If It Ain’t Spoke…
I’d never been to any of the previous AEA’s, but I kind of had an idea what to expect: the whole enterprise focuses on Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer’s particular, cross-disciplinary approach to technology, and its tone is an outgrowth of the exceedingly down-to-earth and approachable personalities of these two giants of their field. So I had expected to find a friendly, informative and eclectic program of speakers and topics. And that’s exactly how it was; I’m glad, too, because I put in a bit of extra effort to tailor a presentation specifically for that audience, one that really relied on having AEA’s particular mix of high-level design thinkers and roll-up-your sleeve style design practitioners in the same audience.
I wasn’t quite sure how it would come off, but at the very least, several really nice folks in the audience gave me quite positive feedback afterwards. At any rate, I had an excellent time presenting and also sitting in the audience — the other speakers were all terrific (at least the ones I saw on Monday, as I couldn’t attend Tuesday’s sessions due to work).
Attendees can get a slightly abridged version of the slideshow I prepared for the conference for download. I’m thinking about making it available here, too, but I also plan to give a modified version of the same talk at some future engagements. So what I might do instead is start to outline a few of the concepts that I touched upon in upcoming blog posts. Just as a quick summary, though, my talk outlined a typical day in my personal and professional life, how design figures into most all of it, and my approach to getting all of it done. More to come…
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