Journal tags: atmedia09

It’s been a great month for conferences; UX London, An Event Apart in Boston, and wrapping it all up, @media 2009.

The two day event was filled with great talks. The first day was filled with design-led topics and the second had more of a developer-based approach. You can check out Colly’s slides and Malarkey has published the slides and words from his talk called Walls Come Tumbling Down.

The conference finished with the traditional hot topics panel, moderated by yours truly. My guests were Jason Santa Maria, Jon Hicks, Douglas Crockford and Chris Wilson. They were wonderful. Thanks to them, I had a really enjoyable time debating the burning issues of the day, like HTML5 and @font-face. I thank them sincerely for being such gracious panellists, stoicly enduring my snarky barbs.

This year’s @media had a similar feeling to the very first event back in 2005. But this year’s @media has one distinguishing characteristic; it is the last one being organised by Patrick. Never fear! The conference isn’t going to go away. Far from it. My splendid friends at Web Directions will be running @media next year, ensuring that the high standard of the conference will be maintained.

Thank you Patrick, not just for @media 2009 but for all the work you’ve put into this annual London geekgasm.

The second day of An Event Apart in Boston kept up the excellent standard of the first day. Alas, I couldn’t keep the liveblogging up for two straight days …I blame the Media Temple opening party.

Other attendees were far more motivated than I. There’s the Django app A Feed Apart that collates Twitter and Flickr posts from the conference. Then there’s the very cute A Seat Apart which allowed attendees to point out their place in the seating arrangement. In fact, all the attendees I met at the event were an exceptionally enthusiastic and lovely bunch.

The content was, of course, superb; Zeldman, Heather, Derek, Dan, Aarron and Scott all gave superbly inspiring talks. The event closed with Malarkey giving a rousing talk wherein he backed up the assertion already made by myself and Dan that no, for fuck’s sake, websites do not need to look the same in every browser!

That was certainly an emerging hot topic at An Event Apart. Now I’m in London for @media 2009, where it is beholden upon me to track the hot topics for the closing panel. So far, from an excellent first day, the topics I’m seeing are:

• Process
• Icons and metaphor
• @font-family

And that’s just after one day of design-related talks. There’s a whole swathe of developer-focused hot topics still to come. I’m riding a wave of inspiration from two back-to-back conferences; I hope I can harness some of that energy in the closing panel.

This is a busy month for conferences.

UX London just wrapped up. I went along on Monday to listen to the stellar line-up of speakers before the subsequent two days of workshops kicked off. It was, as expected, fantastic. Judging from the scuttlebutt on Twitter, a good time was had by all for three straight days.

I had an all-too brief chat with Jared but I knew I’d be seeing him again soon. We’re both going to be speaking at An Event Apart. See you next week in Boston, I said.

The last time I was in Boston was back in November for Jared’s UI13 conference. I had a great time. Boston is definitely my kind of town. But then, as an Irishman, I would say that.

I’ll be bringing my mandolin along with me but I don’t know if I’ll be brave enough to actually play at any of the sessions. Still, if you live in Boston and fancy meeting up for a pint and a tune, let me know. If you don’t live in Boston but you’ll be attending an An Event Apart, then a Sam Adams or two is definitely on the cards.

I’m excited but nervous. Excited because An Event Apart is always such a great, great conference with excellent speakers. Nervous because… well, it’s a great, great conference with excellent speakers. The bar is set very high. I’ve been agonising over my talk—entitled Future Shock Treatment—and I keep vacillating between thinking it’s going to be quite good and thinking that it’s going to completely suck. I guess there’s only one way to find out for sure.

Once An Event Apart finishes, I’ll be heading back across the Atlantic to London …like, literally the moment that An Event Apart finishes. That’s because I need to get straight back for @media which starts right after An Event Apart. And I won’t be alone. Stan and Malarkey will be on the same flight, winging their way from Massachusetts to Blightly to reprise their talks.

For my part, I’ll be moderating the closing Hot Topics panel. I am rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation. I love moderating panels. I get real kick out of being the Dungeon Master.

See you in Boston, London, or wherever else I happen to end up this month.

One of my resolutions for this year (and the year before) is to try reduce the amount of jet fuel I’m responsible for pumping into the atmosphere. So far, my speaking schedule for the year looks reasonably in-keeping for that aim.

Next month I will be flying to Austin for South by Southwest. I wouldn’t miss that for anything. Like last year, my plan was to go but not speak. Like last year, that plan has changed. Tantek asked me to join him on his microformats panel to talk about some of the things I’ve been doing on Huffduffer.

I can’t resist the opportunity to ramble on about my newest toy. I’ll be blabbing on about Huffduffer closer to home when I give a talk here in Brighton on the third of March at £5 App. The last £5 App event was amazing, featuring a crowdsourced adventure game, fighting sumo robots, duelling bluetooth phone lightsabres, and augmented Christmas reality.

When I get back from Southby, I’ll be popping over to Frankfurt at the end of March for the European Accessibility Forum where I’ll be wearing my moderator hat for a panel on accessible web applications.

In April I don’t even have to leave the country. I’ll be speaking at an inaugural grassroots event called Bamboo Juice down at the Eden Project in Cornwall. What a great location for a geek gathering! And the event is priced at a very affordable 99 quid too.

June is when things get a little crazy. First of all, there’s UX London in the middle of the month. I won’t be speaking but I will be helping out and doing my bit to make sure that everything goes smoothly. I’m excited, and slightly intimidated, to be involved in such an intense, intimate three-day event. If you’re thinking about going, I suggest you sign up by February 25th, when the early bird pricing ends.

Shortly after UX London, I’ll be popping over to Boston to speak at An Event Apart, a conference where the bar is set scarily high. I’m already panicking about meeting the event’s very high standards.

Then, literally right after that I’ll be going straight back to London for @media. I’ll be fulfilling my now-traditional duty as moderator of the closing hot topics panel—always a good opportunity for some mischievous fun.

I know that looks like quite a hectic schedule but compared to last year, it’s positively relaxed. And most of those events are reachable by train rather than plane.

I do have one other long-distance flight lined up but it’s for pleasure, not business. Tomorrow Jessica and I are flying to Seattle. It’s going to be a short trip but I hope to meet up with some of my Seattle-ite buddies while I’m there. Get in touch if you’re going to be around.