know that a session for An Event Apart will be awesome when the speaker’s blog is unstoppablerobotninja.com and his Twitter handle is simply @beep. Ethan Marcotte, who strikes me as the web equivalent of a Zen master, spoke to us about “A Dao of Flexibility.” He recently wrote a ground-breaking article for A List Apart, Responsive Web Design, so I suspected this would be a pretty profound session.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Jeremy Keith, "Paranormal Interactivity"

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

Jeremy Keith, expert on JavaScript and HTML5, spoke to An Event Apart Minneapolis about “Paranormal Interactivity.” The session description describes this as:

Interaction is the secret sauce of the web. Understanding interaction is key to understanding the web as its own medium—it’s not print, it’s not television, and it’s certainly not the desktop. Find out how to wield HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to craft experiences that are native to the web.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Eric Meyer, "Everything Old is New Again"

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

The second day of An Event Apart began with Jeffrey Zeldman introducing Eric Meyer. Jeffrey pointed out that there was much one could say of Eric, but perhaps the simplest is to say that he has been documenting CSS since 1996, and browser makers have come to him to ask how to implement CSS in their browsers.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Greg Rewis, "Weaving the Modern Web"

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

The final speaker of the first day at An Event Apart Minneapolis was Greg Rewis from Adobe. Yes, Adobe was a sponsor of An Event Apart, so this was a promo for Adobe in general and Dreamweaver CS5 in specific, but Greg made clear that he not only promotes Dreamweaver, he uses it quite a bit, just like many of us do. I had the delight of chatting with Greg for a while after the first day finished: he’s quite a character and does a great job explaining the things Adobe has done to make the lives of working designers and developers easier.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Dan Cederholm, "The CSS3 Experience"

Submitted by admin_marc on

One of the key people from whom I learned how to do standards-based markup and CSS is Dan Cederholm, through his books Web Standards Solutions and Bulletproof Web Design. He has a real knack for taking the complex and challenging and transforming into something seemingly simple and doable. So the opportunity to hear him talk about CSS3 at An Event Apart Minneapolis was a real treat.

An Event Apart Minneapolis: Aarron Walter, "Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design"

Submitted by Marc Drummond on

One of the most charming presentations at An Event Apart Minneapolis was from Aarron Walter, who talked to us about learning to love humans, something we have all struggled with from time to time, I’m sure. Aarron is also the author of Building Findable Websites, which I am reading and enjoying right now.

Really, the only flaw in the presentation is that Aarron is apparently originally from Iowa. I tried not to hold that against him, as I’m a Minnesotan. I jest of course, I suppose because I’m human.

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