I guess I should be clear: this is going to be way too short a post to catch up on ALL of the past month or so - but with so much having happened and the pace continuing, I had to give it a shot. There's more to come this week (ouch - a written commitment to post) about Puerto Rico, the NCAIS Innovate conference and a talk I gave on the Open Source Revolution in schools and a fistful of websites designed and launched over the past month or two.
I went out to Chicago for DrupalCon last month, and had a month full of learning slammed into about 3 days. My brain still hurts just a little bit, and I haven't even had time to watch the video of Leisa Reichelt's presentation on UX Strategy. A couple real highlights for me were the keynotes from Dries, Clay Shirky and Jared Spool, Samantha Warren's presentation on working with clients during the design process, Steve Fisher's on Designing for Mobile, the panel discussion on Design Thinking and a great closing session with Kevin O'Leary and Arron Stanush on web typography.
But it wasn't just the sessions - not by a long shot. I spent a bunch of time hanging out with John Giannopoulos and Ed Platz from Monotype Imaging, talking to them about their webfonts.fonts.com service, and introducing them to the guys at Lullabot, the good people of Phase II and others. They're great guys, and I've really enjoyed getting to know them and working with their service. More on that soon.
There's so much more to talk about from the opening party at the Field Museum (our own night at the museum - just amazing!) to an awesome night out to dinner, Gypsy jazz and the Billy Goat Tavern with Samantha Warren, Steve Fisher and Jeremy Keith, to a closing night crawl which (ironically) STARTED at Rock Bottom and slid in a wobbly fashion down from there to an Irish pub filled with tipsy Drupalistas. I felt it was a crowning achievement to explain the value of good typography to a table full of core developers at 2am and have them totally get it. Or at least that's how I remember it.
Hat's off to the organizers. It was an amazing time, really well-run, thoughtfully planned and thoroughly enjoyable. Felt like a week with my 3,000 closest friends. And now I have Drupal pants. #WINNING