David Murr

An Event Apart DC 2012

Having just returned from my second An Event Apart, I can affirm: last year wasn’t a fluke—AEA is the most useful and well-orchestrated conference I’ve ever attended. Seemingly every detail has been taken care of: from the fast, dedicated wifi for attendees to the way all of the talks, while on quite different topics, all flow together naturally. And although AEA is a conference for web professionals, there’s not as much emphasis on code as you might expect. @bratling said it perfectly:

What I like most about An Event Apart: it’s not about recipes. It’s about ideas.

Indeed, if you’ve followed A List Apart over the years, this 10,000-foot view of our industry with the occasional, well-timed dip into practical code and constructs, will feel quite familiar.

Luke Wroblewski posted excellent notes on many of the talks, so if you couldn’t attend or need to jog your memory, I’d encourage you to go read those. Although there’s no point in reinventing the wheel—even if I could do so even half as well as Luke—I wanted to capture a few points that I found especially important, insightful, and that permeated many of the talks.

Attending An Event Apart is expensive, yes, but I’d found it to be worth every penny if you care about the why as much as the how. If AEA is coming to a city near you in 2013, you should go.