The last show of the year

I flew out to San Francisco last week for An Event Apart. This was the final event (apart) of the year so it was something of a bittersweet affair. This year the line-up for AEA was—with some minor modifications—consistent from city to city:

It was like a travelling roadshow, a carnival of web geekery. Next year’s AEA line-up will be very different from city to city, showcasing lots of new speakers, so last week’s San Francisco gig felt like the last concert of a tour before the band breaks up.

Well, we went out with a bang. It was a great conference. But then, every AEA this year has been pretty great (see my account from Boston, for example). I saw so many great presentations and met so many lovely people.

With An Event Apart San Francisco falling in December, I was able to extend my travel time into a Christmas-time trip to Jessica’s family in Arizona …but not before spending a week in San Francisco.

I love that town. Admittedly that might be because there’s so many people I know that live there but it’s just a fun place to be a tourist. Coffee at Four Barrel, a Mission burrito, coffee at Blue Bottle, pizza in North Beach, beers at Toronado, wine-tasting in Napa—and all of it culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime trip to The French Laundry.

I put together a Map Tale of my trip, which turned out to be a great way of jotting down my experiences at the end of each day (or at the start of the next day if the day’s exertions proved too much).

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 6:57am

Tagged with aneventapart conference aea sanfrancisco travel