Category: events

Places to go, people to see. Conferences, seminars, festivals.

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Accessibility An Event Apart better-know-a-speaker Boston business cities Community Design development events industry Redesigns Standards Tools

Register for An Event Apart Boston

Registration is now open for An Event Apart Boston 2007. Enjoy two amazing days of design and code plus meals, a party, and a bag of swag for a mere $795 (reg. $895) while early bird savings last. Attend for as little as $745 with a discount code exclusively for zeldman.com readers.

Learn by day, party by night

On An Event Apart’s website, you’ll now find a detailed schedule describing the presentations with which our superstar speakers hope to entertain and enlighten you. From “Web Standards Stole My Truck!” to “Redesigning Your Way out of a Paper Bag,” it’s two stimulating days of best practices and fresh ideas in design, usability, accessibility, markup and code.

Check out that schedule. I’ll wait.

Lest you be overwhelmed by learning too much too soon, we’ll help you unwind (and do a little networking) at the Opening Night Party sponsored by Media Temple. You might even win a prize, courtesy of Adobe, New Riders, or Media Temple.

Hotel savings

Our Boston Events page also includes notes to help you book your hotel room at a specially negotiated discount price.

Located in beautiful and historic Back Bay, the Boston Marriott Copley Place provides in-room, high-speed internet access; laptop safes and coolers; 27-inch color TV with cable movies; luxurious bedding and linens, and more. Best of all, it’s the site of the conference. You can walk out of your room and into the show!

Save more with discount code

During the early bird period, the price for this two-day event is $795. But you can nab an extra $50 off with this discount code exclusively for zeldman.com readers:

AEAZELD

Just enter AEAZELD in An Event Apart’s shopping cart to enjoy those savings immediately. During our early bird period, you’ll pay just $745 for the two days and everything that comes with them.

After February 26, 2007, when the early bird savings ends, the price goes up to $895, and you’ll pay $845 with the discount. Still pretty good for two days with some of the sharpest minds and greatest talents in web design. But why pay more? Book An Event Apart Boston as soon as you can.

Unlimited creativity, limited seating

An Event Apart Boston will be the best conference Eric Meyer and I have yet put together. It will also be this year’s only East Coast Event Apart. Don’t miss it.

Join Eric and me, along with Steve Krug, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Molly Holzschlag, Cameron Moll, Dan Cederholm, Ethan Marcotte, and Jason Santa Maria, for what we modestly believe may be the most exciting and enlightening show in modern web design.

Hurry! Seating is limited and early bird savings end Feb. 26, 2007.

[tags]aneventapart, boston, aneventapartboston07[/tags]

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An Event Apart better-know-a-speaker Design events people

Better Know a Speaker: Steve Krug

You may have heard that An Event Apart is expanding. 2007 will see big, two-day shows in fine, fancy towns like Boston, New Orleans, Chicago, and San Francisco—with more great speakers than before and at a lower ticket price per day.

Steve Krug

Take Boston, and consider but one of our nine featured speakers, Mr. Steve Krug (biography, business website), author of the game-changing usability tome Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, now in its second edition. I can’t believe we got him. I’m still awed that he said yes.

If not for Steve Krug, I wouldn’t so much as speak the word “usability” in the privacy of my home, let alone bandy it about in mixed company. Curt Cloninger memorably expressed what many of us felt when he wrote “Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus” in the July 28, 2000 issue of A List Apart.

Stop and smell the brimstone

Like many design professionals, I rejected usability when I first encountered it. That’s mainly because I first encountered it as a series of rules, put forward by business-oriented, lab-coat-wearing experts who were hostile to the aesthetic component of user experience. Later, the rules would soften. “Only use blue, underlined links” would give way to gentler and more flexible guidelines.

And even before this softening, there was much in the early, fire-and-brimstone approach to usability that was actually of value to web designers. I should have been open-minded enough to benefit from the helpful bits and wink at the rest. But I was too busy defending my creative turf (not to mention reliving old battles with badly run focus groups and cocky account execs) to look closer and see that usability mainly means designing for the people who use my site.

And then along came Mary

Don’t Make Me Think. Starting with his book’s very title, Steve Krug made me see. Advancing from one low-key, guilt-free, common-sense premise to the next, Don’t Make Me Think made me think. And think. Above all, it made me rethink.

Icon from archived Happy Cog projects page (non-hover state).

Consider an archived Happy Cog portfolio page. Ignore the problem of orange-on-orange, which falls more under accessibility than usability. Focus on the page’s unusual means of presenting written content. When you click an icon, relevant text emerges. Click again, and it disappears. For instance, when you gently tap Cate Blanchett, you get text about the Charlotte Gray website we designed for Warner Bros.

It’s nifty stuff—at least for a non-Flash, pre-Ajax site. Or is it? I had fun designing it; other designers had fun reverse-engineering it and adding the same show and hide effects to their pages. I even shared the code in the first edition of Designing With Web Standards, mainly to prove how easy it was to use CSS, JavaScript, and the DOM to create playful interfaces that roughly mimicked the behavior of applications and kiosk-based presentations.

But the page’s usability is awful. How could a visitor possibly know that she is supposed to click an icon to reveal pertinent hidden text? She couldn’t. Hence the explanatory text at the top of the page. If you have to explain how your interface works, maybe you need to rethink the whole thing.

Steve Krug didn’t drop by my house to tell me my design was overwrought and under-thought. And he wouldn’t have put it that way, anyway. He’s way too nice a guy, not to mention way too experienced a consultant, to base his tutelage on insults. But his book woke my conscience and reshaped how I approach my craft.

His book, which you can read during a business flight, makes a convincing case for studying your audience, learning their needs, creating pathways of experience that you hope will meet those needs, and then testing, testing, testing.

Krug convinces because he is witty, and charming, and humble, and mostly because his ideas make sense and ring true. Boiled down, the essence of usability is the same as the essence of all good design: Think more so your users don’t have to think at all.

Design, after all, is about solving problems. Start with your user’s.

Please come to Boston

An Event Apart Boston 2007

My Event Apart co-host Eric Meyer and I don’t know exactly what Steve Krug will talk about on March 26 or 27 on our stage at Marriott Copley Place. We only know we will be privileged to be among his listeners. Registration for An Event Apart Boston 2007 will open in January, 2007. (A lot) more information about the show will be available very soon.

In coming weeks, in these pages, I’ll share what each of our exciting speakers means to me. Meanwhile, enough about me and Steve Krug. What does Steve Krug mean to you?

[tags]aneventapart, Steve Krug, usability, design, webdesign, boston, conferences[/tags]

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Accessibility An Event Apart cities Community Design events photography Standards

Shiny happy people

An Event Apart Austin. Monday 6 November 2006. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown. Austin, Texas, USA. Design and code. Macs and mics. Was it good for you, too?
(Photo pool.)

[tags]aneventapart, austin, design, conferences, events[/tags]

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An Event Apart cities Design events Standards

An Event Apart Austin: Details, Details

Event Apart Austin attendees, this post contains important information about parking, laptops, snacks and lunch, the after-party sponsored by Knowbility, our Flickr photo group, and more. The rest of you, please move along.

About Austin

Austin, capital of Texas, “live music capital of the world,” and the Southwest’s answer to Silicon Valley, is a lively and remarkable town, teeming with history and high-rises, high-tech and dirty low-down blues. Seat of a great university and a million funky taverns, it’s paradise for music lovers and Tex-Mex junkies. Our favorite activity: breakfasting and celebrity-watching at Las Manitas Florist, 211 Congress Avenue (when we can get in). Yes, it’s called “Florist.” No, it’s not a florist, it’s a great Mexican cafe. Welcome to Austin!

Location, Laptops, and Lunch

An Event Apart Austin takes place…

Monday, November 6th, 2006, 9am – 5pm
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
409 Colorado St. (Corner of 4th and Colorado; Directions and Map)
Austin, TX 78701

Yes, you can bring your laptop. Yes, there will be WI-FI. Yes, there will be chow throughout the day, including vegetarian choices. (Lunch options include veggie pizza, veggie sandwiches and salads. There are plenty of meat options, too.)

The Schedule

An Event Apart Austin runs from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. We have a lot to cover, so the event will start promptly. Arrive early to get a good seat! Doors open at 8:00 am; for best results, plan to show up between 8:00 am and 8:30 am. If you’re driving, leave yourself extra time to find a good parking space. (See the next section for details on parking.)

The day’s schedule is available for your perusal.

Parking

Parking can be a hassle, so come early and give yourself extra time. The Alamo Drafthouse says:

With the ongoing construction and the increased popularity of the warehouse district downtown, parking can be a real challenge. Street parking is still available for the crafty and persistent; we also recommend the parking structure between 3rd and 4th streets on San Antonio. The neighboring restaurants also have valet parking until midnight.

Happy Hour and a Half

An Event Apart Austin will be chock-full of design and code pleasures. But the fun (and the networking) don’t stop at 5:00. Join us after the show for a Happy Hour and a Half featuring complementary cocktails and savory snacks, sponsored by our good friends at Knowbility:

Happy Hour and a Half 6:00 – 7:30
The Belmont
306 W. 6th Street

Entering the Belmont Austin, with its wonderful 60s period decor, is like cruising Las Vegas or Palm Springs with Frank, Dino, and Sammy. Okay, it’s not—but it will be fun, especially after all those hours of brain work. Pull up to a plush banquette, order a free cocktail, and hob-nob with your fellow attendees.

Freebies From our Sponsors

By random drawing, some folks attending An Event Apart Austin will win software, books, or free hosting donated by our wonderful sponsors: Adobe, New Riders/AIGA Press, and Media Temple. Thank you, sponsors!

Join our Flickr Group!

You know you want to! Bring your digital camera and snap away (just be considerate of your fellow attendees). Share your snapshots with other attendees on our Flickr group:

flickr.com/groups/aeaaustin2006

Suggested tags: aneventapart, aneventapart06, aneventapart2006, aneventapartaustin, austin

Disclaimer and Miscellany

Please note that the schedule is subject to change, and that some things are not entirely within our control.

Previous AEA Austin 2006 news

[tags]aneventapart, design, conferences, austin, texas[/tags]

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Accessibility Browsers Design development events Ideas links music Standards writing

Monday breakfast links

Berners-Lee: reinventing HTML

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web and founder of the W3C, announces reforms:

It is really important to have real developers on the ground involved with the development of HTML. It is also really important to have browser makers intimately involved and committed. And also all the other stakeholders….

Some things are clearer with hindsight of several years. It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn’t work.

9 to 5 = average
To be great in design takes passion and work.
Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful to Feelings
I love this.
Web Directions North
Our Australian friends set up camp in Vancouver, for what looks like a great two-day conference on standards-based design and development (Vancouver Canada, February 6-8 2007). Speakers include Kelly Goto (Gotomobile), Andy Clarke (malarkey), Adrian Holovaty (Chicago Crime, Washington Post), Douglas Bowman (Google Visual Design Lead), Dan Cederholm (SimpleBits), Joe Clark (joeclark.org), Dave Shea (CSS Zen Garden), Cameron Moll (Authentic Boredom), Molly Holzschlag (Molly.com), Veerle Pieters (Veerle’s Blog, Duoh!), Kaitlin Sherwood (Google Maps US Census mashup), Tantek Çelik (Technorati).
Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
By Andrew Kirkpatrick, Richard Rutter, Christian Heilmann, Jim Thatcher, Cynthia Waddell, et al. Don’t let the unsexy title fool you. Vast and practically all-encompassing, this newly updated classic belongs on every web designer’s shelf. (Better still, open it and read.)
I Cannot Possibly Buy Girl Scout Cookies From Your Daughter at This Time
By Charlie Nadler in McSweeney’s.
Gemini Girl
New women’s blog elegantly designed by Ray McKenzie.
eMusic: 33 Folkways LPs
Thirty-three important Folkways Recordings for download. Louis Bonfa, Mighty Sparrow, Woodie Guthrie, Henry Cowell and more.
On having layout – the concept of hasLayout in IE/Win
Technical but reasonably easy to follow discussion of why Internet Explorer’s rendering of your design may suck differ from your expectations
“Apple’s Backup App is Shit”
God bless SuperDuper.

[tags]W3C, webdirections, accessibility, haslayout, browsers, mcsweeney’s, folkways[/tags]

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An Event Apart cities events

Show Pix, Seattle stylie

Code Critique

Photos from An Event Apart Seattle 2006.

[tags]aneventapart, seattle, design, webdesign[/tags]

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An Event Apart Design events Standards

An Event Apart Austin

Though Seattle has sold out, we’re pleased to announce our next Event Apart. Come join Jason Santa Maria, Eric Meyer, your humble narrator and a mystery guest for a Texas-sized day of design and code in Austin, TX.

Monday, November 6th, 2006
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
409 Colorado St.
Austin, TX 78701

Alamo Drafthouse

We love movies, and the Alamo Drafthouse might just be the best place in the world to see them. It’s also a great place for an event. The seats are comfy, the sightlines clear, the screen sizeable, and the food wonderful. All this and free Wi-Fi, too!

Register early to save $50!

Registration is open now, and you can save $50 off the cost of attending An Event Apart Austin if you register by October 6th, 2006. There are a limited number of seats, so don’t wait too long to claim your stake!

[tags]design, events, austin, texas, webdesign, aneventapart, an event apart[/tags]

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Get your kicks on Pier 66

Sorry, An Event Apart Seattle is all sold out!

There are still a few seats available for An Event Apart Seattle, featuring Kelly Goto, Erin Kissane, Jason Santa Maria, Eric Meyer, and Zeldman. Grab them (the seats, not the speakers) before the price goes up! Our early bird discount ends this Friday, August 18th. (Schedule | Map | Registration)

[tags]design, events, seattle, aneventapart, an event apart[/tags]

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And boy are my arms tired

6:40 AM, laptops and collateral parked at the curb, waiting for Scandinavia House to open.

An Event Apart NYC is over. It lasted twice as long as previous events. Featured three times as many speakers. Took at least four times as much effort to prepare. And was ten tons of fun.

We couldn’t have done it without you

Thanks first and foremost to all who attended. You made the show.

Our speakers were some of the best thinkers, designers, and coders this side of Antarctica. Thanks, Ze Frank, Khoi Vinh, Tantek Çelik, and Aaron Gustafson.

Jason Santa Maria, in addition to speaking eloquently, designed the identity system for the conference, right down to the lanyards.

Day One: Jason Santa Maria onstage an hour before the show starts.

Eric Meyer is a genius. You could put a mic in front of him anywhere and a crowd of CSS-hungry devotees would soon gather. You could even put him on after Ze Frank.

Baltimore filmmaker Ian Corey videotaped the event, supplied and maintained additional equipment, and ran the sound system.

Daniel Mall and Jon Aldinger, web designers and event assistants extraordinaire, lugged heavy boxes of collateral from Happy Cog to Scandinavia House. They also (with brilliant Rob Weychert) manned the doors, cleaned the auditorium after attendees filed out each day, and assisted Ian with the sound.

A space this elegant and food this good are hard to come by in the world of conferences. Perfectly tuned service is equally rare. Victoria and Bo of Scandinavia House and Peter and Angellique of Restaurant Aquavit, along with their discreet yet ever-present staff, provided almost unheard-of levels of service. We thank them, and I recommend them to anyone hosting an intimate or mid-sized design conference in New York City. (The theater seats 168 but we cut off registration at 120 to maintain intimacy.)

Thank you for your constant and astonishing support: Adobe, AIGA, Media Temple, and New Riders.

Happy Cog paid for the drinks.

Linky-poos

Rekindle the memories or start new ones:

[tags]aneventapart, an event apart, eric meyer, khoi vinh, jason santa maria, ze frank, tantek, aaron gustafson, media temple, adobe, AIGA, new riders, happycog, happy cog, nyc, zeldman[/tags]

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An Event Apart cities Design events Ideas people war, peace, and justice writing

We hold most of these truths

A copy of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand is on public view at The New York Public Library. Accompanying it are several of the very first printed versions known to have survived.

Standing in the presence of these yellowing pages is like glimpsing the face of God, for they are the foundation of American democracy, and their core idea underlies all human rights struggles, liberation movements, and emergent democracies around the world.

The version in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand is fascinating not only because it’s in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand, but also because it contains passages that would have ended slavery at the birth of the American nation. But those passages had to be deleted before the Declaration could be signed by representatives of states where slavery was practiced.

Put another way, the client bought a document intended to liberate all humanity, but demanded changes that kept part of humanity in chains. It would take another 100 years and hundreds of thousands of deaths before slavery ended, and the tragic legacy of African enslavement plagues the U.S. to this day. (At The New York Times: a slide show of Freedom Rider portraits, a work in progress by my friend Eric Etheridge.)

So the next time a client requests changes that make your work less beautiful, less usable, or less smart, remember that greater people than you have lost bigger battles over far more important matters.

The Declaration of Independence is on view at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue now through 5 August and admission to the Library is of course free. If you’re in New York City this summer, the exhibit is worth a look. (Plug: And if you’re in town next week for An Event Apart, the Library is just a few blocks away from the Scandinavia House venue.)

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Accessibility An Event Apart cities Design development events Standards Zeldman

An Event Apart NYC Schedule

A detailed schedule of An Event Apart NYC has been posted at aneventapart.com and reproduced below for your convenience. Join Tantek Çelik, Ze Frank, Aaron Gustafson, Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh, Eric Meyer, and Jeffrey Zeldman for two days of design and code in the heart of New York City:

9am – 5pm, Monday 10 July & Tuesday 11 July
Scandinavia House
Victor Borge Hall — Level A
58 Park Avenue, New York City, NY 10016
Map | Hotel info

Victor Borge Hall is located on Level A, one floor below ground. Enter at the front door on Park Avenue and take the elevator located at the rear of the entrance hall, across from the ground-floor Gift Shop. Wheelchair-friendly restrooms are located on Level B, accessible via the elevator.

Seating is lecture-style, in a comfortable and exquisitely designed theater space, and doors open at 8:00 am. There is no Wi-Fi at this venue, but we will provide downloadable files the night before the show for those who wish to follow along on their laptops.

Schedule

An Event Apart NYC runs from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. We have a lot to cover, so the event will start promptly. Arrive early to get a good seat! Doors open at 8:00 am; for best results, plan to show up between 8:00 am and 8:30 am. Here is what you can expect over the two days of this conference:

DAY I – DESIGN DAY

9:00 am Welcome and Housekeeping [Zeldman]
9:05 am Textism (Writing User Experience) [Zeldman]
Better design and better usability through word choice. Editing for designers.
10:05 am BREAK!
10:15 am Solving (Re)Design Problems [Jason Santa Maria]
Visually repositioning a beloved brand (namely, A List Apart). Design as problem solving. Knowing which problems to solve.
11:00 am Bringing A List Apart Together [Eric Meyer]
How someone like Eric Meyer takes a design and turns it into a living, breathing web page.
12:00 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Sponsor Giveaways
Adobe, Media Temple, New Riders and AIGA Press will hand out valuable software, services, and books for free.
1:15 pm A Day in the Life of a Design Director [Khoi Vinh]
From sun-up until the stroke of midnight, Khoi Vinh will take us through a typical day inside the NYTimes.com design group.
2:15 pm What’s the Story? [Zeldman]
Finding brand narratives that set your site apart from others like it. Seizing inspiration from limited budgets.
2:50 pm BREAK!
3:00 pm Web 0.2 [Ze Frank]
A personal, down-in-the-trenches view of how the technology revolution impacts the way we communicate with a mass audience.
4:00 pm DESIGN CRITIQUES [Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh, Ze Frank, Zeldman]
A rip-snortin’ romp through the design and architecture of sites created by some of the smartest people in the world (namely, the attendees of An Event Apart NYC).

DAY II – CODE DAY

9:00 am Welcome and Housekeeping [Eric Meyer]
9:10 am Hard-Core CSS [Eric Meyer]
An in-depth exploration of what makes CSS work, how it works the way it does, and how you can make it work harder for you.
10:10 am BREAK!
(You’ll need it)
10:30 am Microformats [Tantek Çelik]
What are microformats, and how can they transform the web? Tantek Çelik, co-founder of the microformats movement, tells us what’s already happening and what comes next.
11:30 am “One True Layout” overview [Eric Meyer]
Incredible stroke of genius or gross hack to be shunned? Eric analyzes this new CSS layout technique and examines the pros and cons, both immediately and into the future.
12:30 pm Lunch
1:30 pm Sponsor Giveaways
1:45 pm So you want to be a DOM Star [Aaron Gustafson]
What does it take to be a great front-end developer in today’s marketplace? Aaron Gustafson lays it all on the line.
2:40 pm BREAK!
3:00 pm Web Standards Second Edition [Zeldman]
What a long, strange trip it’s been.
4:00 pm Code critiques [Eric Meyer, Aaron Gustafson, Tantek Çelik]
A fast-paced, rough-and-tumble review of markup, style, and scripting on a select group of sites created and submitted by attendees.

Food

Catering is by Restaurant Aquavit, the country’s premier Scandinavian restaurant, and includes vegetarian choices.

Lunch

  • July 10: Gravlax Club, Grilled Scandinavian Shrimp, and Roasted Mushroom sandwiches. Salad and potato salad.
  • July 11: Smoked Salmon, Spice Roasted Pork Loin, and Roasted Mushroom sandwiches. Salad and pasta salad.

All Day Long

Freshly Brewed Coffee, Decaffeinated Coffee, Selection of Teas, Assorted Soft Drinks and Sparkling Water.

Afternoon Pick-Me Up

  • July 10: Assorted Cookies
  • July 11: Basket of Fruit

Details

It’s a non-smoking event. Sorry, smokers! Still photography is permitted, but audio and video recording are forbidden, except by our official videographer, Mister Ian Corey. Sorry, recordists and videographers! As always, please be considerate when taking pictures. And speaking of pictures…

Flickr Group

We’ve established a Flickr group for those of you who want to share your photos with the world: flickr.com/groups/aeanyc2006.

Disclaimer

This schedule is subject to change. We’ll do our best to make the experience live up to what we’ve mentioned here, but cannot guarantee a perfect 1:1 correspondence. We thank you in advance for understanding any changes we may be forced to make due to events, people, and other stuff beyond our control.

New York 2006 news

An Event Apart RSS feed

Subscribe and keep track of all the comings and goings of An Event Apart.

[tags]an event apart, aneventapart, design, code, conference, web design, webdesign[/tags]

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An Event Apart cities Design events industry Standards

An Event Apart Seattle

It’s de-lightful, it’s de-lovely, it’s the city on Puget Sound. Join Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, and Jeffrey Zeldman on Monday 18 September 2006 at Bell Harbor International Conference Center for An Event Apart Seattle, a concentrated, creative learning session that could change the way you approach web design. Save $50 when you register by August 18th, 2006.

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An Event Apart Design events people work

zefrank or zebeans

A man who needs no introduction is joining a line-up that has no equal. New media satirist/superstar zefrank, creator of the show, is coming to An Event Apart NYC. (zefrank replaces Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware.)

Join Tantek Çelik, zefrank, Aaron Gustafson, Jason Santa Maria, Khoi Vinh, Eric Meyer, and Jeffrey Zeldman for two days of design and code in the heart of New York City. Hurry! Early Bird Savings end Friday. Register today.

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Accessibility An Event Apart cities Design development events industry Redesigns Standards Tools work writing Zeldman

Wrapping Chicago

An Event Apart Chicago has wrapped. It felt like the best one yet. Everything clicked.

There were as many designers as coders in attendance, as many Chicagoans as out-of-towners, as many agency people and freelancers as in-house folks, and nearly as many women as men. They engaged at “good morning” and stayed involved all day, asking shrewdly penetrating questions and sharing their own insights and experiences. Energy flowed not only between the floor and the seats but also from one seat to another. It felt like community.

This was the third time out for Eric, Jason, and me. Our talks were sharper and shorter — looser and more relaxed, yet also more focused than before. The rhythm was better. The balance between technical and aesthetic subjects, how much time was alloted to each, the way one theme flowed into another — the music of the day — felt tighter and truer than at events past.

Thanks to our sponsors at Adobe, AIGA, New Riders, and Media Temple, we were able to give away thousands of dollars worth of software, books, and services. (We’ll be doing the same at An Event Apart NYC next month.)

Guest speaker Jim Coudal‘s leisurely stories were like little grenades of inspiration. He tossed them out casually; moments later, they detonated.

The day formally ended with lively critiques of sites submitted by attendees. We tried this once before, at An Event Apart Philadelphia, with mixed results. This time it felt like it really worked. The day informally ended at Timothy O’Toole’s pub, with a mixer sponsored by Jewelboxing.

Time, and the blog posts of those who attended, will tell if the event was as good for you as it was for us. Sincere thanks to all who attended. Thanks also to Dawson, John Gruber, Amy Redell, Michael Nolan, and Orrin Fink.

And a reminder: the Early Bird Rate for An Event Apart NYC ends June 9th. That’s a week from today! On June 10th, the price will increase by $100. So if you’re thinking of attending An Event Apart NYC — two days of design and code — please register soon.

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An Event Apart cities events Standards

In Chicago

Here we are in Chicago, city magnificent, blessed by architects, lake and river, where in less than twelve hours we’ll present the third Event Apart. I pray all who tread Chicago’s streets look up each day and feel how lucky they are to inhabit this Rome, this Paris of the American heartland.