AEAChicago08 Day 2

Better late never is my follow up on Thoughts on AEAChicago08 Day 1. There’s good reason for the delay on this write up. It’s two fold. 1st up, I was am busy. 2nd is that at the time I didn’t know what to write. I wasn’t sure I even liked the second day as a whole… at the time. Just like before, below you will find my thoughts on a few of the Day 2 sessions.

A Panel Apart - Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and Guests

This was new for An Event Apart and a nice change of pace. As I scrambled up and down the isles to hand a mic to the attendees and bring them gifted books from the speakers I cought in my ear some true gems of web design knowledge. Gems you could only get from many years in the field, many years as a freelancer or many long nights as a Creative Director for a start up design agency. Or then again, you could have just been there You see, I have my own start up studio and when it comes to growth hearing their thoughts on how best to grow your business was priceless. The speakers discussed much more than business, in fact if I recall business was a very small portion of the discussion. They spoke freely and rather playfully on everything from CSS, semantics, accessibility and user experience design. All in all it was nice, and a great way to end the conference.

Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z – Dan Cederholm

Although a few letters were skipped in the presentation, for a last minute speaking engagement Dan knocked it out of the park. It was passive, conversational and witty. I walked away with some ideas of on how I could streamline the process in which I write mark-up, how better to argue the case for a reset style sheet, and a few styles of design I’m looking forward to tinkering with.

Rob Weychert’s session titled Design Lessons in Chess deserves an honorable mention. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it enough for a full write up. I’m actually still absorbing the talk. I will have to revisit the slides again soon.  The concept of Design as chess with quotes from Sun Tzu sprinkled through out was an interesting take on what it is to collaborate, work for hire, and to war for what you think is right.

That’s it, yes I know only two reviews and an honorable mention. You see, as is the case with most conferences, the bang is in the first day. The second day feels as though it lags, delving more into niche techniques or smaller segments of the industry. This of course is just 2 unsolicited cents from a guy writing a post while escaping paperwork at the office.

I think I ran the mic better… I know that’s all you wanted to find out about anyway. But really, the bottom line as it was asked to me a few days ago; Was it worth it?  Would you go again?

The answer to both questions is an “absolutely”! The community, city, speakers, concepts, lessons, discussions and the experience was all worth it. I will be sure to attend again in 2009. I’m thinking Seatle though.