Archive: May 9th, 2011

What with all the overseas travelling I’ve been doing lately, I’m quite looking forward to going to some conferences here in the UK. I’m definitely looking forward to Web Directions @media in London later this month and DIBI in Newcastle next month although there’s something about both events that troubles me: they’re both double-track conferences, splitting the talks into “design” and “development” categories.

Don’t get me wrong—I think the line-ups look great. But that’s just the problem. I know I’m going to have make some very hard choices when two excellent speakers are on at exactly the same time. It’s a guarantee that I’ll have strong feelings of FOMO.

Personally, I’d rather not have to make those decisions. That’s one of the reasons why I really like the single-track format of dConstruct and An Event Apart. I think that the playlist-like curated single-day line-up of events like Build and New Adventures In Web Design really contributes to their special atmosphere.

The single-track single-day format works especially well for tightly-focused conferences like the JavaScriptastic Full Frontal.

If you’re looking for a single-track, single-day conference devoted entirely to typography on the web, then you simply must get along to Ampersand right here in Brighton on June 17th.

Yes, I am biased: we at Clearleft are organising it, but if you’ve been to any of our other events—dConstruct or UX London—you know that we kick ass when it comes to crafting conferences.

To say that I’m excited about Ampersand would be an understatement. I mean, come on! A day of font geekery with speakers like Jon Tan, Tim Brown, David Berlow and Jonathan Hoefler …it’s going to be typography heaven! It’s also a good excuse for you to come on down to Brighton at the start of a Summer weekend …and you could stick around for the typography tour around town with Phil Baines the next day.

There are some other reasons you should register for Ampersand:

• One lucky attendee will receive a gorgeous lesson plan print from those lovely chaps at Ligature, Loop & Stem.
• Every attendee will receive $20 worth of fonts from Fontdeck.

Oh, and if you’re a student …it’s half price. Not that the price is much of a limiting factor: a mere £125 is pretty excellent value for such a great line-up.

So book your place and we can get together for a beer—either at the pre-party or the after-party—and we can geek out about typography on the web together.

There was an episode of the SitePoint podcast a little back wherein Max Wheeler and Myles Eftos discussed many matters mobile, including a look at responsive design. A post of mine—Sea Change—came up in the conversation.

Now admittedly this was before I published my clarification to make my point clearer, but I felt that my view was somewhat misrepresented on the show and I left a comment to that effect. I also said I’d be happy to come on the show and have a natter. Louis, the host of the show, was kind enough to take me up on the offer and we had a really good chat about responsive web design.

Have a listen for yourself or if you’d rather not hear my voice in your head, I’ve published the transcript amongst my articles.