The crowd at An Event Apart Boston 2010. Attendees, add yourself to this picture.

Filed under: An Event Apart, Community, conferences

10 Responses to “Girls ‘n Boys”

1. 
   Eric Meyer said on 26 May 2010 at 3:54 pm:

   Personally, I regret my failure to take a picture of the parallel lines for the mens’ and womens’ bathrooms.

2. 
   Jeffrey Zeldman said on 26 May 2010 at 4:22 pm:

   Although your purpose in taking such a photo might have been misconstrued.

   But it is very gratifying to host a “tech” conference where the line for the women’s restroom is as long as the line for the men’s.

3. 
   Adrienne Adams said on 26 May 2010 at 6:11 pm:

   Very, very encouraging to see half a roomful of young women at a “tech” conference, most of whom seem to be sitting in the first rows… Says something to me not only about the interest of women in the field, but the organizers’ ability to make such an event attractive to prospective female attendees.

4. 
   Charles Roper said on 27 May 2010 at 8:01 am:

   While the gender equality is encouraging, I find the homogeneity of all those little glowing Apples a little sad. Diversity of all things, not just gender, is a good thing, no? IE and Microsoft taught us that painful lesson, no? Should the near ubiquity of Apple computers in the design industry be of concern? Not if those Macs are operated by skilled, cross-platform-savvy, standards aware designers. It seems, though, that @font-face is revealing an alarming trend of sites being tested on Windows as an afterthought, judging by the poor choice of typeface (when ClearType/DirectWrite rendered) present in some cases. Furthermore, I am seeing well-intentioned but flawed, incomplete advice cropping up and being promoted by those who should know better.

   The elephant is getting bigger!

5. 
   Dave Arel said on 27 May 2010 at 9:17 am:

   Diversity is only good when all variations have something to offer. Microsoft, I’m afraid, has nothing to offer the design industry. They suck at it. So maybe, when the web looks beautiful on apple computers, and the unfortunate users of windows begin to realize this, Microsoft will be forced to get their act together on basic things like… font rendering.

6. 
   Charles Roper said on 27 May 2010 at 2:02 pm:

   Dave,

   Well, you could say Microsoft have nothing to offer. That is, nothing apart from a stable, easy-to-use, mature OS that runs on cheap, reliable commodity hardware, and runs most if not all industry standard software as well as a wealth of cheap or free alternative software. These attributes are particularly relevant in developing countries, where the price of an Apple computer could stretch to a year’s worth of wages. I hope Linux takes the place of Windows in the coming years as the ‘commodity’ OS, but at the moment, it’s not quite there. The point is, diversity is healthy, even if you don’t favour the alternatives. My anxiety regarding lack of diversity is the danger of designers inhabiting an ‘Apple bubble’ in the same way politician often live in a political bubble and have no idea how the majority truly live.

   So what’s important for us as designers is understanding and working with the text rendering we’re stuck with now, and that means thoughtful font selection that takes into account ClearType, non-ClearType, DirectWrite and OS X-style rendering.

7. 
   Christopher Murphy said on 27 May 2010 at 3:34 pm:

   It’s encouraging to see such a balanced audience and long may this trend continue.

   On an – I think – entirely unrelated note… Charles, you made a point earlier, about, “Well-intentioned but flawed, incomplete advice cropping up and being promoted by those who should know better.”

   Can you expand on what exactly you meant? You’ve linked back to a piece we published yesterday on Laura Franz’s excellent Good Web Fonts service. A service we feel has been created with the best of intentions. We’d love to hear your ideas on what’s flawed and incomplete about this, however, this is very much off Mr Zeldman’s topic and we’d encourage you to contact us directly.

8. 
   Charles Roper said on 27 May 2010 at 5:10 pm:

   Christopher, it’s not entirely unrelated. Jeffrey is making the point that gender diversity is good; I was making the point that, in that photo, technology diversity is sadly lacking. Leading from that, I hypothesised that this might be why we’re seeing some poor choices and poor advice relating to @font-face. I thought it was an appropriate segue, given the subject of Jeffrey’s blog, and the need to keep banging on this subject.

   I will contact you separately, though. I would have commented directly on your blog, but you don’t have a commenting facility. :)

9. 
   Jeffrey Zeldman said on 27 May 2010 at 8:16 pm:

   I actually agree with you, Charles. Windows is still the elephant in the room where web fonts are concerned. In many cases, foundries are rehinting (or even redesigning) their fonts to make them legible and attractive in the various Windows environments. Services like Typekit are also working hard on this problem. It’s not fair to say that type designers and web fonts services are unaware of the problem. But it is fair to say that, with more and more web designers doing their work on Macs and checking it on iPads ;) , it’s easier to believe that all web fonts look great across the board (simply because they look good in our Apple environments).

10. 
    Christopher Murphy said on 28 May 2010 at 4:20 am:

    Charles, I think it’s the two steps you jumped: A leads to B leads to C which, eventually… leads anywhere. ;-)

    I’d be interested to hear your thoughts, though I’m still not entirely convinced about your criticism of Ms Franz’s Good Web Fonts service which is – as I see it – intended, in a constructive spirit, to try and address some of the issues surrounding appropriate choices for web typography.

    Jeffrey, you make a valid point and one that concerns me greatly. In our January assessments, one of our Masters students – when confronted by a tutor that was accessing his work via a Windows box and enjoying a less-than-stellar experience – glibly announced, “It all looks fine on a Mac; I never check on PCs!”

    I was, how can I put it? Horrified.

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