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Behind The Firm List Blog
I Have a Webvision
I went to Portland, OR for a little web conference. First conference I'd been to since the summer of 2002 when I went to
the HOW design conference. Both were on my dime. This one was much cheaper though.
It was a little conference, but growing. It's odd, it was mainly Portland area people there, but I still managed to
meet several web people I'd known for years but had never met in person. And they were from outside the area.
I met Cameron Barrett (camworld.com) who I'd known since at least 1998 and who tried to get me to move/work with him
on two occasions (Borders.com in 1998 and for Wesley Clarks campaign in 2003). We had a lot of time to talk and I
found him to be very like myself, in that we both have endles ideas for web projects, have no problem building them
from scratch (and quickly) but we both need some more help/connections to get them marketed and promoted properly. We've
both seen many others have runaway success with ideas we'd had prior.
I got to meet Jason Fried (37signals.com) who I've known for a while as well. One of the first Spotlights on this site
was with 37signals. Got to hear his presentation and he signed a copy of their book. Nice guy. Didn't have as much
time as I'd have liked to talk with Jason.
Another person I got to meet and talk with was Nick Finck (digital-web.com) who was one of the people responsible for
the conference. We'd known each other online for a while and it was good to meet up with him and chat. He just got a
new job in Seattle, congrats Nick!
Got to meet some others, Matthew Haughey (metafilter.com) and Anil Dash (www.dashes.com/anil/) amongst others, but didn't
know them as well or get the chance to talk as much as I would have liked.
Oh, the conference was good. Was a little too short and I think I was a little underwhelmed with the variety of speakers
and discussions. Everything was "blog" which is cool, but I'd like to have a couple fringe people/speakers too. Something
on the cutting edge that most people hadn't heard of before. I guess blogs might have been that for some of the more
mainstream people there, but for those of use who've been knee-deep in the industry for so long...
Anyways, enough of that. I had fun. Hope to head back next year.
If you know of a small, regional (and cheap) conference like this near you, let me know, I'd love to come.
