The Event Apart Mailing List

That’s right: you can now join the select group of people who will get occasional e-mail straight from the crack team that brings you An Event Apart! It’s quick and easy, and it uses the Mighty Power of AJAX (With Fallbacks for The Scriptless) to get you signed up in a jiffy. Just submit a valid e-mail address, hit the confirmation link in the mail you’re sent, and that’s it! Really, that’s it: just an e-mail address. Nothing else. Ten seconds and you’ll be halfway there (the rest is up to the mail system).

As for why you should join, well, that’s easy:

1. You’ll be one of the first to get the latest announcements regarding speakers, schedules, socializing, and sundry special snippets of An Event Apart news.
2. You’ll get inside information about speakers, like what they’re working on, what they plan to present, and where they shop for their swanky laptop bags.
3. From time to time, we’ll send out special discounts that are just for our subscribers. And who doesn’t like discounts?
4. You’ll start getting compliments about your hair. If you already get compliments, then you’ll get even more. True!

As it says on the signup page, we swear on a stack of W3C specifications that we’ll never share your address with anyone else. This is just between us. So sign up today!

Location and Schedule

The conference takes place at the newly renovated Hilton New Orleans Riverside, located on the Mississippi River near the French Quarter, Riverwalk Marketplace, Harrah's Casino, and Aquarium of the Americas:

Hilton New Orleans Riverside
2 Poydras Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
Phone: (504) 561-0500

An Event Apart runs from 8:30 a.m.-7:15 p.m. and features seven sessions per day, plus a bonus eighth session sponsored by Adobe® on the first day. All sessions take place on the 3rd floor of the hotel, in the Napoleon Ballroom. Signs will direct you to the right spot.

There's a lot to cover, so the event starts promptly each morning. For best results and a good seat, show up early.

The schedule for both days is available on our site.

Registration

Event registration will be open in the Court Assembly, outside the Napoleon Ballroom on the 3rd floor, during the following hours:

Wednesday, April 23: 4:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 24: 7:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m.
Friday, April 25: 8:00 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

Food

Bring your appetite! Breakfast and lunch will be served on both days. Buffet luncheon will include something for everyone. Beverages and snacks will be served throughout the show.

Laptops

Laptops are not necessary, but they are welcome. We will provide charging stations at most seats to keep laptops juiced all day, but we still advise you to charge your laptop's battery before the show.

Session Notes Online

On the first day of the show, downloadable speaker session notes will be posted at a secret URL for conference attendees only. And after it ends, the session notes will stay up, so you can refer to them indefinitely. Don't blog the secret URL! You can, of course, share the presentations with your colleagues at the office.

Special Adobe Session

On Thursday, April 24, from 6:15 to 7:15 p.m., Adobe will present a special bonus session:

"From Prototype to Web Page"
Greg Rewis

Explore current standards and best practices for web page prototyping and design, and get a sneak peek at how the upcoming releases of Adobe Dreamweaver and Fireworks will address some of these concerns.

Opening Night Party

On Thursday, April 24, beginning at 7:30 p.m., (mt) Media Temple sponsors an opening night party for all attendees and speakers.

Crescent City Brewhouse
New Orleans French Quarter Microbrewery
527 Decatur Street in the French Quarter
New Orleans, LA 70130

Open bar, light munchables

Featuring live jazz nightly, the Crescent City Brewhouse is one of New Orleans' premier restaurants and the only French Quarter microbrewery. Mingle with speakers and your fellow attendees. Discuss the first day's sessions, network wildly, or just enjoy a brew and the view.

Flickr Group

Share your photos with the world on our public Flickr group:

flickr.com/groups/aeanola08/

Be sure to tag your photos "aeanola08" (and anything else that suits the content and your fancy).

Attendees want to see other attendees. Take plenty of shots of your friends and colleagues. Before shooting attendees you don't know, please ask their permission. Not everybody wants to have their picture taken and posted to a website.

Speakers are fair game. You don't need their permission. Speaker action photos are encouraged (just don't flash our speakers right in the eyes while they're presenting). After the session, don't be shy about asking your favorite speaker if you can take a picture with him or her.

Details, Details

It's a non-smoking event. Sorry, smokers! Still photography is permitted (how else are we going to fill up that Flickr group?), but audio and video recording are forbidden.

• Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing With Web Standards, on the current state of web standards and understanding the very nature of web design itself
• Eric Meyer, author of CSS: The Definitive Guide, on the lessons we can draw from popular CSS frameworks and ways to use CSS to make your development and debugging easier
• Kimberly Blessing, Web Development Platform Team Lead at PayPal, on defining and spreading standards in the enterprise
• Doug Bowman, Visual Design Lead at Google, on design principles that scale up beyond your wildest dreams
• Andy Budd, author of CSS Mastery, on the nine keys to a perfect user experience
• Christopher Fahey, Founding Partner at Behavior, on the relationship between form, function, and style
• Peter-Paul Koch, author of ppk on JavaScript, on best practices in unobtrusive and maintainable scripting
• Ethan Marcotte, co-author of Web Standards Creativity, on bridging the gap between high-end design (and designers) and standards-compliant coding
• Jason Santa Maria, Designer at Happy Cog, on telling and evolving stories with great design
• Jared Spool, Founder of User Interface Engineering, on which of the five types of navigation page works best in which circumstances
• Jeff Veen, Design Manager at Google, on cutting through the Web 2.0 hype to find the design lessons embedded within
• Luke Wroblewski, author of Web Form Design Best Practices, on the ways good design can smoothly guide users through web applications

Last year's Boston show was a sold-out smash success, and seats are already going fast for this year's. Don't get left out!

Thanks for talking with us, Matt! Kindly tell us a little bit about ifoh designs (including what the ifoh is all about!) and your role there.

Ah, I am not giving up that easily, bud. The "ifoh" started off as an inside joke. I couldn't think of anything for a company name. Complete blanks. I didn't want to go with something ordinary, or generic; that is about all I knew. My sister and used to laugh about this saying, because our insane father said it once. Anyway, I figured (and this is probably the worst attitude to have, but) that it didn't really matter what the name was-- all that mattered was what I was offering, and the quality of my work.

So, sorry, but for now it stays at rest.

Okay, fair enough. So what's your main focus at ifoh: design, developer, or both?

Well, ifoh designs is actually not my day job. I work for a financial company in Quincy, MA as a Web Designer, and have been here for the past year and a half. It is a pretty cool job, actually. A great atmosphere, and co-workers, which always makes for a productive employee. The commute is probably the worst part of the job as I live in Providence, RI and make the trek daily.

At ifoh, however, I do it all. Not many designers do both any more, but I think it is really great to have a solid understanding of the platform you are designing for to make the best product and user experience possible.

With that sort of view, I'm going to guess that you're a veteran of the field. How long have you been riding this crazy web train?

I have been on the train since 2001, when I needed to get a site up and running for some amazing high school metal band I was in. As you might have guessed, the site, and the band, were awful. The site might have been terrible, but I knew that I liked doing it, and that was enough for me to start seriously striving to get better. I went to New England Institute of Technology, and graduated in 2006 with a degree in Multimedia & Web Design. College was great. I recommend everyone to attend, and stay as long as you can!

Now I am working in Massachusetts, living in Rhode Island with my lovely fiancée, and driving like a maniac daily.

Given your location, I can see why you attended the Boston 2007 show. What did you like about it?

Right, so enough about me. I can't stress enough how excellent this event is for people of all walks of life. Seriously. It doesn't matter if this is your first, or hundredth web site, there is something for everyone there, and you will definitely leave with even more knowledge than you came with.

It was really great to hear some of the best in the business speak their minds, share insight, and just really get you motivated to try harder and become better. That is really what it all comes down to, being the best we can possibly be at what we do. I didn't even bring my laptop, I just took some notes, and listened. By the end of the second day I couldn't wait to get back to work and try out some of the new things I had learned.

Awesome! In the interests of fairness, was there anything that would have made the show even better for you?

Really the only thing that I thought could have had more time devoted to, was at the very end when you all were up there doing the critiques of user submitted work. It was nice to see what other designers are up to, and your reactions to them, however I would have liked to have seen more.

So you're coming back for more this year, right?

I am definitely planning on attending the June 23rd and 24th event in Boston. I also just checked the website and I should probably get my ticket before May 26th, so I can save $100. I am not going to lie though, my employers paid last year, so this year I am going to have to cough it up myself, but I do not mind one bit.

Why not? What makes AEA worth the investment?

Obviously to hear all the great guest speakers, and this year to network and promote my business.

Networking and promotion, eh? What makes you think AEA is a good place for that sort of thing?

AEA is a great place to network for many reasons. First and foremost, you are sitting in a room with several hundred other people, all of which are either in the same field, or own their own businesses. Even if you are not looking for any help, who doesn't want to make friends? Get some more links coming in to your site, which is always a good thing. Also, we all have strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps the person to your left or right is looking for some help with design, while you are not the best programmer. Exchange your information, and you now have something in the works that could benefit both your pockets.

Any other tips for our readers?

Just make sure you get your ticket(s) early enough. If you are going to travel, bring a friend along and make a trip out of it. I would most definitely recommend coming to Boston, just because it is "wicked" good, but all the other locations seem like they won't leave you without anything to do.

Oh, and bring extra money so you can buy the hosts drinks and lavish gifts...

How thoughtful of you! But we much prefer people's presence to any presents, and we're certainly looking forward to seeing you back in Boston. Thanks for taking the time to do this, Matt!

You are absolutely welcome. I too am looking forward to this year's events, and shall see you all in June. Take care!

Q. Why shouldn't web application designers have the same leeway as desktop application developers? It isn't immediately obvious how to achieve every possible task in Photoshop or Excel. As builders of sophisticated, powerful web applications, shouldn't we have the same flexibility as our colleagues at Adobe and Microsoft? Doesn't our emphasis on web usability limit what we can achieve as developers?

Great question! Let's start by talking about Photoshop and Excel, which you mentioned by name.

These, as well as countless other veteran desktop applications, have had a lot of time to bake. Perhaps, too much. As they've matured, we've seen new features added with every release to address new possibilities, and while all these features have the potential to enhance the application for the users that take advantage of them, every addition can also mean making the basics incrementally more difficult to master. This endless cycle of new development can sharply increase the learning curve for newer users, as well intermediate-level users, trying to improve their skills.

But despite all this, even the most complicated applications can be made more usable, without sacrificing their robustness, as long as designers do what they can to ensure that less experienced or less committed users can become proficient.

With this in mind, this is actually a bit of a trick question.

It's not that desktop designers have more leeway than web designers, it's that designers working on veteran applications can be less prone to maintain or improve the applications’ usability. The problem of decreased usability is not exclusive to desktop applications. There are plenty of very complex web applications, and there is plenty of opportunity for advanced or less common features in almost any application. Even simple applications—online or off—can suffer from poor usability.

Mature applications have become more robust simply as a result of their evolution. This is completely understandable. But within this process, designers can continue finding ways to improve the usability of the applications as they evolve. Ultimately, the scope of an application is not that important. Robustness doesn't have to equal poor usability. You can have both.

As I wrote about in Designing the Obvious, a user's ability to utilize an application effectively is primarily the result of applying a few key design principles. For example, users of even the most mature applications can benefit from quality instructive design. By creating short and friendly instructive text, screencasts, screenshot tours, inline tips, succinct Help articles, and so on, we can support all end-users, regardless of their experience level. These elements can not only help new users get up to speed, they can also serve as reminders for the more experienced user who might be struggling with a feature she hasn't used in a while.

Many of the pain points in Photoshop, Excel, and any complex application can be remedied. By doing more to turn beginning users into intermediates, surface the core and most common features, tuck away the more advanced and less common stuff, exclude redundant or irrelevant features, and so on, we can enable people to succeed within the complexity.

Every application can and should be made easier to use, regardless of the platform. What matters most is the users' ability to be productive with an application and to enjoy the experience. This should be a priority for any designer. Achieving this goal can certainly be tricky at times, but as long as we keep pursuing it, we can raise the bar and earn ourselves loyal and happy customers, regardless of how complex an application may be.

Q: You've worn many hats, but for the past few years you've focused on markup and code to the exclusion of design, architecture, copy, and so on. How does a coder survive and thrive in this market? What value do you bring to every job that makes people want to hire you above others? What's your secret?

To answer the last part about value first, I write very clean, succinct code. I'm fast and efficient. Many companies I work for don't have someone on staff that can create the semantic, accessible, standards-based markup they need. Blogs on advanced techniques and bug-busting ideas abound, but many people writing CSS still need to understand the basic principles. Their employer may require them to wear so many development hats that they haven't had time to learn how to properly apply foundational principles to create solid structures for their content.

The companies that hire me, however, understand the value both to their bottom line in development and maintenance hours, and to their clients’ bandwidth savings and search engine placement. I'm contracted at times to oversee the plan for a project and advise on semantics and accessibility—to take code already written and make it more succinct and efficient, or to troubleshoot a challenge that has developed. I also train larger companies’ web departments to do what I do. I get great joy from helping people "get it." To me, there's nothing better than to watch that “aha” moment!

As you said, I've worn many hats, dabbled and learned about a variety of web technologies over the years. But I decided quite a while back that the key for me is to specialize in the things I enjoy and to have a network of people that specialize in the things I do not.

When a job comes directly to my company, I project manage, pull the subcontractors I need together for the copy (so important for SEO), user interface (the part many clients don't want to pay for), design (which I refuse to do anymore since I'm a terrible tweakaholic—my time is better spent in art direction) and back-end development (which even front-end developers must understand, if only communicate scope to their back-end developer partners). I do the front-end development myself (partially because I'm a bit of a control freak). It's important for me to understand the technologies that are available, to keep up with where the web is going and what's possible, so the job can be properly planned. I don't believe it's important for me to master every technology (although I am currently adding JavaScript to my list of tricks).

All that said, my preference is still the simplicity of subcontracting for, or doing training in, other companies. I work "part-time, as needed" for two different companies. For one, I create the front-end for all their ColdFusion applications. The other, Miskeeto, is best described as a consortium. We are several developers, each with our own roles and talents, working together to help non-profits. We're even carbon-neutral (although Robert Hoekman, Jr., our founder, accuses me of creating the biggest part of that expense through all my travel).

Finally, I'd guess the secret to my surviving and thriving relates to networking, being proficient and determined (yet fun), and never knowing when to turn off the lights at night. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (my social water cooler of choice) realizes that, if I'm not on the road, at least 14 hours of my day is spent coding and talking to the little people inside my computer. I'm a horrible workaholic. But I love what I do more than anything—except maybe beach volleyball and my boyfriend.

While you’re here, you should also plan to go to the first weekend of Jazzfest. The list of people performing is crazee. That weekend includes Robert Plant, Ozomatli, Buckwheat Zydeco, Doug Wimbish & Will Calhoun (two of my favourite colours), Cowboy Mouth, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Alvin Toussaint and like a zillion others...

Need more incentive to come to New Orleans in April? Jasmine. Sweet olive. Honeysuckle. Street car rides down St. Charles to Audubon Park. Boiled crawfish at Frankie & Johnny’s. 5 napkin roast beef po boys. Liuzza’s. Mandina’s. Jacques-Imo’s. The Carousel Bar. Loa. Pimm’s @ Napoleon House. A gulf coast lingering slow night on the porch at the Columns. Beignets. Streets full of people more colorful than what you got in your town. (Just don’t bet them. They can tell you where you got your shoes.) Burgers at Port of Call after you drink too many touristy drinks like hurricanes & hand grenades. Faulkner House books. The Maple Leaf Bar. There’s a million of em, baby, you just got to come on down.

We couldn't have said it any better ourselves.

An Event Apart New Orleans will be held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside on April 24th & 25th, 2008, with fourteen sessions by a dozen of the hottest, hippest, smartest speakers around—including Mr. Oberkirch himself. Like he says: you got to come on down.

Q: You advocate "transcending the web of today." What does this mean to a designer, and how does one start transcending?

I know, from speaking to many creative designers, that many feel that working on the web involves accepting many more limitations than perhaps might be acceptable in other areas of the graphic arts. Designers feel limited by many different factors such as typography, the limitations of XHTML markup and CSS and also what is possible within certain browsers, particularly often-used, but fat and wheezy browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. But perhaps the biggest limiting factor is what designers themselves feel are possible.

Transcending is about moving away from outdated notions, for example that a design should look the same in all browsers. It is about designing the best possible visual experience for people using the best browsers (and then considering what happens for people using outdated technologies). This is the opposite of progressive enhancement where a designer would design for the most common, lowest common denominator browser (even it is the least capable), and then add extra visual decoration to reward people who use more modern software. Transcending about designing the best for the best.

Transcending also involves using all the available tools, for example CSS selectors, even though some may not be implemented in all browsers. This can also be extended to using already implemented, or previews, of CSS3 where various browsers now implement some features such as multiple background images in Safari, Multi-columns in Firefox or Media Queries in Opera.

Once you let go of the notion that a design has to look the same across all browsers, your creative options multiply and this can only be a good thing for a designer's creative appetite, clients and the web in general.

Q: You're a man of many talents: designer, CSS whiz, icon creator, author, speaker, conference founder, entrepreneur. What do you suck at?

I suck at organization. It's a rare year when I see the bottom of my inbox at any point. When I'm not busy, I procrastinate instead of keeping up a steady workflow. But nothing motivates me better than last minute panic. When things absolutely, positively must get done, they do. I'm able to juggle a scary number of things at once, but only at the last minute; when I have the luxury of time I waste far more of it than I ought to on YouTube or wherever.

It's an insane way to live, but somehow it works.

Q. What is findability? How does it relate to SEO, and what is the web standards connection?

Findability is an under-appreciated sub-discipline of the web industry that attempts to make content more discoverable. Its primary goals are to help users:

• Find the websites they seek
• Find content within websites
• Rediscover the valuable content they’ve found

Although SEO (search engine optimization) occupies an important piece of findability’s domain, there’s more that can be done to make content findable. Search systems integrated into a site can help users discover the content they seek within your site, as can tag clouds and sitemap pages. Microformats, RSS feeds, and mailing lists make your content portable, so users can access it in the context that is most convenient for them. Content that is portable is easily rediscovered. Of course, content authoring by itself is critical to findability, as high quality content that serves the needs and desires of users can attract inbound links, and create ambient discussion that will generate traffic.

Web standards help foster findability by making content machine readable. Semantic markup communicates with search engines and migration agents—such as Technorati’s hCard converter—so they can discern your content’s information hierarchy, better identify what the content is about, and even automate tasks like migrating otherwise stationary information on a web page to your computer’s address book or your mobile device.

Web standards also help us prevent problems for search engines. By progressively enhancing interfaces with JavaScript or Flash and maintaining functionality when these technologies are unsupported we can ensure that search engines still have access to a website’s content. Progressive enhancement also helps make your content more accessible to disabled users and those on alternate devices so you can reach a broader audience.

Findability and web standards are symbiotically intertwined. I think the challenges to the adoption of web standards in the corporate world could largely be overcome by speaking to our clients about them in terms of findability. Clients often don’t get what web standards are or how they serve their business interests. They understand their customers and their business, and findability is all about connecting people with their target audience. It makes business sense, and it helps the web better serve our needs.

New Orleans, if you please

The New Orleans page contains the full schedule as well as information on our venue, the Hilton New Orleans Riverside. It’s located right on the banks of the Mississippi River and the edge of the fabulous French Quarter, not to mention it was the site of Eric and Jeffrey’s first face-to-face meeting, oh so many years ago.

We’ve arranged a specially discounted room rate just for An Event Apart attendees; the details are all there on the New Orleans page. Remember, though, that just like tickets to An Event Apart New Orleans, there are only a limited number of hotel rooms available at the special rate—and once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Please come to Boston. Or Chicago. Or San Francisco.

For our other shows—Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago—we’ve provided information on each venue and the special room rates we’ve negotiated on your behalf, as well as all of the great speakers you’ll see and hear when you join us. Of course, the same caveats from New Orleans apply to these shows: seats and rooms are limited and on a first-come, first-serve basis, so don’t delay.

Each show is an all-new, two-day extravaganza, featuring a fresh mix of speakers and talks you haven’t heard before.

New content, new speakers, more sessions

In every city, there are now 12 brilliant speakers—a mix of fresh new faces and last year’s highest-scoring presenters from all four cities—leading 14 information-packed sessions in two jam-packed, nine-and-a-half-hour long days.

But with all this change, we’ve kept the things that make An Event Apart special: a single track (everyone in the same room, sharing the same information at the same time), an unwavering focus on creativity and best practices in contemporary web design, and the greatest speakers and subject experts this side of paradise.

And there are still plenty of breaks to help you unwind while passing your business card around, as well as plenty of tasty edibles to fortify you for the next big burst of knowledge sharing.

If you loved last year’s events, you’ll double-love this year’s. So don’t miss out! Register now. Come on down, bring a friend!

So we asked Dan for recommendations regarding who might replace him, and he mentioned Boston-area wünderkind Ethan Marcotte. Ethan delivered a very popular talk at last year’s Boston show, so we were happy as could be about Dan’s choice. The only question was, could we get the elusive Mr. Marcotte to return?

Fortunately, our entreaties fell on receptive ears, and Ethan has agreed to join the lineup with an all-new talk that we can’t wait to hear:

Comps and Code: Couples’ Therapy

High-end design. Standards-compliant code. Doesn’t exactly sound like a match made in heaven, does it?

In this session, Ethan will look at a few high-profile brands, and discuss the intersection of quality code and top-notch art direction. He’ll discuss strategies for UI developers to achieve that extra level of ‘bulletproofing’ in their templates, as well as tips for designers to better convey creative requirements to their coding counterparts.

A full listing of Boston sessions will be available on our website in mid-March. Want to be notified the minute it goes up? Subscribe to our news feed.

As for Mr. Cederholm, he’ll be back on our speaking platform at An Event Apart San Francisco, August 18–19, 2008 at The Palace Hotel.

Meanwhile, please join us in welcoming Ethan Marcotte to An Event Apart 2008!

Ladies and gentlemen, the speaker lineups for our 2008 schedule.

Boston

June 23-24

• Kimberly Blessing
• Doug Bowman
• Andy Budd
• Liz Danzico
• Peter-Paul Koch
• Ethan Marcotte
• Jason Santa Maria
• Jared Spool
• Jeffrey Veen
• Luke Wroblewski

San Francisco

August 18-19

• Dan Cederholm
• Tantek Çelik
• Heather Powazek Champ
• Liz Danzico
• Derek Featherstone
• Kelly Goto
• Jeremy Keith
• Jason Santa Maria
• Jeffrey Veen
• Luke Wroblewski

Chicago

October 13-14

• Andy Clarke
• Curt Cloninger
• Jason Fried
• Robert Hoekman Jr.
• Cameron Moll
• Sarah Nelson
• Jason Santa Maria
• Jonathan Snook
• Jeffrey Veen
• Rob Weychert

...plus your esteemed hosts, Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, at each and every show.

See you in 2008!

(Edited 26 Jan 08 to reflect changes in the lineup for An Event Apart Boston. Please see "Cederholm Out, Marcotte In For Boston" for more information.)

Join us April 24-25 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside for two intense 9.5-hour-long days of learning and inspiration with...

• Andy Clarke, author, Transcending CSS
• Dave Shea, co-author, Zen of CSS Design
• Cameron Moll, author, Mobile Web Design
• Jeff Veen, design manager, Google
• Brian Oberkirch, Publisher, Like It Matters
• Aaron Gustafson, co-author, AdvancED DOM Scripting
• Stephanie Sullivan, co-author, Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3
• Aarron Walter, author, Building Findable Web Sites
• Robert Hoekman Jr., author, Designing the Obvious
• Jason Santa Maria, designer, Happy Cog
• Eric Meyer, author, CSS: The Definitive Guide
• Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards

Upcoming Events

Can’t make New Orleans? Join us in these cities!

• Boston – June 23 & 24
• San Francisco – August 18 & 19
• Chicago – October 13 & 14

You can register for these shows now. Schedules will be announced soon.