An Event Apart San Francisco runs from 9:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m. and features six sessions per day. There’s a lot to cover, so the event starts promptly each morning. Registration opens at 7:30 a.m. Doors open at 8:30 a.m. (8:00 a.m. on Day Two.)
In association with:
Sponsored by:
Join Us For Two Days Of Design, Code, and Content
An Event Apart San Francisco features 12 great speakers and material you haven't heard anywhere else!
Music Playlist
If you like the music at this show, check the playlist.
Monday, December 7
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9:00am–10:00am
A Site Redesign (PDF)
Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards, 3rd Ed.
How can you change the way a site looks, while preserving the way its brand feels? Can “listening to your content” help you design more effectively? We’ll examine the differing goals and processes behind client work (when the content belongs to someone else) and homegrown sites (when the product or content is yours).
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10:15am–11:15am
A Dao of Flexibility (PDF)
Ethan Marcotte, co-author, Web Standards Creativity
“The Way is shaped by use, but then the shape is lost.” Flexible web design allows our users to control their online experience, while preparing our sites for ever-shrinking displays. Unfortunately, it has completely failed to capture the imagination of web designers. We’ll review sites that have made the transition to non-fixed design, discuss how to bring an extra level of craftsmanship to your page layouts (fixed or fluid), and revisit popular CSS techniques in a changing environment.
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11:30am–12:30pm
They’re Letting Designers Code Now? (PDF)
Shea Resources (zip)
Dave Shea, co-author, Zen of CSS Design
Sure, CSS is great for web design. But visual design on the web is about so much more than just that one language. Using real-world examples, Dave Shea will explore the visual and interaction design possibilities that are enabled when a designer understands what he or she can do with coding languages like JavaScript, jQuery, and PHP. Oh, okay, and CSS too.
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12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH
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2:00pm–3:00pm
Seductive Design (PDF)
Andy Budd, author, CSS Mastery
In the dating game of the web, you need more than just a pretty (inter)face and a winning smile. You need to woo your users in a complex ritual of seduction and delight. Only then will you win their hearts, minds and registration details. Sadly, too many sites focus purely on the chase, adding each new conquest into their little black book of registered users before moving on to their next victim. While one-night log-ins can be exciting, they aren’t particularly satisfying. The best relationships are born from a sense of shared ideals; they are supportive, caring, and fun. Using examples from the real world, we will look at tips, tricks, and techniques to make your users fall in love with your product or service. So dim the lights, put Barry White on the stereo, and get ready for a lesson in the fine art of user seduction.
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3:15pm–4:15pm
10 Secrets from a UX Design Strategist’s Toolbox (PDF)
Planning worksheet (PDF)
Sarah B. Nelson, Principal, User Experience, Hot Studio
The practice of user experience has grown more sophisticated, produced higher quality online products, and gained wider acceptance beyond the design community. Still, so many potentially wonderful experiences disappoint and many talented design teams are excluded from decisions that fundamentally affect the experience. Why? Two words: ineffective communication. For designers, effective communication with teammates, business owners, and other constituents is 50% of our job but almost 0% of our training. From deliverables to design reviews to team meetings—good storytelling and persuasive arguments are critical. Sarah shares 10 tools from her UX toolbox to help you develop persuasive arguments, and successfully create and advocate for the best user experience in your organization.
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4:30pm–5:30pm
Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon (PDF)
Jared Spool, Founder, User Interface Engineering
Amazon.com isn’t flashy, but its pages hide secrets every designer should know about. In this entertaining presentation, Jared will share some of UIE’s latest research into the hidden treasures of (the) Amazon. Learn the simple yes/no question that increased revenues by more than $1 billion, the subtlety of Amazon’s security system, the hidden aspects of its business model (and why designers need to care), and more.
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5:45pm–6:15pm
Design Lessons From 300 Million (PDF)
Julie Zhuo, product design manager, Facebook
In its brief five year history, Facebook has seen its share of redesigns, new features and controversy, all amidst a rapidly growing and changing demographic. In this presentation, Julie will share some of the stories and lessons learned from those experiences, including how to avoid common design pitfalls, and why being user-centered doesn’t always mean listening to your users.
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7:00pm–?pm
Opening Night Party
Sponsored by (mt) Media Temple
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 974-1719Media Temple’s opening night parties for An Event Apart are legendary. Join the speakers and hundreds of fellow attendees for great conversation, lively debate, loud music, hot snacks, and a seemingly endless stream of grown-up beverages.
111 Minna Gallery is a very short walk from the hotel—five minutes at the most.
Tuesday, December 8
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8:15am–8:45am
Using Internet Explorer 8 & Other Tools To Create The Modern Web (PDF)
Pete LePage, Senior Product Manager, Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer 8 has support for several HTML5 features and has built-in developer tools that help make creating websites easier and faster for designers and developers alike. Learn about these tools, and ways to help make your world a little better.
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9:00am–10:00am
JavaScript Will Save Us All (PDF)
Eric Meyer, author, CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Ed.
Browsers’ JavaScript engines are astonishingly fast and getting faster. Standards move slowly, and appear to be slowing down. Guess which will win? The fascinating thing is that you’re probably wrong. Eric will explain why in this look at the next stage of standards development, complete with code.
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10:15am–11:15am
Integrating JavaScript Effectively (PDF)
Snook Examples (zipped)
Jonathan Snook, co-author, Accelerated DOM Scripting with Ajax, APIs, and Libraries
Whether we're seeking to create an effective dynamic UI, or to satisfy clients in search of the latest whiz-bang effect, JavaScript and the multitude of ready-made libraries and plug-ins have become the preferred tools of choice. We’ll look at common interface problems and solutions and examine how to structure our HTML and CSS to implement JavaScript into our projects effectively.
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11:30am–12:30pm
Object Oriented CSS (PDF)
Nicole Sullivan, co-author, Even Faster Websites
How do you scale CSS for millions of visitors or thousands of pages? What happens to the size of your CSS file as more pages and modules are added? The answer, for most sites, is that it grows out of control and becomes an unmaintainable tangle of spaghetti code. Object Oriented CSS allows you to write fast, maintainable, standards-based front-end code. It adds much needed predictability to CSS so that even beginners can create beautiful websites. OOCSS is not a framework or a tool (though in this session Nicole will demo both); it is a better, saner way to write and maintain style sheets.
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12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH
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2:00pm–3:00pm
Web Form Design in Action (PDF)
Luke Wroblewski, author, Web Form Design
Building on topics in his top-selling book, Luke will illustrate how to apply design best practices to redesign crucial web forms. He’ll also outline how gradual engagement approaches to form design can create compelling new user experiences for a wide variety of web applications and services.
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3:15pm–4:15pm
Mapping A Web Of Data (PDF)
Mike Migurski, Developer
Piece by piece, the world is moving onto the web. “Things informationalize,” as Ben Cerveny puts it. Nothing is making this move quite so quickly as geographic data, from crowd-sourced streets, to municipal data published by cities, to local business and housing listings from newspapers and review services. Michal Migurski will show how to collect, generate, process, slice, dice, curate, caress, design, and publish maps and data using examples from emerging projects out on the GeoWeb and Stamen’s work in dynamic interactive mapping.
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4:30pm–5:30pm
How the Web Works (PDF)
Jeff Veen, author, Art & Science of Web Design
Turns out that the fundamental principles that led to the success of the web will lead you there, too. Drawing on 15 years of web design and development experience, Jeff will take you on a guided tour of what makes things work on this amazing platform we’re all building together. You’ll learn how to stop selling ice, how to make the planes land on your island, and how to avoid reaching across the conference table and strangling your coworker. Seriously.
Great Hotel, Special Savings
The Palace Hotel (skip intro) has arranged special room rates for Event Apart attendees of $249/night. To get these savings, call (888) 627-7196 and tell the nice person who answers that you are calling to take advantage of the special “An Event Apart” room rate.
Centrally located downtown on Market Street, adjacent to the Financial District, the Palace is within walking distance of Union Square, the cable cars, the Embarcadero, Chinatown, AT&T Park, Yerba Buena Park, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Theater District. North Beach and San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park are also nearby, along with award-winning restaurants.
Openlist says: “recommended by Gayot.com (it’s on their Top 10 list for Business Hotels), Fodor’s (it’s one of their hotel ‘Picks’), and seasoned travelers, who rate it 4-and-one-half stars.” Best of all, it’s the site of the conference. You can walk out of your room and into the show!