An Event Apart

My trip to California went well. It was bookended with a few days in San Diego on either end. I relished the opportunity to hang with family and soak up the sunshine.

In the middle was my outing to San Francisco for An Event Apart. There were some great talks: Krystal talking about onboarding, Miriam blowing my mind with cascade layers, Eric diving deep into the :has() selector, and David closing out the show with a superb call to arms.

I gave my talk on declarative design at the very start of the event, just the way I like it. I was able to relax and enjoy all the other talks without having mine on my mind.

The talk went down well. I thought maybe I might have the chance to repeat it at another An Event Apart sometime in 2023.

But that won’t happen. An Event Apart has closed its doors:

Seventeen years ago, in December 2005, we held our first conference in Philadelphia. The event we just held in San Francisco was our last.

Whenever I was invited to speak at An Event Apart, I always responded in the affirmative and always said it was an honour to be asked. I meant it every time.

It wasn’t just me. Ask anyone who’s spoken at An Event Apart. They’ll all tell you the same thing. It was an honour. It was also a bit intimidating. There was a definite feeling that you had to bring your A game. And so, everyone did. Of course that just contributed to the event’s reputation which only reinforced the pressure to deliver a top-notch presentation.

I’m really going to miss An Event Apart. I mean, I get why all good things must come to an end (see also: dConstruct), but it feels like the end of an era.

My first time speaking at An Event Apart was in 2007. My last time was in San Francisco this month.

Thank you, Eric, Jeffrey, Toby, Marci, and the entire An Event Apart crew. It has been my privilege to play a small part in your story.

2007

Chicago

Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave

2008

San Francisco

Pattern In The Process

2009

Boston

Future Shock Treatment

2010

Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis, Washington DC, San Diego

Paranormal Interactivity

2011

Seattle, Boston, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Washington DC, San Francisco

Design Principles

2012

Austin

The Spirit Of The Web

2013

Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco

The Long Web

2014

Seattle, San Diego, Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco

Enhance!

2015

Seattle, Austin, San Francisco

Resilience

2016

Seattle, Boston, Orlando, San Francisco

Resilience, Evaluating Technology

2017

Seattle, Denver

Evaluating Technology

2018

Seattle, Boston

The Way Of The Web

2019

Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco

Going Offline

2020

Online

Design Principles For The Web

2021

Online

The State Of The Web

2022

Online, San Francisco

In And Out Of Style

Declarative Design

Day-of-talk countdown (with images, tweets) · larahogan · Storify

If you’re at all interested in public speaking, this is a great insight by Lara into what it’s like on the day of a talk.

as days pass by — Don’t Read Off The Screen

Excellent advice from Stuart.

Watch—and more importantly, listen—to this five minute video to get the full effect.

You’re on mute: the art of presenting in a Zoom era. | by Hana Stevenson | Feb, 2021 | Medium

Hana recounts the preparation she did for an online presentation, including some advice from me. I’m right in the middle of preparing my own online presentation right now, and I should really heed that advice. But I fear what I told Hana was “do as I say, not as I do.”

Create Landmark Timing Slides - Notist

This is something I do in my presentations. I have speaker notes scattered throughout the slide deck with the “beats” of the talk—10 minutes, 20 minutes, etc.

If I hit one of those slides and I’m ahead of schedule, I can go on a few more tangents. If I hit one of those slides and I’m behind schedule, I can cut to the chase. Either way, having those decision points spread throughout the talk really helps to keep things smooth.

One thing that can really help in the delivery is knowing if you’re running fast or slow before you crash into the end of your talk. That way you can make adjustments as you go along by glossing over smaller points to speed up or expanding more on your ideas to slow down.

Talking about talking CSS

I had the great pleasure of finally meeting Hui Jing when Mozilla invited me along to Singapore to speak at their developer roadshow. Hui Jing is speaking at each one of the events on the roadshow, and documenting the journey here.

She’s being very modest about her talk: it was superb! Entertaining and informative in equal measure, delivered with gusto. Seriously, frontend conference organisers, try to get Hui Jing to speak about CSS at your event—you won’t regret it.