It's taken me a month now to write about the Voices That Matter web design conference which took place in the surprisingly chilly but majestically cultured city of San Francisco, CA.
The kick-off speaker, Jesse James Garrett (what a cool name--seriously), did a great job getting us all excited about what was to come. For a few moments I felt like I was tapped into the greater meaning of life and not just feeling like a frustrated Photoshop slave staring at bits of code for days on end. This guy is really cool, and when you Google his name there is a great cartoon of him on the first page of image results.
Tantek Çelik is also a very cool guy. I'm not even being sarcastic. His dress code is quite dapper. He somehow transcends the tech geek stereotype with his dark blazer and matter-of-fact yet enthusiastic mannerisms. Fact is: he doesn't need to act or dress cool. He just is. I'm fairly certain I developed a small crush on the dark-rimmed-glasses know-it-all over the course of 2 days. Back in the day, my coding instructor spoke of his work in class, so I was aware of his reputation. My colleague and I were interested to hear what Tantek had to say about HTML5. There has been lots of talk about this lately, so it was comforting to hear what The Dude had to say about it.
Denise Jacobs is a sparkling CSS chica -- and tall (well, compared to me being 5' 3"). I think she is in the running (alongside Paul Adams with all his MSN messenger-people diagrams and hideously cute accent) for being the most comedic presenter. She defended a photo of herself amidst a group of people: "We weren't drunk!" Am I remembering that correctly? I think I am. Anyway, as a female web dork, I find myself surrounded by serious web dudes all too often (post about "web dudes" yet to come). So I enjoy my moments to respect women colleagues and learn about the latest in CSS3.
Another female presenter with nice glasses and decals on her laptop, Emily Lewis got me all excited (again) about microformats. I really, really love the idea of microformats because they give human meaning to otherwise-droidlike lines of code. Meaning and organization are both good things in my book. I haven't written a book yet like the two ladies I just mentioned, but perhaps I will someday.
A third woman presenter (woo hoo!), Colleen Jones, gave us the all-too-painful reminder that as designers we have to think more about the content of the sites we build and not just plop text from the Word document we've been waiting 3 months for into the pages we mapped out in the 30-second wireframe "meeting" we supposedly had at some point in the past. Or thought we did. At least, I thought I did...
I don't know about you
but fonts are, like, one of my favorite things of all time. Lyndsay's Top 5 Things: eating, breathing, blinking, riding horses, FONTS (aka typefaces). Ok maybe blinking would be bumped out by something else, but you get my point. Jason Teague did a very satisfying job of bringing to light some of the sexiest web fonts and how we can incorporate MORE of them into our web universe and not be tied with our hands behind our backs to the same boring/familiar/safe ones. "Comic Sans. . .'nough said," says Jason. There are options out there, folks! Like TypeKit (if you didn't already know/use it) and Fonts.com's new service.
I first noticed Robert Hoekman on the shuttle from the hotel to the conference center. It was early in the morning and he had a coffee and I didn't. Later I realized coffee wasn't the only thing this man had up his sleeve. I would later hear his presentation on user experiences and marketing strategy. I even took some really enthusiastic notes:
(The sad bug character represented my mostly non-existent disappointment that there were no snacks at the time.)
Todd Parker and Scott Jehl were both extremely friendly. My colleague and I encountered them at breakfast on the first day. I didn't notice their "speaker" name badges at first but realized they had to be important when they opened their mouths! Smart dudes.
Khoi Vinh just has a really rad NYC UX/UI design job and is an accomplished artist. New York is also still the coolest and most difficult place to be a designer of any kind.
Maybe this is kind of silly, but Steve Krug was so adorably hilarious and insightful at the same time that I just wanted to hug him. He seemed so comfortable standing up there making us all laugh. His presentation was the most "interactive" I'd say because he live critiqued websites submitted by the attendees, which was really neat. I am deathly afraid of both asking and answering questions at conferences or networking events, but I always enjoy listening to Q&A sessions. One reason I like the web is because I can put on a face with it and hide behind it at the same time :)
I missed parts of presentations here and there (like, some of the morning ones), but all-in-all I was utterly impressed with both the information and inspiration I took away from this conference. It was only 2 days, but I felt like I had a chance (if I dared) to ask these top professionals questions and/or drink wine with some of them at the Hotel Palomar during the free-wine hour. Everything from the food, coffee and topics discussed were right on target.
Hopefully I will be able to go next year!
