An Event Apart Seattle 2011

Sunday, March 27

1. 6:00pm–??pm

   Pre-Conference Party

   

   Sponsored by Typekit

   Frontier Room
   2203 1st Ave (At Blanchard St)
   Seattle, WA 98121
   (206) 956-7427
   

   Kick off the conference on the right note and share a drink with your fellow attendees and speakers.

Monday, March 28

1. 9:00am–10:00am

   Web 2.1: The Medium Comes of Age

   

   Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards, 3rd Ed.

   Webkit-powered smartphones like iPhone and Droid have come along at precisely the moment when HTML5, CSS3, and web fonts are ready for action; when standards-based web development is no longer relegated to the fringe; and when web designers, no longer content to merely decorate screens, are crafting provocative, multi-platform experiences powered by research, strategy, and years of social media know-how. Zeldman kicks off AEA by studying the thinking and inventions that led to the web, and showing why we stand at the dawn of a newer, more mature, more ubiquitous web, powered by standards.

2. 10:15am–11:15am

   Crafting the User Experience

   

   Sarah Parmenter, You Know Who

   As we journey through life we are moulded into various experiences and influenced by design around us. What makes us click “buy” on one website compared to another? What small design details can we add to truly enhance our design for positive benefits? How can design shape our everyday interactions without us realising? Sarah will serve up a large helping of practical UI advice for both mobile and the web, through her experiences as a User Interface Designer.

3. 11:30am–12:30pm

   On Web Typography

   

   Jason Santa Maria, Mighty

   Achieving a thorough grasp of typography can take a lifetime, but moving beyond the basics is within your reach right now. In this talk, we’ll learn how to look at typefaces with a discerning eye, different approaches to typographic planning, how typography impacts the act of reading, and how to choose and combine appropriate typefaces from an aesthetic and technical point of view. Through an understanding of our design tools and how they relate to the web as a medium, we can empower ourselves to use type in meaningful and powerful ways.

4. 12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH

5. 2:00pm–3:00pm

   Why Designers Fail and What to Do About It

   

   Scott Berkun, author, Making Things Happen

   All those who participate in design, from interaction designers to usability engineers to IA masters, fall victim to similar challenges when trying to bring good design into the world. From politics to hubris to downright incompetence, what can we learn by confessing to our failures? Berkun thinks we can learn everything, more than studying successes. This fun, interactive talk explores why designers fail and presents advice on learning from and overcoming these situations.

6. 3:15pm–4:15pm

   A Content Strategy Roadmap

   

   Kristina Halvorson, author, Content Strategy for the Web

   How to make a website: discover, define, design, develop, deploy. It’s a familiar framework for most of our project processes. Now along comes this content strategy thing. Sure, it sounds like a great idea, but how does it fit in with what we’re already doing? Kristina will walk us through a typical website project to demonstrate why, how, where, and when content strategy happens.

7. 4:30pm–5:30pm

   Mobile Web Design Moves

   

   Luke Wroblewski, author, Web Form Design

   Mobile dances to a different beat. Learn how to transition what you know about designing for the Web to Mobile and pick up a bunch of new moves along the way that’ll help you rock the mobile Web.

8. 7:00pm–??pm

   Opening Night Party

   

   Sponsored by (mt) Media Temple

   Belltown Pub
   2322 1st Ave (between Bell St. and SR99)
   Seattle, WA 98121
   (206) 448-6210
   

   Media 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. Kindly RSVP if you are planning to attend.

Tuesday, March 29

1. 9:00am–10:00am

   The CSS3 Anarchist’s Cookbook

   

   Eric Meyer, author, CSS: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Ed.

   A decade ago, Eric first showed the world how to use CSS for evil. Now, thanks to CSS3, we have even more powerful weapons at our disposal, and the time has come to make use of them. Join Eric for a live-without-a-net nuts-and-bolts tour of the dark side of CSS and see exactly how to torment friends, relatives, and co-workers with cruel tricks both subtle and gross. Start practicing your evil overlord laugh now!

2. 10:15am–11:15am

   Design Principles

   

   Jeremy Keith, author, HTML5 For Web Designers

   All software is inherently political, reflecting the biases and beliefs of the people behind it. These beliefs can be made explicit through the publication of design principles: pragmatic rules of thumb that underpin a shared endeavour. Find out how important good design principles are to any project, whether it’s a website, a framework, or the World Wide Web itself.

3. 11:30am–12:30pm

   Idea to Interface

   

   Aarron Walter, author, Designing for Emotion

   When you’re working for the man, it’s hard to find time to make something fun for yourself. You’ve got ideas swimming around in your head for your next website or app, but translating abstract thoughts into a usable, successful interface is no easy task. Should you wireframe, prototype, or both? How do you know if your idea is even worth building? Aarron will share practical advice from the interface design school of hard knocks that will help you make your ideas a reality.

4. 12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH

5. 2:00pm–3:00pm

   Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

   

   Andy Clarke, author, Hardboiled Web Design

   Animation on the web has traditionally been low-fidelity and shares much common ground with the work of early animators. Web animations have always been the domain of Flash because equivalents couldn’t easily be created using open standards. That is until now, with ever increasing support for CSS3 Animations. Learn about the latest CSS animation techniques and how to create effective, accessible fallbacks for all browsers, including those with limited capabilities.

6. 3:15pm–4:15pm

   The Dimensions of a Good Experience

   

   Alexa Andrzejewski, founder, Foodspotting

   Good designs are useful, usable and desirable. But what is a good experience? While crafting the experience of her own startup, Foodspotting, Alexa Andrzejewski found answers in urban design. Asking the same question about urban experiences, Kevin Lynch, author of “Good Urban Form,” extracted a set of dimensions for evaluating experiences. By applying these principles to interactive experiences, you can identify what kind of experience you’re creating for users: Is it adaptable? Does it tell a story? Are there signs of life? You’ll leave with a set of guidelines that, unlike traditional heuristics, will enable you to evaluate the experiential qualities of your designs.

7. 4:30pm–5:30pm

   Everything the Network Touches

   

   Tom Coates, writer and technologist

   The earth is our canvas. The work we’re collectively doing on the web touches all human knowledge and creativity. It’s a project so large it’s hard to grasp, and the next few years are going to get even more interesting as the network pervades physical objects and environments, sensing and manifesting information in the real world. It’s time to recognise the scale of the project we have in front of us, the breadth of the material we have to work with, and the possibilities of design within it.

8. 5:30pm–8:30pm

   WebINK Cocktail Party

   

   Sponsored by Extensis

   Maritime Event Center
   Bell Harbor International Conf. Center
   2211 Alaskan Way, Pier 66
   Seattle, WA
   

   Ready to debrief after a long day of presentations? Join your fellow attendees and speakers to chat about the day over appetizers and festive libations. Adjacent to the conference center, we look forward to seeing you in the distinctive and unique waterfront setting of the Maritime Event Center!

Wednesday, March 30

A Day Apart: Mobile Web Design

The mobile web is the biggest, fastest-growing strand of the World Wide Web. Mobile expert Luke Wroblewski will lead a full-day, in-depth exploration of designing for the mobile web—the different devices, the changed interaction patterns, the constraints and opportunities inherent in mobile design. If you’re even thinking of doing mobile web design—and you should be thinking of it—then you won’t want to miss a single minute of Luke’s insights and experience.