Dan Century

“Jacked up on candy and coffee!”

An Event Apart 2005

December 24th, 2005 | Category: Web

On 12/5 my colleagues Vincent, Joe, John, and I attended An Event Apart in snowy Philadelphia.

The event was organized by three of the biggest names in web design and coding: Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and Jason Santa Maria. All three men contribute to the A List Apart web design magazine, from which the conference gets its name. A List Apart is a fantastic resource for web designers and developers; if you design or code websites, you should visit it frequently.

The Franklin Institute was chosen as the location of the event. Remarkably I resisted the temptation to sneak out and visit the giant walk-thru heart, or ease on down to the Mutter Museum. I also neglected the many historical sites, sports teams and the world famous Philly Cheese Steak sandwiches. Here’s my photo of Ben Franklin and photos other people took during the conference.

I haven’t attempted to design a webpage in over five years (just look at my site — it’s as exciting as a Word document), so my interests were coding best practices, and specifically how to take a design and code it into a webpage — something I’ve done for the past 11 years, but this day I would be learning from the masters.

Eric Meyer gave a talk about Internet Explorer 7, with a focus what web designers and developers will have to do prepare for the arrival of the updated Microsoft browser. Microsoft is playing catch up to Firefox in terms of obeying web standards, tabbed browsing, and RSS feed reading.

Meyer also discussed “any order columns” and “equal height columns” from the in search of one true layout article on Position Is Everything. This presentation was worth the price of admission.

Jeffrey Zeldman gave an excellent presentation called Textism about the importance of good copy writing for web sites, particularly, copy writing in terms of usability. Zeldman advocates a Copy Czar for all web sites: someone who would ensure that site copy is clear, brief and audience and brand appropriate from a global level. Unfortunately business owners rarely comprehend the need for such a role, and writers are cut from website budgets.

Zelman also gave a presentation called What’s the Story, about “finding the story” behind a business and the business’s users, and then using that story as the foundation of the website design. As a non-designer, I found this presentation very interesting. Yet another presentation titled Making Accessibility Accessibile tackled the often overlooked yet crucial topic of website accessibility.

Jason Santa Maria gave a presentation explaining the redesign of the A List Apart web site. I enjoyed this presentation immensely, because it opened by eyes to his design process, and the choices he made when designing the site. Eric Meyer followed Jason to explain how he coded the new design; this talk was excellent as well.

In general, the Event was excellent. The topics covered were critical and cutting edge, and the presentations were all well written and presented. They gave us snacks and lunch, a t-shirt, a new New Riders book, and two free drinks at a local bar, and we had a chance to network with other designers and developers. If you are a designer, developer or writer or usability guru, An Event Apart is worth your time and money. I do wish the Event lasted more than one day, and included breakout sessions and workshops; maybe next year it will.

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General Observations:

  • The lunch was very tasty and generous, but perphaps too heavy on the carbs.
  • Black rimmed glasses and beards are popular with designers.
  • There were a surprising number of people with red hair at the Event. I don’t see many red haired people in New Jersey or New York.
  • At least three of the women at the event were super gorgeous. This is my blog — I’ll say what I want.
  • Jeff Zeldman is not a thug gangsta as his book might lead you to believe. In person he is more like Patton Oswalt crossed with Ricky Gervais. He is class personified, has a sense of humor and he’s a family man.

My colleague Vincent Murphy posted an excellent post-mortem of the Event. Read it because it’s better than my post.

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