Category: Education

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AI Best practices Education environment ethics planet

AI Roundup: The Bad, the Ugly, and the Pretty Cool

Ay, ay, AI! Hype, fear, and strongly voiced opinions—the traditional currency of internet conversation—are unequal to this moment, where the Fate of Everything™ dangles from a single gossamer thread. So here are four useful links to pieces of the web that make differing and complementary sense of the threat and promise of AI.

Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech bubble. Pick up a rental car at SFO and drive in either direction on the 101—north to San Francisco, south to Palo Alto—and every single billboard is advertising some kind of AI company. Every business plan has the word “AI” in it, even if the business itself has no AI in it…

Tech bubbles come in two varieties: The ones that leave something behind, and the ones that leave nothing behind. Sometimes, it can be hard to guess what kind of bubble you’re living through until it pops and you find out the hard way…

Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?

de Vries calculates that by 2027 the AI sector could consume between 85 to 134 terawatt hours each year. That’s about the same as the annual energy demand of de Vries’ home country, the Netherlands. 

The Verge: How much electricity does AI consume?

The Elements of AI is a series of free online courses created by MinnaLearn and the University of Helsinki. We want to encourage as broad a group of people as possible to learn what AI is, what can (and can’t) be done with AI, and how to start creating AI methods. The courses combine theory with practical exercises and can be completed at your own pace.

Elements of AI

We define AI literacy as a set of competencies that enables individuals to critically evaluate AI technologies; communicate and collaborate effectively with AI; and use AI as a tool online, at home, and in the workplace. We conducted an extensive review of literature (see paper) and distilled a set of key AI literacy competencies and considerations for designing AI literacy learning interventions, which can be used to guide future educational initiatives as well as foster discussion and debate in the AI education field. This page lists and describes the competencies and design considerations that we have outlined.

AI Unplugged
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“Where the people are”

An Event Apart 2013 limited edition lunchbox; illustration by Kevin Cornell. Eric Meyer as Spock, Jeffrey Zeldman as Kirk.
An Event Apart 2013 limited edition lunchbox; illustration by Kevin Cornell.

It’s nearly twenty years ago, now, children. Facebook had only recently burst the bounds of Harvard Yard. Twitter had just slipped the bonds of the digital underground. But web geeks like me still saw “social media” as a continuation of the older digital networks, protocols, listservs, and discussion forums we’d come up using, and not as the profound disruption that, partnered with smartphones and faster cellular networks, they would soon turn out to be. 

So when world-renowned CSS genius Eric Meyer and I, his plodding Dr Watson, envisioned adding a digital discussion component to our live front-end web design conference events, our first thought had been to create a bespoke one. We had already worked with a partner to adapt a framework he’d built for another client, and were considering whether to continue along that path or forge a new one.

And then, one day, I was talking to Louis Rosenfeld—the Prometheus of information architecture and founder of Rosenfeld Media. I told Lou about the quest Eric and I were on, to enhance An Event Apart with a private social network, and shared a roadblock we’d hit. And Lou said something brilliant that day. Something that would never have occurred to me. He said: “Why not use Facebook? It already exists, and that’s where the people are.”

The habit of building

Reader, in all my previous years as a web designer, I had always built from scratch or worked with partners who did so. Perhaps, because I ran a small design agency and my mental framework was client services, the habit of building was ingrained. 

After all, a chief reason clients came to us was because they needed something we could create and they could not. I had a preference for bespoke because it was designed to solve specific problems, which was (and is) the design business model as well as the justification for the profession. 

Our community web design conference had a brand that tied into the brand of our community web design magazine (and soon-to-emerge community web design book publishing house). All my assumptions and biases were primed for discovery, design, development, and endless ongoing experiments and improvements.

Use something that was already out there? And not just something, but a clunky walled garden with an embarrassing origin story as a hot-or-not variant cobbled together by an angry, virginal undergraduate? The very idea set off all my self-protective alarms.

A lesson in humility

Fortunately, on that day, I allowed a strong, simple idea to penetrate my big, beautiful wall of assumptions.

Fortunately, I listened to Lou. And brought the idea to Eric, who agreed.

The story is a bit more complicated than what I’ve just shared. More voices and inputs contributed to the thinking; some development work was done, and a prototype bespoke community was rolled out for our attendees’ pleasure. But ultimately, we followed Lou’s advice, creating a Facebook group because that’s where the people were. 

We also used Twitter, during its glory days (which coincided with our conference’s). And Flickr. Because those places are where the people were. 

And when you think about it, if people already know how to use one platform, and have demonstrated a preference for doing so, it can be wasteful of their time (not to mention arrogant) to expect them to learn another platform, simply because that one bears your logo.

Intersecting planes of simple yet powerful ideas

Of course, there are valid reasons not to use corporate social networks. Just as there are valid reasons to only use open source or free software. Or to not eat animals. But those real issues are not the drivers of this particular story. 

This particular story is about a smart friend slicing through a Gordian Knot (aka my convoluted mental model, constructed as a result of, and justification for, how I earned a living), and providing me with a life lesson whose wisdom I continue to hold close.

It’s a lesson that intersects with other moments of enlightenment, such as “Don’t tell people who they are or how they should feel; listen and believe when they tell you.” Meet people where they are. It’s a fundamental principle of good UX design. Like pave the cowpaths. Which is really the same thing. We take these ideas for granted, now.

But once, and not so long ago, there was a time. Not one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. But a time when media was no longer one-to-many, and not yet many-to-many. A time when it was still possible for designers like me to think we knew best. 

I’m glad a friend knew better.

Afterword

I started telling this story to explain why I find myself posting, sometimes redundantly, to multiple social networks—including one that feels increasingly like Mordor. 

I go to them—even the one that breaks my heart—because, in this moment, they are where the people are. 

Of course, as often happens, when I begin to tell a story that I think is about one thing, I discover that it’s about something else entirely.

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Get it right.

Airship city

“Led” is the past tense of “lead.”

L.E.D. Not L.E.A.D.

Example: “Fran, who leads the group, led the meeting.”

When professional publications get the small stuff wrong, it makes us less trusting about the big stuff. Trust in media is already at an all-time low. Don’t alienate liberal arts majors and obsessive compulsives. We may be the last readers standing.

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Education glamorous

Education is its own privilege

When I think back to my college friends and me, what a beautiful bubble we lived in! Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a fancy college—it was state school, and we were all from out of state. And we certainly weren’t rich kids: my friend J came from a Lower East Side single parent family, back when the Lower East Side was the Lower East Side. 

The most comfortable of us came from middle class homes with a single professional breadwinner (engineer, dentist). Some of us had been caught in the American legal system as teenagers—although, as white teenagers, we’d had it comparatively easy. 

We’d all experienced prejudice, not only witnessing bigotry against friends, but coming up against it ourselves due to our ethnicity, or sexuality, or religion, or looks, or weight, or height, or comparative lack of athletic prowess, or disability, or the way we thought, or the way we talked, or what part of our town we lived in, or because we did well on tests, or because we did poorly on tests, or because of some other thing, or (usually) some multiple of the above. 

In Pittsburgh, where Cadillacs were called Jew canoes, the kids who tolerated me in ninth grade called me Mini Kosher, and I was subjected to daily humiliations until I proved myself by getting arrested and becoming a low-level pot dealer. But I digress.

We weren’t rich or cheerleaders or jocks (not that those kids don’t have problems of their own), and we weren’t the kind of white kids White America approved of, but we were privileged as hell not only by skin color, but also because we were educated. 


Education should be a right and American public school was initially set up, however imperfectly and even accounting for the racial segregation and deep unfairness of the time, to make sure everybody, at least in principle, would be educated enough to read books, understand political issues sufficiently to participate in America’s representative democracy, take care of their children, earn a living, grill hot dogs in summer, and pay taxes—the good life. 

For the luckiest, those whose families cherished learning, those whose parents read to them, those who looked forward to a Saturday library visit to pick out new books to read (novels and history books and science books and science fiction novels and fantasy stories and books about insects and books about reptiles and books that shed at least some light on the thrilling secret mysteries of adult relationships)…

Those who understood how to take tests so as to do well in school (which is a completely different thing from learning and retaining information), those whose parents encouraged reading and learning and cared and asked about grades and teachers, those with parents at least one of whom had time to spend with them, making them feel loved and safe, those who came from cultures where learning was cherished, so that their aunts and uncles talked about art and science and politics, and not just ball games and recipes…

Those whose families strenuously opposed all racial and religious bigotry, who taught their kids to stand up for the underdog, those who taught their children to approach all others with love and respect (even when, in reality, approaching everyone with love and respect means you sometimes get bullied and ridiculed, because some people are damaged and hateful and will see your humanity as a weakness)…

Those whose families (like all families) were far from perfect, but who somehow, despite failings and tragedies, instilled a love of learning or blew on a spark that was already present…

…So that their kids could do well enough in high school to attend a college, even if they really wanted to run away and join a rock and roll band…

And whether or not it was the most expensive or most competitive college in the land (it wasn’t), it was a place where they’d encounter other smart kids from different backgrounds and discover Truffaut and Bergman and stay up all night enthralled by great ideas or ridiculing them, cracking each other up, sleeping together, experiencing new levels of romance and heartbreak, discovering possibilities.

The ultimate privilege: having a sufficiently educated background to discover possibilities and think for yourself.

If only we all had that.

For Judith

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Code Community Diversity Education

Gender Bias and Reputation on Stack Overflow

This paper concludes that women are not disadvantaged by their own actions; they are penalised by a scoring structure which conceals sexism and disregarded by a masculine-majority userbase. Far from programmers’ paradise, gender-biases dictate the sharing and recognition of technical knowledge on SO.

Trouble in programmer’s paradise: gender-biases in sharing and recognising technical knowledge on Stack Overflow by S. J. Brooke

Hat tip: Shannon Smith (@cafenoirdesign).

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My Night With Essl

Mike Essl and I discuss his portfolio.
Mike Essl and I discuss his portfolio on Night 2 of An Event Apart Online Together Fall Summit.

Herewith, a scene from last night’s interview with legendary web & book designer (and Dean of The Cooper Union School of Art) Mike Essl, who shared his portfolio, career highlights, early web design history, and more. Fun!

If you get a chance to meet, work with, or learn from Mike, take it. He’s brilliant, hilarious, warmly human, and one of the most creative people you’ll ever have the good fortune to know. 

Mike Essl

So ended Day 2 of An Event Apart Online Together Fall Summit 2021. Day 3 begins in less than two hours. You can still join us … or watch later On Demand.

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business Career CSS Design Education maturity

You got this.

A man is struggling to learn new technology on his laptop computer.

I’M LEARNING new tech and it’s hard. Maybe you’re in the same boat.

Through the rosy lens of memory, learning HTML and Photoshop back in the day was a breeze.

It wasn’t, really. And CSS, when it came along in 1996, was even tougher to grasp—in part because it was mostly theoretical, due to poor support in some browsers and no support at all in others; in part because the design model in early CSS wasn’t conceived by designers.

But my memory of learning these tools in 1995 and 1996 is pain-free because it’s an old pain, forgotten because of time passing and even more because the pleasure of achievements gained by acquired knowledge masks the pain of acquisition. (See also: learning to read, learning to ride a bicycle.)

Beyond all that, my old learning’s pain-free in hindsight because I view it through the filter of nostalgia for a younger, simpler me in a simpler time. I was faster, sexier, ached less. Maybe you feel that way sometimes.

Most of all, I falsely remember it being easy to learn HTML, CSS, and Photoshop because I wanted to learn those things. I was doing it for me, not for a job, and certainly not to keep up.

I was a pioneer—we all were, back then. I was passionate about the possibilities of the web and eager to contribute.

Do you dream in color?

That first year of learning web design, I often, quite literally, dreamed in four-color GIFs. I got near-physical pleasure from reducing file sizes. I subscribed to every web design mailing list out there, and even started one of my own.

Remember mailing lists? I don’t mean sponsored, monetized newsletters with images and tortuous HTML. I mean stuff you read in Lynx.

When I shared what I was learning, by writing about it—when I learned what I was learning by teaching it—I felt euphoric. We were at the dawn of a new kind of information age: one that came from the people, and to which anyone could contribute merely by learning a few simple HTML elements. It was going to be great. And democratic. And empowering. Our tech would uplift the whole suffering world.

With every new discovery I made and shared, I felt a sense of mastery and control, and a tingling certainty that I was physically contributing to a better world of the near-future. A world forged in the best tech ever: simple, human-readable HTML.

And then the future happened.

Cut to 25 years later. Web design has become overly and often needlessly complex, and social media’s having a profoundly antisocial affect that designers with good intentions seem powerless to change.

Design is supposed to fix the world, not break it. Yet some of us, possibly even most of us, work on products and at companies we feel conflicted about.

Design is supposed to value simplicity. And yet here many of us are, struggling to learn new tech, and not feeling it.

But enough about the universe; let’s talk about me.

I’m learning new tech and it’s hard.

I work at a company that makes it easy to use a popular open-source publishing platform. Making things easy for customers is what design’s about. It’s also, always, hard work. And it’s supposed to be. The harder designers work behind the scenes, the easier the experience is supposed to get for the customer.

I have a confession to make: I love hard, mental, strategic design work. I love going cross-eyed envisioning customer journey options small and large. I love it like I love good typography and icons and layout, and I’m way better at it than I ever was at those things. I love it like I love color schemes, and, again—I’m better at it than I was at those.

And, stop me if you’ve heard this one, the more strategic I gets, the further from the code I feels.

Learning new code and tools

I’m not on a product team—I do client-facing design on a special projects team inside our product company—but every designer at the company should understand our products on a deep level, and every designer at the company, whether officially working on product or not, should be able to help make the products better for the customer.

For team-building and other reasons, every designer at our company who can do so is flying to a desert resort next month for a meet-up. And at that meet-up, each of us will fix at least one thing that’s wrong with one of our products. And when I say fix it, I don’t mean file a bug report as a GitHub issue. I mean fix it.

To be ready for that, I’m learning code and tools I probably should have learned a few years ago, but, as a rich man says of his servants, I always had people for that.

New to my work day, before and after internal and client meetings, I slog away trying to master command line interfaces, GitHub workflow, WordPress Calypso, Gutenberg, and React. I’ll need facility in these areas to do a live product fix at next month’s meetup.

Getting the hang of this tech will empower me to fix broken designs and create good ones. That excites me. But learning new things is hard—and GitHub, Terminal, Calypso, Gutenberg and React do not come nearly as naturally to me as HTML, CSS, and Photoshop did 25 years ago (or so I remember).

Age. It’s not just a number.

We’ve all heard that the body replaces itself every seven years. Which means I’m not just a different person mentally, emotionally, and spiritually since I first learned web design 25 years ago; I’m also physically an entirely different person, inhabiting a body that’s been rebuilt, cell by cell, more than three times. (The actual science is more granular than the seven-year meme, but go with me, here.)

At my age, change comes harder than it used to. Guess what? That means I need to change, not just to do my job; I need to change to stay young. (No, that’s not science, but yes, it works.) When it’s hard to move, you need to start exercising, even if starting is hard. When you’re trapped in a dead-end relationship, it’s time to say goodbye, even though breaking up is sad and scary and hard as hell. And if you work in tech and find yourself thinking your past learning gets you off the hook from having to learn new things, you need to think again.

Change. Try it, you’ll like it.

I’m lucky. I work in a supportive place. When I get stuck, a dozen people offer to help. (If where you work isn’t like this, consider working with us.)

Learning new things is hard, and it gets harder if you’re rusty at it, but it gets easier if you keep at it. Or so I tell myself, and my friends tell me.

Maybe you’re in the same position. Maybe you’ve even wasted time and energy on mental ju-jitsu like this: “I believe in semantic, accessible HTML. Therefore I don’t need to learn React.” If that’s you, and it was me, review your thinking. There is no therefore. You can have both things.

You can do this, because I can, and I’m more stubborn and more full of myself than you ever were.

So to my old-school sisters and brothers in HTML. If you’re struggling to learn new things today so you can do your job better tomorrow, I’m going to tell you what a friend told me this morning:

“You got this.”

__

 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

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Shopify Partners Program wants you—and so do I!

Partner Studio

AS MUCH as I love reading (and writing and publishing) books and articles about design, I’ve never learned as much from a book as I’ve picked up over time while rubbing shoulders with colleagues who share my work space.

It’s why, even though NYC office rents are ludicrously expensive, I opened a shared design studio space in gently trending NoMad, Manhattan in January of 2012. And why, just three short months ago, I leaped at the chance to help launch the Shopify Partners Studio Program—a coworking space and casual mentoring program for exceptionally talented freelance ecommerce designers and developers.

The first six participants included a web developer and social media consultant; a visual experience designer; a freelance web developer and blogger; two freelance designer/developers; and a copywriter/marketing consultant. Three of them sought feedback from me on exciting business and product ideas they’d come up with; two asked me for career guidance and business advice. All taught me more than I taught them, and inspired me to look at my own work and career with fresh eyes.

Most or all of these lovely and talented people will be moving on soon, as the next phase of Shopify Partner Studio begins. Which brings us to you.

Apply now to join the next round of Shopify Partner Studio! If selected for residency, you’ll gain access to a suite of opportunities to kickstart your business, including:

  • Free rent and high-speed Internet for three months in my studio on lower Madison Avenue.
  • Mentorship from your humble narrator, Shopify executives, and “other industry icons.” (I put the quotations around Shopify’s phrase to not sound like a complete egomaniac.)
  • Fast-tracked access to the Shopify Experts Marketplace, where Shopify sends its 243,000 merchants looking for help with store, theme, and app builds.
  • A free Shopify store to build your portfolio website.
  • A free ticket to Smashing Conference NYC.

So what are you waiting for? Join me and some of your smartest colleagues in an experience that just might help make your career. Apply now to the Shopify Partners Studio Program.

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Community editorial Education Existence experience Ideas

Why humans run the world

History professor Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, explains why humans have dominated Earth. The reason’s not what you might expect:

The real difference between us and other animals is on the collective level. Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers. Ants and bees can also work together in large numbers, but they do so in a very rigid way. If a beehive is facing a new threat or a new opportunity, the bees cannot reinvent their social system overnight in order to cope better. They cannot, for example, execute the queen and establish a republic. Wolves and chimpanzees cooperate far more flexibly than ants, but they can do so only with small numbers of intimately known individuals. Among wolves and chimps, cooperation is based on personal acquaintance. If I am a chimp and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: What kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you?

Only Homo sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. One-on-one or ten-on-ten, chimpanzees may be better than us. But pit 1,000 Sapiens against 1,000 chimps, and the Sapiens will win easily, for the simple reason that 1,000 chimps can never cooperate effectively. Put 100,000 chimps in Wall Street or Yankee Stadium, and you’ll get chaos. Put 100,000 humans there, and you’ll get trade networks and sports contests.

Source: Why humans run the world

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Progressive Enhancement FTW with Aaron Gustafson

IN EPISODE ? 130 of The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”), I interview long-time web standards evangelist Aaron Gustafson, author of Adaptive Web Design, on web design then and now; why Flipboard’s 60fps web launch is anti-web and anti-user; design versus art; and the 2nd Edition of Aaron’s book, coming from New Riders this year.

Enjoy Episode ? 130 of The Big Web Show.

Show Links

A Bit About Aaron Gustafson
Adaptive Web Design: Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement
Responsive Issues Community Group
Easy Designs – Web Design, Development & Consulting
Web Standards Sherpa
Code & Creativity
WebStandardsProject (@wasp) | Twitter
A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites
Genesis – Land Of Confusion [Official Music Video] – YouTube

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conferences Design editorial Education

On Design Conferences

A GOOD CONFERENCE is a designed experience. I don’t mean a visually over-designed brandgasm. I mean an educational and emotionally considered narrative.

To me, the ideal conference offers a single track, so that all attendees (and all speakers) share the same intense experience over one or more days. The content of each presentation should be discussed with the organizer far in advance of the show, just as the content of an issue of a magazine gets reviewed with editors long before the issue is published.

Too many conferences focus on the mechanics and skimp on the up-front editorial strategizing, shaping, and planning. It is not enough to simply hire people because they are respected in the industry, or because they are in demand, or because their name sells tickets, or because they are available.

A great conference is like a great playlist or LP; every song should contribute, and the sequence in which they are heard should have an inevitability to it, like the song sequence on your favorite albums. The order in which sessions take place is critical; there should be music to the ebb and flow; related ideas should be presented in blocks that help attendees see connections across sessions and topics.

A trained ape can invite the same speakers who speak everywhere else. Conference planners should constantly seek new talent and new ideas. Even more, they should strive to create an environment in which speakers actually want to sit and listen to other speakers, thus further improving the editorial flow and the conscious interplay of related ideas.

To put together great editorial content requires deep and broad knowledge of your discipline, and of the people who contribute to it. It takes sensitivity and experience to choose just the right speakers, on just the right topics, and to arrange their presentations across time for maximum educational and strategic benefit.

If I do say so myself, cough cough.

With thanks to my friend Louis Rosenfeld, who has asked a number of conference founders to share their thoughts on the subject. Watch this space for links to a polished conglomeration of all they had to say, coming soon.

Thanks also to Jim Heid, who ran Web Design World back in them days. And to Eric, Marci, Toby, and Stephen, eternally.

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Design Is A Relationship

Mike Monteiro

MIKE MONTEIRO is a man on a mission. He wants to improve design by fixing the core of it, which is the relationship between designer and client. Too many of us fear our clients—the people whose money keeps our lights on, and who hire us to solve business problems they can’t solve for themselves. And too many clients are even more frustrated and puzzled by their designers than the designers are by the clients.

It’s the designer’s job to fix this, which is why Mike first wrote Design Is A Job, and spent two years taking the message into conference halls and meeting rooms from New Zealand to New York.

I wish every designer could read this book. I can’t tell you how many friends of mine—many of whom I consider far better designers than I am—struggle every day with terrible anxieties over how a client will react to their work. And the problem isn’t limited to web and interaction designers. Anybody who designs anything burns cycles in fear and acrimony. I too waste hours worrying about the client’s reaction—but a dip into Mike’s first book relaxes me like a warm milk bath, and reminds me that collaboration and persuasion are the essence of my craft and well within my power to execute.

If the designer’s side of things were the only part of the problem Mike had addressed, it would be enough. But there is more:

  • Next Mike will help clients understand what they should expect from a designer and learn how to hire one they can work with. How he will do that is still a secret—although folks attending An Event Apart San Francisco this week will get a clue.
  • Design education is the third leg of the chair, and once he has spread his message to clients, Mike intends to fix that or die trying. As Mike sees it (and I agree) too many design programs turn out students who can defend their work in an academic critique session among their peers, but have no idea how to talk to clients and no comprehension of their problems. We are creating a generation of skilled and talented but only semi-employable designers—designers who, unless they have the luck to learn what their expensive education didn’t teach them, will have miserably frustrating careers and turn out sub-par work that doesn’t solve their clients’ problems.

We web and interaction designers are always seeking to understand our user, and to solve the user’s problems with empathy and compassion. Perhaps we should start with the user who hires us.

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Career cities Design development Education NYC The Big Web Show

Become a Web Developer: Avi Flombaum of The Flatiron School on Big Web Show 89

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AVI FLOMBAUM, dean of The Flatiron School, is my guest in Big Web Show Episode No. 89. A 28-year-old Rubyist, Skillsharer, storyteller and entrepreneur, Avi founded Designer Pages and NYC on Rails before creating The Flatiron School—a 12 week, full-time program designed to turn you into a web developer.

Listen to Episode No. 89 of The Big Web Show.

URLS, URLS, URLS

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Big Web Show CSS CSS3 Designers development Education eric meyer HTML podcasts Standards State of the Web

Big Web Show 79: Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer

IN EPISODE No. 79 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview CSS guru, Microformats co-founder, O’Reilly and New Riders author, and An Event Apart co-founder Eric A. Meyer (@meyerweb) about upcoming CSS modules including grid layout, flexbox, and regions; his career trajectory from college graduate webmaster to world-renowned author, consultant, and lecturer; founding and running a virtual community (CSS-Discuss); becoming an O’Reilly writer; the early days of the Mosaic Browser and The Web Standards Project’s CSS Samurai; “The Web Behind” variation of The Web Ahead podcast, and more.

Listen to the episode.

About Eric

Eric A. Meyer has been working with the web since late 1993 and is an internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML and CSS. He is the principal consultant for Complex Spiral Consulting and lives in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a much nicer city than you’ve been led to believe. Author of “Eric Meyer on CSS” (New Riders), “Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide” (O’Reilly & Associates), “CSS2.0 Programmer’s Reference” (Osborne/McGraw-Hill), and the CSS Browser Compatibility Charts, Eric co-founded and co-directs An Event Apart, the design conference “for people who make websites,” and speaks at a variety of conferences on the subject of standards, CSS use, and web design.

URLs

Photo: Chris Jennings

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An Event Apart Atlanta 2011

YOU FIND ME ENSCONCED in the fabulous Buckhead, Atlanta Intercontinental Hotel, preparing to unleash An Event Apart Atlanta 2011, three days of design, code, and content strategy for people who make websites. Eric Meyer and I co-founded our traveling web conference in December, 2005; in 2006 we chose Atlanta for our second event, and it was the worst show we’ve ever done. We hosted at Turner Field, not realizing that half the audience would be forced to crane their necks around pillars if they wanted to see our speakers or the screen on which slides were projected.

Also not realizing that Turner Field’s promised contractual ability to deliver Wi-Fi was more theoretical than factual: the venue’s A/V guy spent the entire show trying to get an internet connection going. You could watch audience members twitchily check their laptops for email every fourteen seconds, then make the “no internet” face that is not unlike the face addicts make when the crack dealer is late, then check their laptops again.

The food was good, our speakers (including local hero Todd Dominey) had wise lessons to impart, and most attendees had a pretty good time, but Eric and I still shudder to remember everything that went wrong with that gig.

Not to jinx anything, but times have changed. We are now a major three-day event, thanks to a kick-ass staff and the wonderful community that has made this show its home. We thank you from the bottoms of our big grateful hearts.

I will see several hundred of you for the next three days. Those not attending may follow along: