Live-blogging An Event Apart Seattle

I tried do some live-blogging at An Event Apart Seattle. I surprised myself by managing to do all six talks on the first day. I even managed one or two after that, but that was the limit of my stamina. Torre, on the other hand, managed to live-blog every single talk — amazing!

Some of the talks don’t necessarily lend themselves to note-taking — ya kinda had to be there. But some of the the live-blogging I did ended up being surprisingly coherent.

Anyway, I figured it would be good to recap all the ones I managed to do here in one handy list.

1. Beyond Engagement: the Content Performance Quotient by Jeffrey Zeldman. I think I managed to document the essence of what Jeffrey was getting at: for many sites, engagement isn’t the right metric to measure — the idea of a Content Performance Quotient is one alternative.
2. Digital Marketing Strategies for the Busy “Web Master” by Sarah Parmenter. The structure of Sarah’s talk lent itself well to live-blogging, but I strongly disagreed with one or two of her suggestions (like encouraging people to install the disgusting abomination that is Facebook Pixel).
3. Scenario-Driven Design Systems by Yesenia Perez-Cruz. This one was hard to live-blog because it was so packed with so many priceless knowledge bombs — an absolutely brilliant presentation, right up my alley!
4. Graduating to Grid by Rachel Andrew. The afternoon sessions, with their emphasis on CSS, were definitely tricky to capture. I didn’t even try to catch most of the code, but I think I managed to get down most of Rachel’s points about learning new CSS.
5. Fit For Purpose: Making Sense of the New CSS by Eric Meyer. There was a fair bit of code in this one, and lots of gasp-inducing demos too, so my account probably doesn’t do it justice.
6. Everything You Know About Web Design Just Changed by Jen Simmons. There was no way I could document the demos, but I think I managed to convey the excitement in Jen’s talk.
7. Navigating Team Friction by Lara Hogan. I only managed to do two talks on the second day, but I think they came out the best. Lara’s talk was packed full with great advice, but it was so clearly structured that I think I managed to get most of the main points down.
8. Designing Progressive Web Apps by Jason Grigsby. I had a vested interest in the topic of Jason’s talk so I was scribing like crazy. Apart from a few missing diagrams, I think my notes managed to convey most of Jason’s message.

Of course the one talk I definitely couldn’t live-blog was my own. I’ve documented lists of links relating to the subject matter of my talk, but if you weren’t at An Event Apart Seattle, then the only other chance to see the talk is at An Event Apart Boston in June. That’s the only other time I’m giving it.

I thoroughly enjoyed giving the talk in Seattle, particularly when I treated the audience to a scoop: I announced my new book, Going Offline, during the talk (I had been scheming with Katel at A Book Apart and we co-ordinated the timing to a tee).

This was originally posted on my own site.