This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending BarCamp Grand Rapids. For those scratching their heads, BarCamp is an international network of technology conferences; they’ve held these events in places as varied as Belfast and Bangalore. It’s basically a chance for anyone interested in technology to get together with others in their area and talk shop.
The event is free and extremely dependent on volunteers and their contributions; a big thanks to everyone who pitched in and helped out. The two-day conference went well and I really enjoyed talking geek with fellow nerds. We started on Friday night with dinner and an opening session. Unfortunately I had to take off shortly thereafter to care for Baby O.
I was back at the conference on Saturday morning and hard at work on my own presentation, “Design Eye for the IT Guy”. Unfortunately I was only able to sporadically attend sessions in the morning. I teamed up with Calvin Janes for our 2:00 presentation; he talked about YUI CSS (the tools) and I talked about the techniques.
My goal was to make web site design more approachable to logical, left-brained types. It seems like a lot of people regard design as a very subjective, touchy-feely activity, which is just not true. Once you start digging into stuff like color theory, grid layout, and typography, there’s plenty of hard science there. If nothing else, it was an enjoyable talk to give, since it really delved into the things I’m passionate about. I was also fortunate to have an abundance of source material to work from.
Even though I had to leave for Baby O duty right after our presentation, I was still able to meet a number of really neat people at mealtime or just hanging out between sessions. I’m looking forward to meeting more new people, as well as catching up with BarCamp veterans, at next year’s event.
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