Journal.
@media is dead. Long live @media
This year’s @media at the Southbank Centre was the event’s fifth, but only my second. Conferences like this are a special thing. An opportunity to listen to the people who inspire you day in, day out; a chance to enjoy being in the company of like-minded people; but most of all, to take a step back from the everyday, to remind yourself why you do what you do and determine to be better at it.
The speakers at @media know an important truth: that sharing their techniques doesn’t weaken them, but makes us all stronger as designers and developers. Everyone will take their own highlight depending on the focus of their own work, but Jason Santa Maria was the standout for me.
I haven’t heard Jason speak before, but have been reading his every word for years. He has an ability to make the extraordinary sound routine, an ability to stand outside of the routine and re-imagine how we work. His humility and quiet confidence in achieving work so special is quite something. What a talent.
Elsewhere, Simon Collinson’s talk was practical, thought-provoking and beautifully illustrated. Along with Andy Clarke, Simon did more to make me question and challenge the routine of process and not being afraid to take risks and never settle. Chris Wilson was a pleasant surprise. There are few harder jobs that being ‘the guy from Microsoft’ at a web design conference, but the insight he shared on the difficult job that browser vendors have, the decisions they need to make, and his commitment to the role Microsoft needs to make was an eye opener.
A word about what it is that what makes this event different. Patrick Griffiths has been the man behind it since it began, and this year marks the close for him, as he hands over to Web Directions for @media 2010. Patrick has made something special in this conference, and he deserves a lot of thanks.
Other conferences try incredibly hard to pack in a lot, maybe too much, into their schedules. The involvement of major sponsors can mean that significant time can taken up by sponsor sessions that are rarely what the crowd wants to hear and reduces the time available to the people they do want to hear.
Maybe it is the lack of lobby sponsors and speakers doing their pitch presentations, but the emphasis on the content of the presentations above all, an ability to get the best speakers (and give them the time to get their ideas across), means Patrick and @media have got it right, consistently. Take care of it Web Directions, you’ve got something special.