Fronteers 2010 recap

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I know, I know. It’s been a whole week. What can I say? I’m glad to have so much work.

Fronteers 2010 in Amsterdam was definitely the best Fronteers yet. I was honored to have been invited to speak for the third year in a row. As Chris Heilmann points out, the two of us share that privilege, and a privilege it is; the Fronteers team has put the conference on the map as one of the top front-end design and development conferences around today.

Aside from speaking, Fronteers was a great opportunity to see some friends again and meet new people, and to see some of my favorite web talents speak as well:

Day one

Day one kicked off with Jeremy Keith on HTML5. Jeremy is one of the best thinkers in front-end development and a *fantastic* speaker. He presented a clear overview of past, present and future HTML5. I also finally got to meet him in person after reading so much of his work through the years. And, he built Huffduffer, which you should try.

Robert Nyman. What a character. A very informative presentation peppered with images of celebrities, which misdirected the audience from the fact that Robert has cloned himself several times in order to keep up with all his work.

I’m a big fan of SVG, so I thoroughly enjoyed Brad Neuberg’s presentation, which could have easily been called “show off and make your friends jealous with SVG“. A well-rounded look at this vector graphics format.

Håkon Wium Lie shared stories and images about the beginning of the Web and the history of CSS. Especially enlightening was seeing a picture of the world’s first web server. He finished up by sharing some of his ideas about the future of the Web. Since he is CTO of Opera Software, I do of course expect him to get CSS3 Template Layout implemented soon. To this end, I had to have a little chat with him during the break.

I loved Stoyan Stefanov‘s session on performance. Lots of little tricks in this presentation and some things I didn’t know, but can apply today. Good stuff, and a super-nice guy.

I’ve admired Jina Bolton‘s work for a few years. She’s done a lot of work educating people about and promoting CSS, and it’s easy to see why. While her subject matter was tried and true, it served as a good confirmation of some best practices, especially within teams.

Jake Archibald‘s presentation on design principles for building APIs was insane. Jake’s presentation style is a flurry of insight and humor. There was plenty to learn and lots to laugh about. Absolutely awesome presentation.

Day two

I kicked off day two, basically discussing progressive enhancement all over again in light of the current obsession with media queries. The slides were minimalist, but I found using SVG quite flexible. (Some people have asked about the slides, so I will post the SVG file very soon, with an explanation of how I made the slides).

Real-world Responsive Design

Moving on…

Paul Irish… what can I say? The Web is his little plaything, and does pretty much whatever he wants it to.

Meagan Fisher‘s slides were gorgeous. She walked us through the subtle use of texture, rgba() and text-shadow and box-shadow to turn a bland, wireframe-like page into something delicious.

I didn’t get to see Nicholas Zakas’ presentation on High Performance JavaScript, as I was drafted by Andy Clarke and Dan Rubin to take part in their talkshow session which took place in a second room. It was a fun session, and should have lasted at least another half-hour, as not all questions could be answered in time. As far as Nicholas goes, I can’t wait to see the video of his presentation.

Steve Faulkner and Hans Hillen talked about HTML5 accessibility, and the message was pretty much that it’s not ready yet. But they did give some valuable tips for introducing some WAI-ARIA into your HTML. Christian and I especially loved the slides.

As a big fan of Robert Hodgin‘s work, it was great to see Cameron Adams talk about animation on the Web. Cameron’s presentation also challenged the Flash-bashers, certainly causing me—and probably many others—to stop and think about which technologies are better suited to which goals. Cameron is also a great guy to have a beer with.

As far as I’m concerned, the star of the show was Chris Heilmann, with his inspirational and hilarious presentation designed to motivate us to Go Forth and Make Cool Stuff. Being the web developer’s answer to Anthony Robbins is no easy task, and Chris pulls it off beautifully.

All in all, I had a fantastic time. My compliments go out to the Fronteers team; they really did a superb job putting this conference together. I think we can expect great things for next year!

Fronteers 2010 awaits

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Tomorrow I’ll be heading over to Amsterdam, where I’ll be doing a presentation called “Real-world Responsive Design”, my take on the new design paradigm coined by Ethan Marcotte. It will be my fourth time speaking at Fronteers, and I’m quite excited; the speaker lineup alone is enough to be excited about:

I’m thrilled to once again be included in such a top-notch lineup, and I look forward to meeting old friends and new friends in one of my favorite cities in the world!

If you’re going to the conference and you’re there Wednesday evening, why not join us for the Fronteers 2010 Jam Session? It’s in a bar (so presumably, there’s beer or refreshments) and the sessions are short at 15 minutes each. I’m especially interested to see what Anne van Kesteren will be talking about. I will be doing a short session on CSS3 Flexible Box Layout Module, so if you’ve been waiting for Part 2 of my tutorial, you’ll get the the sneak preview tomorrow night!

See you there!

On leaving Cinnamon

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Last Thursday, 30 september 2010, was my last day at Cinnamon, the company I helped build and where I’ve worked for the past eight years.

Ten years ago, I left my career as art director in print design and joined the company that—two years later— would evolve into Cinnamon. I had been learning about and creating websites since 1995 and I welcomed the opportunity to work full-time on the Web.

As many baby-faced entrepreneurs, I knew nothing about running a business, and less about “doing” business. Hungry as I was for new opportunities, I didn’t stop to think about what running a business meant; I was on board to lead creation of the product.

Cough.

After some management Musical Chairs, I found myself in the position of having to get clients, keep those clients, and lead our team. Not to mention the usual financial responsibilities. I was schooled as a fine artist and graphic designer. The first time I sat across from a potential client, knowing I needed to get the business, was terrifying. I didn’t know this stuff, I just learned as I went.

It was hard at first, but I began to get the hang of it. We built a pretty stable team and decent focus. The main team has been, with one exception, the same since 2006. It’s kind of like family, and that makes it hard to step out and move on. So why?

I love the Web. I love what we do. I can imagine no better job for a creative person who always craves New Stuff. Making the Web means parsing information, giving it meaning, making it accessible, making it usable and (in my opinion) making it beautiful. There are new challenges every day, and with those challenges come new ways to meet them. And if those methods don’t suit you, you can come up with your own. There are rules, yet there are none. The Web, for me, is where my main interests—art and technology—meet, flirt and make babies.

When I started this adventure, I did it because I wanted to make cool stuff. Pretty stuff. Useful stuff. Through the years I ended up selling stuff and managing the People Who Make the Stuff (while periodically sneaking some art direction, design and production work in for myself). And we did do cool stuff. Cinnamon was one of the first companies to combine professional design with web accessibility. Lots of firms do that now, but in 2002, accessible almost always seemed to mean “looks better to blind people”.

But now it’s time for me to get back to why I got in the game. It’s time to focus by removing operational distractions. It’s time for me to create a more balanced work-world, which can allow me freedom to do what I love to do and enjoy my personal life as much as I can. I’ve learned a lot about clients, and as an independent contractor, I want to help them stop being their own worst enemy. I want to help developers do the same. I want to spend more time with the technologies which will allow designers to do more with the web (yes, that includes CSS3 layout). I want to focus on helping clients with what we now call the Mobile Web, which I believe will catalyze some new, platform-agnostic thinking about information, what we can do with it, where and how. And I’m always so full of ideas… it’s time to write and speak about these things more frequently.

I wish my colleagues at Cinnamon all the best. They’re all great and talented people and they’ve been incredible, and they will continue doing great work for some really exceptional clients. And they’re not rid of me completely; there are at least a few projects we’ll be doing together (do I hear profanity?). And next time we go for beers, I’ll be their peer and not their boss.

I’m pretty nervous about it, to be honest. It’s like bungee-jumping—I’ve never done that either. It’s too easy to look down and imagine what it will sound like when the cord snaps. But I’ve done a lot of good work. I’ve helped other people do good work. And I’m looking forward to doing that in the future—of my own design.