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An Event Apart Boston 2009 Recap

Earlier this week the Lion Burger crew (opens in new tab) (@lionburger (opens in new tab)) attended An Event Apart Boston 2009 (opens in new tab) (@aneventapart (opens in new tab)). The speaker lineup (opens in new tab) was outstanding, and their presentations did not disappoint.

When Pete (opens in new tab) and I first arrived in Boston (me from Rochester, him from Acton, MA), we started talking about trying to build something that might make a splash at the event. We knew these conferences get a lot of coverage on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. We thought it'd be convenient to have one place to view a live stream of activity that covered all of the major sources, instead of having to bounce through Twitter hashtag searches, Flickr tag searches, etc. So we decided to build a feed aggregator.

We called it A Feed Apart (opens in new tab), and it aggregates the conference hashtags from Twitter and tags Flickr, and does so in real-time (currently switched off). Check out Pete's posts on what we learned (redacted due to age), and how we built it (opens in new tab).

As some of you may know, I'm a terrible notetaker. So, my reactions / recaps / thoughts listed below are a combination of my memory of the presentations, the slides (available only to AEA attendees), and the reactions from people on Twitter (which you can find here: http://afeedapart.com/sessions (redacted due to age)). If I misquoted you, or you want direct attribution, drop me a line at nick at this domain.com.

By the way, be sure to check out Jeremy Keith's (opens in new tab) (@adactio (opens in new tab)) liveblogging journals (opens in new tab), which I've linked to at the beginning of each session from the first day below. Excellent stuff there - thanks Jeremy, you rock.

Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon (redacted due to age): Jarod Spool (opens in new tab) (@jmspool (opens in new tab))

Content First (redacted due to age): Kristina Halvorson (opens in new tab) (@halvorson (opens in new tab))

  • Jeremy Keith's liveblog of the presentation (opens in new tab)
  • Have a content strategy for every project
  • Content should focus on the user, not on products
  • Content is not a feature - it's a living-breathing thing that evolves & involves multiple avenues of input
  • Content is cyclical, you can't "set it and forget it"
  • Someone needs to own the content from the beginning of the process
  • Lorem ipsum must die
  • You can't just put icons on the page and expect users to find their way
  • Crappy content == crappy user experience

Thinking Small (redacted due to age): Jason Santa Maria (opens in new tab) (@jasonsantamaria (opens in new tab))

Future Shock Treatment (redacted due to age): Jeremy Keith (opens in new tab) (@adactio (opens in new tab))

Designing With Psychology in Mind (redacted due to age): Joshua Porter (opens in new tab) (@bokardo (opens in new tab))

DIY UX: Give Your Users an Upgrade (Without Calling In a Pro) (redacted due to age): Whitney Hess (opens in new tab) (@WhitneyHess (opens in new tab))

  • Jeremy Keith's liveblog of the presentation (opens in new tab)
  • Creative spaces and tools allow for creative thinking
  • "Never tell your UX Designer 'it looks good' - they'll punch you in the face. Tell them what an epic fail it is, instead."
  • Customers that feel they're being heard translates to word of mouth (and more business)
  • "You need to have humility and listen. Users aren't always right but you need to hear them."
  • "The key to a company's success is the 'culture of iteration'."

Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z (redacted due to age): Dan Cederholm (opens in new tab) (@simplebits (opens in new tab))

Beyond Pixel Pushing: A Simple Way to Better Websites and Happier Clients (redacted due to age): Brett Welch (opens in new tab) (@higoodbarry (opens in new tab))

  • "Lowering prices is a race to the bottom - we need to sell our design value more effectively"
  • "A website needs a marketing plan. Always."
  • "When dealing with a scrooge client, cut your scope, not your price"

A Site Redesign (redacted due to age): Jeffrey Zeldman (opens in new tab) (@zeldman (opens in new tab))

  • Any project not for yourself should start with research. Research produces achievable goals
  • Research makes a you a credible partner, not a nag or another mouth to feed
  • User research is not market research - it's about how people act and think
  • Find people that represent real users and define their personas. Design your site around those personas
  • Have a content strategy, and place real content in your designs instead of placeholder text
  • Zeldman likes bacon, mayonnaise, and coffee
  • Clients have a lot of stuff on their mind. Use the Alzheimer's method of repetition in a non-condescending fashion; remind them of steps / changes, and keep in contact
  • "Sell ideas, not pixels"
  • Always avoid combating the client, you want them to always be your friend
  • More sexy time
  • Working with text in Photoshop is hard - writing a few lines of CSS is not
  • "Beta testing is good - it gives the impression that you care"
  • "Mostly I have really terrible ideas one after another, and eventually I get to mediocrity and feel so relieved"
  • "I would kill myself if I had to listen to all of my bad ideas"
  • Simply re-skinning a site is a missed opportunity

Flash and Web Standards - Getting Along on the Playground (redacted due to age): Daniel Mall (opens in new tab) (@danielmall (opens in new tab))

  • "Flash is the smelly kid." (joking)
  • Jakob Nielson's article in 2000 calling Flash 99% bad (opens in new tab) was very hurtful to the Flash community, but 100% true
  • "Why'd you create Comic Sans? - 'beacuse sometimes it's better than Times New Roman.'"
  • In design, there is no bad - just appropriate and inappropriate
  • Flash is another tool in your arsenal
  • The web is a playground - our job is to figure out how to get all of our 'friends' (HTML/CSS/JS/Flash) to play along
  • Be willing to compromise and use whatever technique that gets the task done

Accessibility - Experiments at the Edges of Experience (redacted due to age): Derek Featherstone (opens in new tab) (@feather (opens in new tab))

  • The coolest thing ever can become passe more quickly than you can even realize
  • The API (generally speaking) is the best tool you have
  • "I have no idea if this is useful, but we'll never know unless we try"
  • "We have to push our limits so that others may break through theirs" - brilliant
  • "When you think you're at your 'accessibility limit', push through and find the next limit"

Findability Bliss Through Web Standards (redacted due to age): Aarron Walter (opens in new tab) (@aarron (opens in new tab))

Change the World (Wide Web)? (redacted due to age): Scott Thomas (opens in new tab) (@simplescott (opens in new tab))

  • Deliver clear and concise messaging, focused on the "we" rather than the "he" (Obama)
  • "We were building a plane while in flight" - had to deliver materials day-to-day while contributing to the longer-term mission
  • The fold is dead
  • Websites are living-breathing-evolving organisms
  • "Empower other people in the process, and really wonderful things can happen"
  • http://data.gov (opens in new tab)

Surprise & Delight (redacted due to age): Heather Champ (opens in new tab) (@hchamp (opens in new tab))

  • Respect your members
  • 'Archer' is very six months ago
  • Provide guidelines for good citizenship
  • Leaderboards will bite you in the ass
  • http://www.flickr.com/explore/panda (opens in new tab)
  • Put more tools into the hands of your users
  • A tsunami of feedback has a lifecycle
  • Site changes make users react "like we were throwing kittens out of helicopters on top of small children playing with glass"
  • Be as transparent as you can
  • "Things will happen. It's how you step up, move forward, and change - you'll always make mistakes"
  • Make Lemonade
  • Embrace the chaos
  • noindex all of your abuse / report pages so they don't appear in searches
  • Greenland?

Walls Come Tumbling Down (redacted due to age): Andy Clarke (opens in new tab) (@malarkey (opens in new tab))

  • Andy Clarke puts the sexy in CSS
  • "Limitations imposed by a recession make us think & work in new ways, help us to focus, sharpen our skills, and make us more competitive"
  • "We own our skills, no one else - now is the time to improve ourselves"
  • It's time to discard outdated workflows
  • Develop new workflows based on creativity
  • Embrace agile design / development
  • "Designing static visuals that will live in a browser fails by definition"
  • "It's time to stop showing clients static design visuals"
  • "Static visuals reinforce the misconception that websites should look exactly the same in every browser"
  • As the browser landscape gets more diverse, it becomes uneconomical and undesirable to seek "cross-browser, pixel-perfection"
  • "You know, sometimes I think that web designers have got no fucking balls"
  • "Different does not mean broken"
  • Does your aunt fire up two browsers and say, 'It doesn't fucking look the same in Firefox!'?
  • "HTML/CSS should be a tool in the work belt of developers AND designers"
  • Design systems, not individual pages
  • "Clients are not paying you for the hours you work, but for the years of knowledge you have"
  • Do not charge less just because you can work faster
  • Focus efforts on redefining why we do what we love so much