Not much of a newsy post really, but excited to announce that I'll be speaking again this year at Future of Web Design in NYC this November! My topic this year is going to be centered around the future of the CMS and how it can (and should!) be a part of every designer's toolbox and workflow. I'll post more about the talk as it develops.

Really excited to announce that I’ll be giving a talk on web typography, web fonts and how to use them at Lullabot’s Do It With Drupal conference in Brooklyn, NY this October! Still a few more days for the early bird discount so check out the announcement and sign up! Totally amazing lineup of other speakers with keynotes from Jeffrey Zeldman ( @zeldman ) and Josh Clark ( @globalmoxie )!

I have a talk at #D4DBoston (http://boston2011.design4drupal.org) this past weekend, and wanted to make sure my slides are available. I was truly gratified by the audience - even though it was at 9am on Sunday! Thanks so much to everyone who came, and for all the great questions.

Design Thinking (DT) is a pretty big ‘buzzphrase’ these days, it’s true. Big in business education, business innovation writing and even (shockingly) in the design world. What has always struck me is that purely by definition, design thinking is exactly what designers have been (or at least SHOULD have been) doing for decades.

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.

I wrote this initially as a post to my students - I’m teaching a graphic design course this semester at Rhode Island College, where I studied that subject when I was in school. Heemong, one of my professors in college, always had us start with a minimum of 30 thumbnails of any project we started. Some will say it should be a hundred, some will say it can be less. Some complain that it’s a burden because ‘they can’t draw well.’ But that’s just an excuse, and a condition worsened by not actually doing something to correct it.

I was interviewed by Kimberley Donoghue ( @kydonoghue ) recently for the Providence Business News and it just came out today (view here). I’m really flattered - especially since PBN.com was one of the first big clients I had back in the 90’s and the first large-scale CMS I ever developed. 

I gave a talk today at DrupalCamp ( #DrupalCampWMA ) on Web Strategy and how Drupal fits in that view of the world. I have to say I was hugely gratified with the reception - the room was packed and everyone asked a ton of great questions and sparked wonderful conversations. I've certainly written previously about what web strategy is and why I think it's so important, but what's equally vital is how Drupal can play such an integral role in enabling that strategic approach in designing and developing really compelling web solutions.

If you’ve been around the Providence tech scene for any amount of time, you’ve heard about Providence Geeks. According to Jack Templin ( @jacktemplin ) and Brian Jepson ( @bjepson ), this month marks the 4th birthday of the group, and they organize a monthly dinner/drinks/presentation by a local startup, usually at AS220. Not that many get the chance to present, and it’s usually a packed room full of some of the smartest technologists in the area.

Well, not a huge revelation here - but something that came out of my talk at #FOWD was a bit of inspiration. As web professionals we should remember that we do make AWESOME happen. The web has the potential to be the single most pervasive & transformative development in the history of business - but only if we learn enough about that organization to see how it can be applied.