iamfrankstallone

You can’t really start talking about the delvenyc conference without thanking the patient and well mannered executive producer Fritz Desir for putting together a very well put together panel of speakers and trying something new with the one on one between Liz Danzico and Jason Santa Maria. This is only day one and the information is still sinking in; we all translate things differently and it is nice to see other people’s point of view. Today I saw a lot of things I do and see I am not alone with and most of all I was in a crowd of people who were there because they wanted to me, loved the web and genuinely want to make the web a better place… to live.

At day one the workshop started hot and heavy with a keynote from Lou Rosenfeld whose talk about bringing Web Analytics and User Experience in the same room, offering them coffee, biscuits and tell them to get along. Okay well it was a little more in depth than that, but turning raw data into useful charts and combining the question of what and why of the relative data is not an easy task on the surface. Lou and his colleges have definitely done the research, done the analysis and helping us put together a road map which is something to be grateful for because trust me when I say you don’t want to do that kind of leg work!

The morning really kicked itself into top gear when Jina Bolton and Jeff Croft started talking about developing CSS layouts from scratch and typography on the web. Thanks to Jina Bolton for the free ticket I won from her website Sushi and Robots! Quick tips from Jina were hwo to use CSS 3 to display problem areas, how to use width on separate HTML elements than padding to avoid issues with certain browsers and why floating everything is anti-productive. Jeff only gave us a history of type and how it can be applied on the web but most importantly gave us his opinion on what he does for most situations (px not ems, but it depends). He also emphasized a formula, using the example 12px font with 18px line-height and using multiples of these to keep consistency. Their talks were close enough that we decided to put them together for Q&A time where all the layout questions came out in full effect from the audience. I’d like to give a special thanks to Jina and Jeff both for answering my question about some of the HTML elements that one can square away in a foundation aka core aka CSS framework.

Scott Jehl absolutely blew me away with his and the Filament Group and their work with accessibility and jQueryUI. I never knew that jQuery could look so good and work well in JAWS and other browsers. The research done with user experience and user interfaces just on jQuery forms is smashing! You can check out the work Scott and TFG has done at their lab page. Graceful degradation to IE via VML from HTML5 Canvas, Screenflow demonstrations, uni-form and modernizers were some hot topics of his talk. A well polished and fluent presentation made me absolutely speechless.

Speaking of Polishing Interfaces, Andrew Maier, who talks about just that, deserves special thanks; I won a 20% off ticket from the UXBooth.com and that is greatly appreciated. Andrew is a self sufficient designer, developer and you can easily tell by how well he flies through his talk that much of what he preaches is what he lives and breathes. Using simple, subtle and effective effects in Photoshop to create pop for certain elements is a process that one can easily take forever to accomplish; Andrew makes it look easy and gives you the tools to get the job done! What was the best quote of the day from Andrew? “People don’t come to your site for the logo”, they are there for the content so shrink it up!

At this point of the conference I am just wishing I could take a nap to retain everything I learned. I am actually writing this article not just for people who could not go but for my own recollection and reference because there was just so much going on and even more tomorrow!

Perfect time for Jamie Kosoy from Associate Technical Director of Big Spaceship to come on stage and give us all a good review of the process Big Spaceship has. An interesting formula, they do not work in the normal workflow and because of that it creates a creative environment like no others; his talk was focused on his ten commandments and each point was a well thought out solution to the common problem clients can provide a design firm. Witty commentary and just a great attitude, Jamie’s talk will definitely go down as one of the most influential for how to have fun at work, everyday!

Delve:UI NYC took a different approach for the last group. Liz Danzico had a one on one interview with Jason Santa Maria where the questions came from the audience. There were some great questions and even better answers and antics from Jason who was a great sport about it all. He clears up question like dealing with clients who provide you with problems and not working with ones that are focusing too much on solutions.

“90% of the web sucks”

– Jason Santa Maria

This one on one was a little more laid back and less ‘confrence-y’ in that it allowed him to delve into his experiences, Kutztown University influences, and work ethic.

All and all day one was a smorgus borge of information and I will sleep well tonight trying to retain more than I even talked about here! I hope Jo Jo, my friend, also enjoyed himself and I apologize for those who could not make it! On to tomorrow, and me playing in Photoshop for the rest of the night!