I'm just sayin'…

This year is certainly my “coming out of the office” year in terms of public speaking. With three events down, and four more on the schedule so far, the year holds lots of opportunities to meet new people.

A big, huge thanks goes to the Sonoma County Web Developers SIG for hosting me on Tuesday night for a talk titled, Beautiful Interfaces with CSS. Except for getting out of the office late that afternoon, and getting stuck in over 2 hours of traffic on the drive up from San Francisco, it was really an enjoyable evening with a lively crowd. The smaller setting provided lots of opportunity for interaction and a good amount of questions mixed in throughout from the audience. The talk was scheduled for about two hours, we went over by 20 minutes, and I still only got through about two-thirds of the presentation I had prepared. Tried to bite off too much, I guess; but there were lots of good questions. Little did they realize that the advanced topics I didn’t get to cover included a lot of thinking in how to rework their own table-based site using CSS for layout and presentation. I’m realizing I have a lot more to say about design and the use of CSS than I ever thought I did. When I start talking about the things I love to do, it flows naturally. I think almost everyone left, pretty excited to dive further into the topics we discussed.

That said, if you haven’t seen one of my talks yet, or are curious about other upcoming engagements, see if this short list contains any cities near you — or even cities you’d like to visit:

Portland, OR

WebVisions 2004 | 16 July

Note: Doug’s appearance at Web Visions this year has been regretfully cancelled for personal reasons.

Seattle, WA

Digital Design World, Seattle | 21-23 July

A three-day conference with tracks on Web Design, Photoshop, and Digital Workflow. If you missed the last event held in San Francisco in February, Seattle is a chance to hear two more sessions from me: one solo talk about design and CSS, and a second talk on design and accessibility, co-presented with Andrew Kirkpatrick from the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media. Register before 9 June to get the discount.

Washington, D.C.

Adaptive Path’s User Experience Week 2004 | 16-19 August

A four-day jam-packed week of knowledge-sharing from the wise folks of Adaptive Path, including guest speakers, Christina Wodtke and Douglas Bowman (must be some other guy named… oh wait, that’s me). If you haven’t attended a workshop put on by AP yet, you should. They put on a good show, and share a lot of valuable information. (I speak from experience of attending past workshops.) Plus, they asked me to join them this time around, so you get an even wider range of material that will be covered. Register before 20 May to save US$300.

Sydney, Australia

Web Essentials 04 | 30 September – 1 October

A two-day conference embracing web standards for those new to standards-based design and the seasoned professional. This one promises to be a bit different than other conferences, in that each session will be co-presented by a tag team of two to three people. The event is organized by the Web Standards Group and the helpful folks at Westciv. I’ll be sharing the stage a few times with Dave Shea, Joe Clark, John Allsopp, Russ Weakley, and a host of other brilliant Aussies. Register before 1 July to save AUD$100.

And for Pete’s sake — he’s a friend of mine too — if you plan on coming to one of these shindigs, please let me know in advance in case we can arrange something while we’re in the same city. Or at least come up and say hi and introduce yourself. I’m a friendly chap, really. Ask anyone who knows me. I double-dog dare you to.