An Event Apart - Chicago 2006

On June 2 2006, several members of the Web Dev team attended "An Event Apart" in Chicago. This one day conference focussed on css and standards-driven development. The sessions included:

• One True Layout Code Review - Eric Meyer
• Textism - Jeffrey Zeldman
• Solving (Re)Design Problems - Jason Santa Maria
• Bringing A List Apart Together - Eric Meyer
• Fully Em-Based Designs - Eric Meyer
• What’s the Story? - Jeffrey Zeldman
• Staying Happy in a Creative Business - Jim Coudal
• Design Critiques

The sessions covered a wide variety of subjects. The sessions by Eric Meyer were very code intensive, whereas the Zeldman sessions were less directly relevant to our discipline.
"One true layout" reviewed a new technique for css layout, as outlined here: http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/onetruelayout/

"Textism" focussed on the importance of the written word, interesting in theory but geared towards other shops that do not have a tech comm discipline as we do.

"Solving (Re)design Problems" was given by a visual designer and was very interesting. In their case, the visual designer seemed to take some ownership of how to semantically lay out pieces of the page (specifying what is a header, etc). When asked, the designer stated that he does not like to use wireframes as often it appears a client may become married to a wireframe, which is an information architecture element, not a design. The division of labour in this development process was stated to be very rigid, but the lines did not completely mirror what we have here in house. There seemed to be more work on the behalf of the visual designer to ensure elements were semantically united across the product; right now I believe that often comes moreso from the HF team.

"Bringing a List Apart Together" was the continuation of the previous session. Eric Meyer was the coder who realized the designs Jason came up with. What was interesting was that Eric did not request specific details from Jason re: headings, etc. He attempted to determine their semantic importance himself without regard to the specific visual treatment they'd received. If his rendering of the page then was in agreement with Jason, they knew they had a strong underlying IA. If not, there were some refinements to be made.

"Fully Em-based designs" looked at how the use of 'ems' rather than pixels or points for measuring elements on a page can allow for a fully scalable website. This was a very intriguing idea, as it meant that the overall page layout was not compromised when the user zoomed in, but it has its own drawbacks, in terms of dealing with cascading multiplication of element sizes. As well, I am not sure this could feasibly be implemented in our current development processes.

"What's the Story" looked at client relations.

"Staying Happy in a Creative Business" was a touchy-feely session that encouraged you to love your work and always be open for new opportunities.

"Design Critiques" gave all the delegates an opportunity to look real life sites and offer up commments and suggestions.

I found the conference very informative, and it was wonderful to be able to network with other delegates, to discover our common challenges and learn about alternative methodologies and practices. It was also a wonderful team-building exercice and I am confident the web dev team will be stronger having attended.

The flickr group set up for the conference is located at http://www.flickr.com/groups/aeachicago2006/