You want to know something? I don’t think Mozart’s going to help at all.

Barbara Bel Geddes as “Midge”, Vertigo

There is, I’m sure, some mathematical formula that tracks the coefficient between an event in my life and the point at which I finally write about it.

Actually, no—screw that. I should just ’fess up to my procrastinating ways. That’s probably easier, involves significantly less math, and I can put it off until much, much later.

So. It’s worth mentioning that the week began on one hell of a high note when An Event Apart came to Boston. With it, many URL-enabled friends and colleagues descended upon my town, arriving from points near, far, and farther.

As with last year, the conference was a hell of a time. The attendees are supremely friendly, and the speakers inspiring. As someone who managed to sneak onto the lineup, watching the other presenters was damned edifying: Each is an extremely practiced, versatile speaker in his or her own right, and I felt like I learned a lot by watching them. While I enjoyed every talk I heard, a few favorites were:

• Jared Spool’s The Scent of a Web Page: Five Types of Navigation Pages. I’d never heard Jared speak. I now consider this to be one of the great sins I’ve committed in recent years. My sides were hurting throughout his talk, and I learned a veritable fuckton of useful info.
• Ditto PPK. I‘d never met him, nor heard him speak: still, he managed to make an hour of JavaScript best practices entertaining, lucid, and (at times) damned funny.
• Andy Budd’s Designing the User Experience Curve. Andy is, as you and the rest of the universe are likely already aware, a very gifted storyteller: poised and entertaining, he made the hour fly right the hell by. I’d sit through this talk again in a heartbeat.
• Doug Bowman’s Design to Scale. Brilliant opening, and thoughtful content: but really, it was just great to see Doug rocking the stage again.

As for my own presentation, I actually felt pretty good about it. (Suffice it to say that, for those of you who know me and my oh-so-self-critical ways, this is something of a fucking watershed event.) Granted, it was the first time I’d given that particular talk, and there were definitely some iffy spots—and oh, the iffiness!—but that aside, I stepped off the stage thinking about ways to sand down some of the rougher bits, and excited about possibly giving the talk in the near future. I received some kind feedback afterwards, so I’m hoping I’ll have another opportunity to polish the deck up a bit more, and try it out again soon.

Oh, and I was relieved that folks applauded when I unveiled the new W3C design that Airbag’s been working on. (I told you about that, right? No? Well, more on that later.)

Anyway, so here we are: The event’s ended, and web friends and luminaries have long since left town. My town’s a little quieter now, but I’d like to thank Jeffrey and Eric once again for inviting me to speak. They put on a brilliant show, and I was honored to participate in it.

Now, about that whole “sleep” thing.