An Event Apart Experience

I just returned from a short trip to Philadelphia and An Event Apart. I had high expectations going into the event, and I'm happy to say that it exceeded them all.

For those not familiar, An Event Apart is a traveling road-show with two of the most influential names in standards-based web development: Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer. For this first event, they were joined by the amazingly talented Stan (AKA Jason Santa Maria) for a full day of presentations, discussions, and demonstrations of cutting-edge web development.

One of the strongest aspects of the event was its intimacy. There were only about 100 people there, which gave the conference-goers ample opportunity to meet like-minded professionals, ask questions, and talk to Eric, Jeffrey and Jason one-on-one. The talks were peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that helped keep the tone informal and entertaining. The Happy Hour-and-a-Half afterwards was also an indispensable part of the experience.

I was quite pleased to learn far more than I had expected. I've read Jeffrey and Eric's books and keep up with both their blogs and A List Apart, and was worried that most of the information would redundant. Fortunately, the event didn't disappoint. Most of the presentations were either extremely fresh (such as Eric's discussion of IE7 and Jeffrey's analysis of the upcoming WCAG 2.0); insightful explanation of new, groundbreaking techniques (such as One True Layout and fully-scalable em-based design); or otherwise full of very practical information (I particularly enjoyed the Textism presentation in this regard).

Perhaps most useful, however, was the insight we got into the way our three hosts approach and solve challenges. Jason and Eric's tag-team discussion about the design and implementation (respectively) of A List Apart's recent makeover was a phenomenal experience in unadulterated web-geek voyeurism.

The day was not without its hitches, however. The WiFi was inoperable for most of the morning, thanks to the nearly 1:1 attendee-laptop ratio. There were a few questions that remained unanswered at the end; perhaps some dedicated Q & A time would be a useful addition next time around. Also, while the markovers and critiques definitely yielded some good advice, I felt that most of them were solving the bigger, basic pitfalls that have already been covered elsewhere. I feel it would have been more instructive to focus on a handful of really challenging problems that required unexpected solutions.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience and one that I would highly recommend when An Event Apart comes to your town. For now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Jeffrey and Eric open up the audio and slides (and perhaps video?) to the public; I think the web development community would benefit tremendously from the information therein.