Buck Turgidson Would’ve Been Proud

Day 11238

Last night was the third gathering of the Markup & Style Society, the social gathering thing that Dan and I created last year. In the past, we’ve kept things fairly social: given that Boston has a dearth of meetups available to those of us who ~~fear the sunlight~~ work on the web, we created M&SS to give people a chance to drink, eat, and network with like-minded people in the area.

But last night, we had people talkin’. And the talkin’, it was good:

Some jerk with a robot fetish rambled on forOMGever about liquid layouts, and some strategies for making them bulletproof.
Once everyone woke up from the first speaker’s snoozer, Dan took the stage and gave an amusing walkthrough of his love for grids, and getting them to rock in an em-based layout. His slides were hilarious, but the ensuing Q&A was especially great: a lot of people weighed in on the approach, and the discussion brought a lot of killer ideas to bear.
Josh Porter gave an inspiring talk on what it means to be a craftsman. I’ve admired Josh’s work for some time now, but last night was the first I’d heard him speak. To say I was impressed would be an understatement: Josh is a talented presenter, and really conveyed an air of, well, craftsmanship during his short talk.
Rounding out the evening was Scott Jehl from Filament Group, who talked about Filament’s approach to progressive enhancement. It’s obvious that they’ve put a lot of time and energy into their approach, and I’d recommend you check out their sandbox/lab. Brilliant stuff.

The space? Prime. Filament Group were incredibly gracious hosts, opening up their beautiful studio to nearly fifty Boston-area web nerds. So many thanks, Filament—you guys were incredible.

And Freshview, makers of Campaign Monitor and authors of indispensable tips for creating HTML-/CSS-based emails, donated beer, soda, and pizza, which was incredibly generous (and likely helped us stave off a riot of hungry geeks). And Adobe rounded out the Trifecta of Generosity by donating two copies of CS3 Web Premium to be raffled off, which likely eased the pain of my mini-presentation.

So thanks to Filament, Freshview, and Adobe, who were a large part of making the night a success. But what’s next? Well, as Dan’s suggested, last night was only the beginning of new heights of Awesome™ for our little meet-up. We’re hoping to make our society a little bit more formal in the future, adding proper workshops and other event-like things to the line-up. It’s going to be fun, so be sure to stay tuned.

But fear not, citizen: there will still be beer. Praise be.

Comments are now closed.

The time for discussion has passed. Still, the 8 comments below are preserved for posterity’s sake.

That, and The Robot threatened to punch me in the mouth if I got rid of ‘em.

Runa says:

Sounds like a fun night. Wish I could have been there :)

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
The Robot says:

There’s always the next one!

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
Jason Robb says:

A grand time indeed. It really is a mini-conference. I hope it stays small in the future. I really enjoyed the possibility of meeting and hopefully remembering only 50 people. Cheers, and bravo!

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
Jared says:

I really wish we had something like this in DC.

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
Patrick Haney says:

That robot fetish guy sure wouldn’t shutup about liquid layouts, but at least he was funny. Sort of.

For serious though, I had a great time. You and Dan got me thinking about things I had forgotten about, including sIFR, “gridlasticness”, and image widths. I need get that stuff back into my normal workflow.

Keep the beer flowing,
Patrick

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
The Robot says:

Glad you guys enjoyed yourselves. Hopefully we’ll see you at the next one. Or “ones,” as the case may be.

Jason, who knows. Maybe we’ll have to rock a road show at some point.

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago.
Simon says:

Hey, sounds like you all had a great time.

As I’m in the UK, is there any chance you can put up some details of each presentation here?

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago.
The Robot says:

Simon, thanks for the note. We’re in the process of planning the next M&SS;, and will be sure to give a think on how to handle presentations.

Rock.

Posted 1 month, 2 weeks ago.

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