An Event Apart Chicago Thoughts
Last week the AG UI Team packed up our bags and headed to An Event Apart Chicago ‘07. We had a great time, learned a lot, and ate a lot of pizza. Overall, all of the talks were mostly informative and worth the trip.
My initial impressions were:
- Wow there’s a lot of different kinds of people!
- All these people have very different background as well, some are strictly developers, some are designers, some are both, some are project managers. (P.S. kudos to all you managers who actively try to learn about what your employees do.)
- More women than I expected, though still only a ratio of about 1:10.
However, anyone on a budget could probably glean most of this information from the web in the days afterwards (or on Twitter the day of.) All of the code tutorials could be found on the web, and even a lot of the more abstract concepts are discussed on the speakers’ blogs or in their various publications. But there’s something to be said for learning by way of someone actually showing you versus reading an article online. Additionally, the enthusiasm of some speakers really made their talk, and you can’t really get that online.
My favorite panel was easily Liz Danzico’s The Seven Lies of Information Architecture. I won’t rehash because about a dozen other people have done so, I’ll provide some links at the end of the post. Ms. Danzico also teaches, which showed through her amazingly engaging talk. I’ve been thinking about going back to school for a while to study IA more in depth. This talk left me really inspired, so when I got home I sent an inquiry to Kent State who has a Masters program in IA.
My second favorite was Luke Wroblewski’s Best Practices for Form Design. I took more notes during this talk and drew more information applicable to my day to day tasks than during any other talk. He knows how to cover a lot of information in a short period of time without overwhelming.
I also really enjoyed Jeremy Keith’s javascript talk. I’ve always wanted to do more with javascript than just cut and paste pieces to do this and that. I haven’t had much opportunity because at AG our programmers handle all the scripting. Though since we’ve implemented Dojo I’ve become increasingly interested. Mr. Keith makes javascript very accessible for those of us coming from a design background without formal education in programming languages. In fact, I felt so inspired I bought his book after I left, and it’s every bit as accessible, friendly, and straightforward as his talk.
The only talks I probably would’ve skipped (most respectfully) were Jason Santa Maria’s and Jim Coudal’s. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both very well spoken and highly entertaining people. But Mr. Santa Maria’s panel dealt with a lot of fundamental design 101 (Keep a morgue file, look to print design for inspiration, etc. etc.) While this wasn’t totally relevant for me, I imagine it was great for the audience members coming from a development / programming background. And it’s always cool to gain some insight into the work flow of a talented designer. Pretty much the same goes for Mr. Coudal’s talk, he showed some videos I’d already seen and talked about staying engaged in personal projects. Not useful for me, but I’m sure it was useful for a lot of people there.
I think that’s perhaps one of the greatest parts of An Event Apart, they managed to have something for every kind of web professional while not going crazy with 3 different panels all running concurrently. I prefer the smaller approach with the focus on quality.
My only regret is that I didn’t have much chance (through my own fault) to participate in more of the community aspects of An Event Apart. We were busy doing AG related stuff and were unable to attend what I heard was an awesome after party, and I spent so much time out on the town I was too tired to do the group lunch thing and headed back to my room for naps. I really had been hoping to meet more designers, particularly those with similar experiences to my own. It was exciting to meet other lady web pros. The best part of the conference was probably winning a copy of CS3. I hadn’t bought it yet, so it’s pretty cool to not only win something, but something I’ll actually make great use of! Thanks Adobe and An Event Apart! Also the conference rate hotel rooms were really nice, which made for an even more fun stay in town.
If I were to change anything about the event I’d have a table available where attendees can purchase books by the speakers and related publications. I know as soon as I got home I ordered DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Web Design 2nd Edition, and Don’t Make Me Think (Read it before but it belonged to my former employer.) As soon as I finish DOM Scripting I plan to order Bulletproof Ajax, and the minute Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design Best Practices is available I will be preordering!
In the future I would probably attend another AEA, but not for at least a couple years. I noted that there’s some great speakers at the next one (and notably more women speakers) but a few are repeats (totally understandable since not too many people can attend more than one or two conferences a year.) so I’d wait until I was sure all the content would be fresh to me. That said I’m interested in maybe attending SXSW next year, which would be a complete contrast.
Related Links:
- The Seven Lies of Information Architecture
- More on the Seven Lies of Information Architecture
- Best Practices for Form Design Luke’s site actually has a great write up of several of the presenters.
- Another take on the event
