AEA Chicago ‘07

This past August I was fortunate enough to catch the Meyer/Zeldman roadshow “An Event Apart” in Chicago - a city I’ve not been to before. Overall I’d have to say that it was one of the best (web-related) conferences I’ve been to. Here’s why. First of all - Chicago is an amazing town. Architecturally speaking, the city is incredibly diverse and visually interesting. It screams creativity. Secondly, the line up of speakers was fantastic and diverse. Jeffrey Zeldman was as entertaining as he was enlightning and Liz Danzico’s refinement of the 10 Rules of IA was brilliant. A real plus for me was that the conference was run as a single track session - no opportunity to have two speakers you’d like to see speak at the same time in two different venues. It’s a simplifying approach that makes it easy to see what you want. This created a very different experience than the one I had at SXSWi. Perhaps it was this that added to the genuine sense of intimacy at AEA that was completely unexpected. Watch speakers during the day then have a drink with them in the evening. Lovely. The material covered was extensive though not too mired in detail. It was presented as a building block - a starting point for conversation mixed with ideas to get rolling with. I like that. It’s the type of learning that works for me - enough theory to enable understanding with practical examples that let me get stuff out the door.

There were too many highlights to cover - dinner at the Billy Goat with Grant, Beau, Jason, Mr. Warren, Mark, Rob and Liz was probably one of the better times I’ve had. Cheezborgers for all.

+ The group pool is here