Entries Tagged 'Conferences' ↓

i could tell you that this is my favorite flower, but i’m not sure it’s the truth. i proclaim every flower i see to be my favorite. so i’ll just tell you this is one of my favorites, for sure. and it’s growing on my front steps!

these are survivors i picked out of the mess that was my flower garden attempt last summer. i decided i didn’t have enough time or energy to devote to another flower garden project, so i was sort of cleaning up the area and discovered these guys, growing strong during a chilly minnesotan spring.

bleeding heart, periwinkle, lamb’s ear, and day lillies.

wikipedia just told me that periwinkle is also a kind of sea snail. the more you know!

this is me tonight: i drank a nordeast grain belt and watched the season finale of glee online. i laid on the floor. the kitties wrestled around me. didn’t turn the television on at all. it’s just quiet, except for the tick of the clock and the gurgle of the kitties’ water fountain.

in one month, i’m going to san francisco again! i’m bringing my special dude and we’re going to hang out in golden gate park, i want to see that japanese tea garden. oh! and this time i will make sure to see the full house house from alamo square. i’m also be attending voices that matter: web design. i’m excited! this lady needs an airplane ride.

on monday, i went to minnewebcon for the first time. i am a huge fan of more nerdy, web events happening in minneapolis! in fact, just days prior to this event, i attended a girls in tech meet-up which was awesome. and now, after meeting a bunch of cool women and getting reacquainted with some folks at umn, i’ve registered to attend a talk from jared spool at the end of the month and have seen two other minneapolis events for nerds bubble up. awesome!

i carpooled with my pal, bertine, and we arrived way too early in order to each get a free book at sign in. i scored zoe mickley gillenwater’s stunning css3, a book i’ve been coveting for months! i was excited. and i was also pleased when other attendees, who had missed out on scoring this awesome book, asked me if they could look at it.

the morning keynote session from luke wroblewski, titled “designing for today’s web,” told us that mobile use is growing by leaps and bounds faster than any other online tech has grown. there are 6 billion people on the planet, but over 10 billion devices that can access data on the web? we are seriously connected, people. (i have at least three – my droid phone, my mac laptop, and my wii. i would like to add an ipad to my arsenal, but i’m not completely sure why, other than the fact that they are neat.)

this session also reiterated the fact that i need to learn more about responsive web design. like, right now.

next i attended “online at a live event” with julia schrenkler. she live-blogs and tweets during mpr’s new program, wits. (she also works with a long-time friend, mary, so i had to introduce myself after the session.) take away thoughts about running an online event: everyone is a participant — make it easy for anyone to attend and for anyone to find the archive of your event. since wits is a live event with web coverage, she also gave the idea of hosting a web-only session during transition times such as intermissions.

i also had fun watching some “visible tweets” scroll behind her as the session became more of a brainstorming session. (ooh, pretty…)

i attended the “wordpress geekout!” and “just your type” sessions, but didn’t take many notes during either session. i was hoping the wordpress session would be a bit more advanced. i also need to try out a web-font service and improve my typography on the web. two good notes (group decisions) from the type session, though: (1) em units are more mobile-friendly than px units. (2) only use pt units in print stylesheets.

then, along came the geek girls, nancy lyons and meghan wilker, for a rousing second keynote. they reminded us that it isn’t technology that drives innovation, it’s users. and users are people — and we are all people! they encouraged us to develop our emotional intelligence, noting that we’re able to stay up-to-date with the latest technology, but we’ve forgotten about empathy.

here are a few ways they suggested that we could work on our emotional intelligence: (1) communicate openly (in the language of those that surround you) (2) listen and try to understand the meaning of what is being said (3) treat your client as the expert (for healthy, collaborative energy!) (4) push boundaries, but practice humility (5) don’t allow an “us vs. them” attitude

i’ll admit i was feeling sort of ill during the last two sessions that i attended. i don’t have many notes from either, but i’ll do my best to summarize my thoughts. “making a css framework that works for you” used examples from a department at the university that manages 200+ webpages. i again wish this session had been a little more technical, perhaps explaining the why’s and why not’s of coding decisions made within their framework. i don’t really remember what happened during this session, but i don’t remember seeing any css. “html5 design” with christopher schmitt was informative, though seemed to focus on the new audio and video attributes in html5. which is cool, but isn’t there so much more? maybe too much more for one 50-minute session. perhaps i should just read my html5 for web designers book from a book apart and then figure out what i need to be asking the html5 experts.

also, i need to try using modernizr.

christopher asked for a volunteer and since no one jumped at the chance during the final session of the day and she accidentally made eye contact, bertine got called to the front of the room. he asked her to list all of the html4 tags she could think of. she was speeding along quite nicely, then looked up at the crowd and got suddenly shy and forgot everything. since i’m such a good friend, i snapped a photo and tweeted it. bonus for bertine though: she’ll be receiving another tech book!

i also had thought that mr. schmitt seemed familiar, and he is — he’s co-founder of environment for humans, which is an organization that has run a few online conferences i’ve attended in the last year. it’s always nice to meet familiar folks from the web in person!

after the conference ended, bertine and i collected our adam turman prints and headed out for the official happy hour at grumpy’s. we probably got there too early (and left too early as a result), but when i got home i crashed pretty hard. i survived minnewebcon, though! and i hope i can attend again.

bertine thinks i could lead a session about how to code like it’s 1999: i’ve got a pretty in-depth method to the madness that is html emails.

I went to Cisco LIVE this year to support my company and learn a bit more about the business.

It’s always an adventure to get out of the cubicle and into the crowd. I got to talk to and goof around with a lot of Cisco-certified folks, and they’re all a blast.

Of course, being surrounded by fun at the end of the day is always a bonus, right? A few of us were dismissed a little early one evening to go check out the World of Solution exhibition hall.

Marilyn Monroe told me that I could totally pull off her look. Maybe I shall someday… Halloween is a-comin’.

While Casey got addicted to Splinter Cell…

Tiffany and I went to the store’s photo booth.

Booth babes. It’s too bad Tiffany hammed it up behind them, so the girls probably thought I was giggling at them. I’m sure they’re over it. (They’re probably not over it.)

I took this photo before the signs to “not sit on the letters” appeared. Sorry, but it’s a good photo op!

The next night we hung out with some Cisco authors. They’re only ridiculously smart, no big deal…

One of them wanted to practice with my D-SLR, so I let him. I supervised the whole time.

Group shot! My awesome coworkers and me.

And what’s a conference without a crazy theme party?

Side note: it was completely awesome.

Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra was like being inside a Rock Band game.

Standing next to this gal did not help my self-esteem, but it was still cool to see her up close. So much bling!

Blues Brothers!

And Elvis! Cisco brought all of the sightseeing to its attendees, which I can appreciate.

And Smash Mouth, but this is when we pooped out.

Okay, one last photo op…

And, somehow, our last day of work came and went so quickly. It was a blast. I’d easily do it all over again!

catch up! catch up! catch up!

i added more plants and cedar mulch to my little flower garden.

carnations!

yesterday i discovered some animal has come along and completely stolen my anemone plant. it was dead anyway, but seriously? that area of the garden is totally ugly now.

bertine had a girls-only clothing swap.

this is bertine’s girl cat, harriet, so don’t worry. no boys infiltrated! (her two boy cats hid in another room.)

i saw some fun puppets from the in the heart of the beast during the annual may day parade.

this banana was not from the heart of the beast, but he was clever. and handing out bananas. like.

these two are married now! that’s another post though. back to puppets!

“year of the tiger” was the parade theme.

can you believe it? seriously. these puppets are so wonderful.

then life was quiet for a little while. i know because i’m going through my flickr photo stream and the only things i posted for a week or two are my photos of the day.

however, during this quiet time, i finally left tcf bank for spire credit union. i’ve been wanting to switch to a credit union for a while since i’m just about ready to think about buying a new car or my very own house or something big like that. i think being part of a credit union will help me with this sort of thing.

i’ve also been spending a lot of time having a big crush on my boyfriend. he’s pretty darn awesome. (he was celebrating cinco de mustache in this photo.)

and, of course, i’ve been petting my kitties. they recently received a FURminator (from me) and it’s all they can talk about (if they aren’t talking about food).

my real reason for this photo purge? i am participating in flashbelt this week and will be heading out to las vegas in about a week and a half and i just really need to clear my blog’s to do list before i can properly share these other experiences with you. there are other events coming up over the next month or two that i will be taking a lot of photos during, so purge purge purge i go! what will i post about next?!

I just found out that in a few months I’ll be headed to Las Vegas to work at an event: Cisco Live!

What happens in Las Vegas… stays with you forever.

This year’s Cisco Live Customer Appreciation Event is set to deliver the complete Vegas experience under one roof; from beautiful showgirls to flying Elvises, from top Vegas acts to a rockin’ concert performance by one of today’s hottest bands.

It will be five crazy days of work and aching feet, but it ends July 1st, which means I could have a super 4^th of July vacation in Vegas and around the area. I think seeing the Hoover Dam is at the top of my list. What else should a first-time Nevada visitor see and do?