Stuff and Nonsense

Malarkey is Andy Clarke, a UK based designer, author and speaker who has a passion for design, CSS and web accessibility.

Andy has been working on the web for almost ten years. He is a visual web designer and author and he founded Stuff and Nonsense in 1998. Andy regularly writes about creating beautiful, accessible web sites and he speaks at events worldwide. Andy is the author of Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design, published by New Riders in 2006.

Of conferences and workshops

Web Directions South, Fundamentos Web and Carson Workshops.

With Web Directions South and Fundamentos Web now both done and dusted, I have only one public event left before the end of this year.

Web Directions South

You might think that attending conferences regularly would mean that I have heard what is on offer from speakers. But at Web Directions South there was so much to learn and also new perspectives on some familiar topics. I won't gush too much about the great job that everyone did, so here are some of my personal highlights.

I can never learn enough about accessibility from Derek Featherstone. Always inspiring and informative, Derek is less concerned about the pedantics of accessibility conformance and instead works with people to learn the problems that they encounter accessing web content. He constantly comes up with solutions to those problems. His ideas on updating form labels and back to top links is not something that can be found in any book and his presenting style makes the practical details of accessibility fun. I could listen to Derek all day.

Thomas Vander Wal is someone that I have been wanting to spend time with for a long time and I found him to be a genuinly lovely man, willing to share his (not inconsiderable) experiences with IA with the rest of us. Kelly Goto deserves a medal (and a long lie in), not only for her keynote, but for whispering through her Day Two session with almost no voice. It's been said before, Kelly is a trooper.

Mark Pesce's talk was both fascinating and terrifying. His dream that the mobile devices in your pocket will constantly communicate information about you to friends in your social network sent waves of fear and trepidation down my spine. Mark is a great speaker, I just hope that he is wrong, I really do.

Sydney is the furthest away from home that I have ever been, but at the same time, the warmth and friendliness of the people inside and outside of the conference made it feel almost like home. John, Maxine and the Web Directions team put on the slickest show that I have ever been involved with but managed to keep the whole event feeling very personal. I wish that I could have stayed longer in Australia and experienced more than a few square miles of Sydney. I know that it's a place that I'll be going back to and I hope that it won't be too long before I get to see my new friends again.

John and Maxine will be publishing a transcript, podcast and slideshow of my talk, 'Creating Inspired Design', over at the Web Directions site. If you can't wait that long (to see my embarrassing student coach card from 1987), a PDF of my slides is available for download (23Mb).

Fundamentos Web

From Sydney, it was (almost) straight on to Oviedo in Northern Spain for Fundamentos Web, a web conference with a distinctly Spanish flavour.

Stalwart travelers Kevin Yank and I were somewhat delayed in arriving, but fortunately Dave Shea and the W3C's Richard Ishida had yet to eat every scrap of food in the town so there was still a little left to go around.

Our Spanish hosts and the conference and workshop guests made everyone feel very welcome. Our workshop, 'Designing for Web 2.0' was, I think, the best organized and certainly the most fun workshop that I have done. I will never forget being slipped a large Spanish sausage in exchange for some of the code examples from my book: priceless. And the experience of demonstrating the CSS3 Advanced Layout Module (working in a browser) in front of Cesar Acebal, one of its inventors, was one that I won't forget in a hurry.

I would like to say a huge thank-you to Jose and the organizers for inviting me and I will definitely be visiting Oviedo again for a more leisurely stay in the city. Dave Shea has some amazing photographs of Oviedo on Flickr and my presentation slides from 'Feeding your Creativity without Compromising User Needs' are available to download in PDF format (10Mb).

Carson Workshops:

That leaves only one more thing. I will be presenting a one day workshop, 'CSS for Developers' for Carson Workshops this coming Thursday October 19th. Places are now very limited but a handful are still up for grabs. If you are in or around London that day, it will be great to see you.

Now it's back to the grindstone, I'll try to not leave it so long next time.

Replies

1. #1 On October 15, 2006 11:15 PM pauldwaite said:

   "I will never forget being slipped a large Spanish sausage in exchange for some of the code examples from my book: priceless."

   Pricel- wait, you already summed it up :)

2. #2 On October 16, 2006 12:03 AM Murph said:

   "I will never forget being slipped a large Spanish sausage in exchange for some of the code examples from my book: priceless."

   And... where are the code examples? I did not remember to get them. :-P

3. #3 On October 16, 2006 02:03 AM C�sar Acebal said:

   The pleasure was mine, my friend.

   Thank you very much for your extremely kind words (I don't deserve them).

4. #4 On October 16, 2006 04:06 AM Ben Buchanan said:

   It was fantastic to meet you - and not just because you dropped your pants in the main hall! Although I don't think "showing off your macbook scars" makes as good a euphemism as "being slipped a spanish sausage"! ;)

5. #5 On October 16, 2006 04:27 PM Cola said:

   LOL - Ben .. "showing off your macbook scars" ... Is that the web 2.0 equivalent of "would you like to see my etchings?"

   Cheers for putting up the PDFs, Andy :o)

6. #6 On October 16, 2006 08:34 PM AntonyG said:

   I'll be at the Carson workshop this week, Andy. Been looking forward to it for weeks! Save me a place at the front! ;)

7. #7 On October 17, 2006 09:38 AM Jorge Luna said:

   Hi Andy!

   I was at Fundamentos Web and it was a real pleasure meeting you. Listening to both your keynote and the workshop was very interesting, I had a great time, seems you had too!

   I still think a code example in exchange for spanish food is a pretty good deal. Take care!

   Signed: Mexican guy with the sad desing story

8. #8 On October 17, 2006 08:52 PM Jeff said:

   Like your blog but haven't seen any new designs from your good self for a loooooong time! You're not going to turn into one of these people who spends all their time lecturing about design but never does any paying work, I hope?!! ;-)

9. #9 On October 17, 2006 10:12 PM Malarkey said:

   @ Jeff: It has been a while hasn't it? :) Don't worry Jeff. I've been a little busy on my book for the last few months, but I hope to be writing about new client projects pretty soon.

10. #10 On October 23, 2006 09:49 AM Malarkey said:

    @ Murph: World travels over and the files are winging their way to you by email ;)