When I was first in Chicago, I was five years old, between a bus from Toronto and a train to Los Angeles — though not my official point of entry into the United States, it has defied its own insignificance — a mere fingerprint on The Bean, if you will — and, with Burger King French toast sticks, become an integral part of this immigrant’s narrative. My memory allows little more than that I was there, but this time, two days in the august company of squared-shoed and trapezoid-spectacled enemies of my enemies, I know to take pictures, to take notes.
Notes on An Event Apart, Chicago 2007.
“Dealing With The Both of You” by Jim Coudal was, depending on one’s ability to extrapolate useful information from sots and blood from rocks, either the total summation of An Event Apart or a phenomenally absurd rant. Local bar as “conference room B”? I get it, but this is not practical advice for people in conservative corporate environments who still are compelled to work creatively in order to support their families. Who in this context would seriously leave the office mid-day for a shot and a brew, even under the ægis of sparking productivity? Imagine this exchange:
“Honey, what’s the fifty-dollar charge at Neighborhood Pub on the 18th of last month?”
“That? I had a few beers because I needed inspiration.”
And I like I needed inspiration as a riposte for when the designer’s significant other leaves the designer’s unemployed verging-on-alcoholic ass for someone else.
Nevertheless, what I feel should have been expanded upon was that concept of eavesdropping, the idea that design is inherently social and (oh, this would’ve been an appropriate segue from Zeldman’s talk) while we all may not (want to) be drinkers and chain-smokers, we can still — even with families or uptight colleagues in tow — engage strangers and the unsuspecting public in developing our understanding of the social context in which our work will exist. And given that, the fact that I gained more from the individual seminars than the open bar in between its two days is a testament to the quality of the conference as a whole.
The two seminars that engaged me most were delivered by the two speakers about whom I knew the least — Lou Rosenfeld and Luke Wroblewski — rich in case studies and delving into facets of the field where there sadly isn’t much in the way of common sense, and completely applicable to present and future career development. I would have gladly alloted the latter presentation another half-hour or more (Luke unfortunately hastened his discussion of selection dependent inputs to not exceed his hour).
At the end of Lou’s presentation on Monday, I cornered him in the lobby outside the ballroom to discuss the application of his presentation in my workplace and the possibility of consulting my colleagues. When I revealed my employer to him, the discussion moved towards the state of information architecture on federal government websites — as we headed back into the ballroom at the end of the break, after he asked how long I’d been proverbially mining salt, he followed up with (and I paraphrase) “do you look forward to work when you wake up in the morning?” My incremental implementation of web standards and advocacy of accessibility and usability probably counteracts the few occasions I’m compelled to act immorally, and he agreed with me when I acknowledged that the impression these positive changes leaves in my present circumstance, however light, is made indelible in a way no other employer will likely match.
The rest of the conference had its highlights: the ethics of AJAX (Jeremy Keith), keyboard-navigable Google Maps (Derek Featherstone), and Dan, I believe in microformats now — time to get myself properly on XFN and cobble together a favicon for this place. In the company of a younger cachet of attendees (and presenters) at the Billy Goat Tavern, double cheeseburgers by the half-dozen. Derek also provided the oh shit jawdropper of the moment — before you click through, ask yourself the question: how does one semantically structure a crossword puzzle in HTML?
Chicago, as a city, is a fascinating read — I skimmed it briefly on a Sunday afternoon river tour — with all the tropes of American industrial cities for the last half century (including a present obsession with condominiums), colored by the permanent yet malleable memory carried by the survival of a tragic fire in childhood. I had a killer view of its outline from my 42nd-floor hotel room (your tax dollars hard at work) — it feels at once singular and indistinguishable, a Mies van der Rohe wet dream, like New York without the self-parody, like Washington without the dysfunctional grid.
I plan to return to there, to feel out more of the city than Wrigley Field (Cubs won), the Blue Line, and the bar crawl at O’Hare (actually, my flight today connects there), and I may have outgrown hostels for the B&B circuit.
Apropos nothing, when’s the last time you encountered Amish people at an airport?At any rate, my next travelogue will recap my coming time to Montreal (22 and 8, for those of you keeping score). Au Pied du Cochon, Librissime, Cluny ArtBar — good signs it will join Cambridge on The List. And three days of Chicago, two of An Event Apart — though they are but fingerprints on the surface of memory, that may be as much of an impression one may need to leave to be remembered forever.
[...] back from An Event Apart New Orleans and after a good night’s sleep, much like Chicago before it, I am not only prepared to be a better web designer but inspired to be a better [...]