I’m going to Chicago!
August 21, 2007
Five days from now I’ll be on my way to Chicago for two full days of web standards, best practices, inspiration and who knows what else. It’s An Event Apart — and I’ve been waiting two years for this!
In 2004 I happened upon an orange book (now green, in it’s 2nd edition) called Designing with Web Standards written by a man named Jeffrey Zeldman. For a few years prior I had immersed myself in web design. I was currently working in-house on some web projects for our city’s Parks department, and had been so captivated by these newer methods of building websites that I did everything I could to implement them into my work. I found Zeldman’s site; an online magazine about web design called A List Apart (also founded and published by Zeldman); Cameron Moll’s journal; John Gruber’s Daring Fireball and others, learning everything I could about this new practice called Web Standards.
About a year later, the fine folks at A List Apart formed the traveling conference called An Event Apart, and I wanted to go. Oh boy, did I want to go! But I couldn’t. It was always too far, or too much, or both. I’ve dreaded every passing event, hoping they wouldn’t announce it to be their last.
A few things have changed recently in my life (perhaps, of which, I will write about at a later time), and it is most likely due to this change that I am going to Chicago next week. I hope, and am fully expecting, to be challenged, inspired, motivated, and taught to work in an entirely new way. And I intend to implement everything I learn into every new job I take on. Happily.