An Event Apart Seattle

I sat at the Bell Harbor Convention Center for An Event Apart Seattle. Jeffery Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Jason Santa Maria, Kelly Goto, and Erin Kissane gave presentations.

I saw Eric Meyer last year at the Carson Workshop last year, and a lot of his material was retread from that. “One True Layout” and “Hardcore CSS” were the names of his sessions. Both of which didn’t teach me anything new. Of course, people who haven’t seen Eric talk before probably got a lot out of his sessions.

Jeffery Zeldman, brought a lot of information to the table. He talked about how to develop quality client relationships. He talked about flirting with the client. Making sure that you build a client relationship the same way that you build any other quality relationship. You are discerning about who you associate with, you start by establishing trust, and you build on that with mutual investment in the relationship. That concept isn’t totally groundbreaking but he remarked about his experiences with clients that are great to work with as well as ones that could be served better by a different relationship. He also talked about how to distinguish the difference, and that you should always trust your gut.

In a later session Zeldman talked about the importance of writing on websites. I think this session was my favorite. It’s something I don’t have a lot of experience with and he was generous with his thoughts and ideas about what is successful, and what isn’t.

He broke web writing into 5 sections:

• Guide copy
• Copy copy
• Brand copy
• Labels
• URLs

His explanation and definition of each type was helpful and then in the critique time at the end of the day he (Zeldman) and Erin Kissane talked about some of the submitted sites and where their copy could be improved. It drove home the copy concepts that were defined earlier in the day.

Jason Santa Maria’s talk was about his redesign of A List Apart. It was interesting to hear about how he really wanted to make it a readable experience, similar to a book. His personal website has a similar aesthetic. It was cool to see the progression of the design for the site and the logo. Not only images of it, but he was able to articulate the whys of the decisions that were made.

Near the end of the day Kelly Goto explored the emerging mobile market and had a ton a research and statistics to back up the points she made. It was informative and interesting, but at this point of the conference I was pretty tired so it was a little difficult to totally get into it.

After Kelly’s presentation, all of the presenters took turns poking holes in sites submitted by attendees. Some of the criticism seemed helpful and other just felt like a theoretcial/philosophical debate. Multiple times Eric Meyer would rip into someone’s site because it used tables, or the CSS wasn’t perfect. It seemed he didn’t have a firm grasp of real-world work environments that are not best-case. But, thankfully, Zeldman and Santa Maria, reigned him in a bit.

After the conference was over, the folks from Blue Flavor generously hosted a happy hour (and a half) at the nearby Alibi Room. It was a good time to have few drinks, reflect on the days activities and meet some really great people.

Thanks to all involved with putting on An Event Apart Seattle. It was really a fun experience.