Content strategy guru Kristina Halvorson, who tore up the stage at An Event Apart Seattle, is releasing Content Strategy for the Web, which promises to do for content strategy what Designing With Web Standards did for web standards. Kristina is the founder of Brain Traffic, a content strategy consultancy based in Minneapolis. She’ll bring her content strategy magic to An Event Apart Chicago on October 12–13, at the Sheraton Towers. Pre-order Content Strategy for the Web at Amazon.com, and follow Kristina on Twitter.

There are no flies on Shaun Inman, who delighted the crowd at An Event Apart Seattle 2007. The multi-talented designer/ developer brought Inman Flash Replacement (the precursor of sIFR) to the design and web standards community, and designed and developed Mint for folks who like their web data with style. You’d think he’d rest on his laurels at this point, but no! In June, Shaun debuted Fever, a feed reader that “reads your feeds and picks out the most frequently talked about links from a customizable time period. Unlike traditional aggregators, Fever works better the more feeds you follow.” How hot is Fever? Sizzlin’! Thousands of subscribers signed up within a few hours of the product availability announcement.

AEA headliner Jeffrey Veen and his company, Small Batch Inc., have begun beta testing Typekit, a web service that promises to bring real typography to the web while supporting standards and without violating type design foundries’ end-user license agreements. Jason Santa Maria, who most recently spoke at An Event Apart Boston, contributed to the product’s design and thinking. You can see Jeff Veen speak at An Event Apart San Francisco, December 7–8, at the Palace Hotel, and follow Typekit on Twitter.

Join us next month for more An Event Apart Speakers … In the News!

Daniel Mall, Whitney Hess, Jared Spool, Kristina Halvorson, Jason Santa Maria, Jeremy Keith, Joshua Porter, Dan Cederholm, Brett Welch, Derek Featherstone, Aarron Walter, Scott Thomas AKA SimpleScott, Heather Champ, Andy Clarke, and Jeffrey Zeldman spent two thrilling days teaching and interacting with AEA’s sophisticated and motivated crowd of designers, developers, IAs, writers, and project managers.

On the night before the show, attendees Nick Sergeant and Pete Karl of Lion Burger built A Feed Apart—a sweet aggregator of live Twitter comments about the show. By 4:20 PM of the second day, the hastily produced web app had served 64,485 updates to An Event Apart Boston 2009 attendees and other interested folks. The talented creators had also added new features to their app, and even put together an iPhone version.

On the second day of the event, attendee Allister Klingensmith whipped up A Seat Apart, a live social networking seating chart for the show. Now you can not only remember who was sitting in front of you, you can also follow them on Twitter. Amazing. We think our attendees are the coolest web folk in the world.

Whether the topic is creating the right content and features for your audience, designing pages that are a pleasure to read and use, or beating browsers and web gadgets into submission, An Event Apart’s presenters are as gung-ho about it as you are. Each speaker has made genuine contributions to our industry. Each is a star.

The next AEA event takes place October 12–13 in Chicago.

And now for the results. The top ten vote-getters were:

1. Washington, DC
2. Minneapolis, MN
3. Denver, CO
4. San Diego, CA
5. Las Vegas, NV
6. Atlanta, GA
   New Orleans, LA (tie)
8. Phoenix, AZ
9. Los Angeles, CA
10. Memphis, TN

As a side note, when we looked at the impact of considering Los Angeles and San Diego as one large city, that combination jumped to second place on the list. It remained there even after adjusting things so that anyone who voted for both was only counted as having cast one vote for the combination of the two cities.

This is not a scientific survey, and we can’t predict the future, but we will keep these results in mind as we plan events for 2010 and beyond. To all who participated, thanks once again!

As always, the survey should literally take one minute to complete. In fact, early voting by people who heard about the survey via our Twitter feed averaged one minute ten seconds. We assume those extra ten seconds are due to being interrupted by e-mail or co-workers.

Thanks as always for your interest and participation!

Boston—cradle of American liberty, home of patriots and the Patriots. America’s Walking City, site of the first American subway, and home of the Big Dig. A center of education and learning and sailing on the Charles River, where baked beans and lahbstah rolls share a plate in perfect harmony.

Join Dan Cederholm, Heather Champ, Andy Clarke, Derek Featherstone, Whitney Hess, Jeremy Keith, Dan Mall, Joshua Porter, Jason Santa Maria, Scott Thomas, Aarron Walter, Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman, and hundreds of your fellow passionate practitioners at the Marriott Copley Place for An Event Apart Boston 2009.

The usual price for two days, thirteen great speakers, and fourteen sessions on web standards, best practices, great design, and inspiration (plus meals, a party, and swag) is $995. If you register by May 25th, which is now just one week away, you’ll pay only $895.

Seats for this event are limited, so don’t delay a moment longer—register today!

Highlights included Kristina Halvorson’s impassioned advocacy and how-to session on content strategy; Luke Wroblewski’s insights into designing web forms to create compelling and successful user experiences; and Derek Powazek’s practical tips on creating positive participation on your website.

Live vicariously

If you weren’t in Seattle, you can still experience some of what you missed:

1. Armed with nothing more than a keen eye, a good seat, a fine camera, and the ability to use it, An Event Apart Seattle attendee Warren Parsons captured the entire two-day show in crisp and loving detail. Presenting, for your viewing pleasure, An Event Apart Seattle 2009 – a set on Flickr.
2. When you’ve paged your way through those, have a gander at Think Brownstone’s extraordinary sketches of AEA Seattle. And though modestly nearly forbids us to mention it, the writeup of the show at Think Brownstone’s blog is pretty nice, too.
3. Still can’t get enough of that AEA stuff? Check out the official AEA Seattle photo pool on Flickr.
4. Wonder what people said about the event? Check these Twitter streams: AEA and AEA09.
5. When he wasn’t burning up the stage with design wisdom, speaker Luke Wroblewski tool marvelous notes on every session of the show.

Thanks and praise

Our thanks to the photographers, sketchers, and speakers. Special thanks to GoodBarry for throwing a fabulous contest, Media Temple for tossing a fantastic opening night party, our friends at MSNBC for the closing party, and (most especially) all who attended.

Don’t miss our next event

Our next show, An Event Apart Boston, takes place June 22–23, 2009. Limited seating is still available; earlybird discount pricing ends May 25.

Meet, Ride, and Party

What’s a Mobile Social? It’s a party situated right at the intersection of bikes, technology, and culture. What makes this particular party extra-special is that Mobile Socials owe their existence to An Event Apart.

“During AEA’s last visit to Seattle in 2007, I noticed a bike rack with other cyclists and talked to a designer about his ride in,” says DL Byron, founder of the Mobile Social effort. “As a result, I started thinking about all the times I’ve seen designers, developers, creatives ride to events like this — and that sounded like a group ride to me!”

Bikers will meet up at the conference center (2211 Alaskan Way, Pier 66, Seattle, WA 98121) at 4:00 pm on Sunday, May 3rd. From there, the MoSo crew will ride to a local brewery in the South Park area of Seattle for a keg tapping and to talk web design, bikes, and beer. There will also be some nice giveaways.

Bikes for out-of-towners, too!

If you’re coming in from out of town, you don’t have to miss out! The Cascade Cycling Club has a list of Seattle area bike rental shops, including some that are right downtown. And if you’re located in the Seattle area, you can take part even if you’re not attending the show! We promise our feelings won’t be hurt (much).

If you’re planning to be there, please head over to the AEA Seattle Mobile Social page for more information, and find out how and where to sign up.

An Event Apart Seattle takes place May 4-5, 2009 at the beautiful Bell Harbor Conference Center. Seating is first-come, first-served, and the early bird discount ends soon, so register today.

Co-founder of The Post Family design collective, Scott studied architecture before bouncing to graphic design and web development. His career took a dramatic leap in 2007, when he was invited to join the New Media team at Obama for America, where he became the Design Director of the historic Obama Presidential campaign. He is currently writing a book that explains how an obscure senator rose to the highest office in the land and celebrity status with the aid of branding and design.

At An Event Apart Seattle and Boston, in a speech entitled Change the World (Wide Web)?, Scott will discuss our generation’s opportunity and responsibility to design a web that frees us to pursue the highest form of happiness.

In the “more content is better” spirit, GoodBarry’s Brett Welch will lead a sponsored Day 2 morning session. “Beyond Pixel Pushing: Three Steps to Building Better Websites and Happier Clients” will help you build effective and future-proof websites clients will love.

An Event Apart Seattle takes place May 4–5, 2009 at the beautiful Bell Harbor Conference Center. The Boston show follows on June 22–23, 2009 at Boston Marriott Copley Place. Seating is first-come, first-served, and the early bird discount ends soon, so register today.

With rapid changes in the browser landscape, especially Firefox and Safari, Dan suggests it’s time to reevaluate the industry’s methodology and rethink the concept of delivering identical views in every browser. Using progressive enrichment, Dan believes that web designers and developers can take advantage of advanced CSS which works in modern browsers while degrading “nicely” in Internet Explorer.

“I’ve historically ignored newer technologies until they are ready for the mainstream,” says Dan, founder of SimpleBits LLC. “The speed of change in new browser versions has added more support for standards which haven’t even been completed yet! It’s never been a better time to experiment.”

It’s true that some controversy emanates from not displaying identical design details in every browser—specifically Internet Explorer 6. Dan opposes sticking to “perfect” visual parity, doing things the same way they have always been done, which he says means “the hard way.” His talk will inspire attendees to begin experimenting with CSS3 while embracing delivered content that looks different in different browsers yet maintains readability and functionality.

Web designers and front-end developers will truly benefit from Dan’s presentation and exploration of new practices for old standards. Dan is one of the smartest, most advanced, and yet most practical designer-developers out there. We never fail to learn from his presentations, which are as entertaining as they are enlightening, and we’re looking forward to having him back on our stage!

An Event Apart Seattle, featuring Dan Cederholm and 12 other superstars of web design and development, takes place on May 4-5 at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center. Seating is limited and our earlybird discount ends soon. Save
$100 when you register by April 6.

Using the 0-5 scale we defined, where 0 meant “I’ve never used this” and 5 meant “I never quit this program”, we got the following average scores for the five tool choices:

In every case, the score was obtained by adding up the scores given and dividing them by the number of people who rated that particular tool. Photoshop’s score is an average of the 1,154 ratings we received, and InDesign’s is an average of its 1,143 ratings.

Among the “What tool(s) did we forget?” responses, of which there were 778, the most popular answers were Illustrator (236 mentions), Fireworks (158), Flash (126), Firebug (94), and Transmit (41). Rounding out the top ten were the Web Developer Toolbar (34), Eclipse (33), Visual Studio (31), CSSEdit (26), and Gimp (25).

Our thanks and appreciation to everyone who participated in the quick survey! We’ll be doing more highly-focused, low-impact surveys in the future—sign up for the AEA newsletter or subscribe to our feed (or both!) to hear about them as soon as they open up.