An Event Apart, Chicago
August 30, 2007
People in airports use PCs. People at design conferences use Macs. I made these observations and more at An Event Apart in Chicago, IL.
I flew into the windy city on Sunday in preparation for the conference the next two days, and stayed at the hostel downtown. It turns out that hostels (this one, anyway) are great places to meet young, adventurous people from the world over. I met folks from China, New Zealand, Poland and nowhere at all. Hostels may not be for everyone, but they sure can make a trip more fun.
It’s a strange and wonderful thing to be in a large room packed full of fellow design nerds. The computers at the conference were both PC and Mac, but there was definitely a large presence of glowing Apples. I didn’t see one Apple computer at either airport.
The conference was two full days of lectures, lots of food, and lots of people. It was neat (and mildly surreal) to see people like Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, Dan Cederholm, Jeremy Keith, Jason Fried, and Jim Coudal in real life. These are people of whom books and websites I read, products I use, guidance I seek, work I admire. This week they became real, tangible people; no longer Interweb fiction.
Lecture topics covered CSS, writing, visual design, search analytics, information architecture, javascript / DOM scripting, form design, accessibility, marketing and selling, and how to bring creative energy into boring client work. Quite a range. And all very interesting. I have new ideas for upcoming projects, and energy to keep learning more.
Many thanks to Zeldman, Eric Meyer and team for putting on the show. And special thanks to Bowin for helping me get there.