An Event Apart – Farewell | Hacker News Reader

An Event Apart – Farewell

aneventapart.com

95 pointsmooreds26 comments

When I see an announcement about a conference I've never heard of shutting down after 17 years, it's eerie. I've been in the software industry for more than twice that time. But I'm guessing this is in the UX part of the space.

Interesting to reflect how there the computing industry is like a galaxy. You can spend all your career in just one star system.

This is why I like HN. It's the only place I know where I can get eclectic exposure.

An Event Apart was started by the A List Apart people. ALA was/is a website that was very important for front-end development during the 2000s and early 2010s. Famously, the article that outlined the technique and name for"responsive web design" for the first time was published there in 2010: https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/

It wasn't UX focused, it was specifically front-end focused. And it was a hugely important part of the evolution of that domain.

The article that first described what came to be known as responsive design was published on ALA by Marc van den Dobbelsteen in 2006:

https://alistapart.com/article/switchymclayout/

Cool find! I had not seen that before. But I still think the one I linked to is the canonical origin since it actually named it and described the method we ended up using (media queries) but this article definitely seems like an important precursor as well - and it strengthens my point of how important ALA was that this post was also posted to ALA.

I think they also were the first to describe the idea of “Mobile First”, the very next year: https://abookapart.com/products/mobile-first

Plus foundational work on concepts like Progressive Enhancement: https://alistapart.com/article/understandingprogressiveenhan...

I think if you were not in the front-end scene during the 2000s, you don't understand how miserable it was. For most of that decade, we had to make sure our sites were compatible with IE6. Flash was vying to take over. Without the work that publications like A List Apart did (along with Mozilla) the web might look much different (worse) today. They were thought leaders.

They shaped what was actually happening in the industry in a time when front-end development was changing dramatically year over year. It makes me sad that they seem to be slipping from our collective memory a bit.

Even before then they were teaching front-end techniques like Sliding Doors[1] that now seem so elementary as to be expected knowledge.

[1] https://alistapart.com/article/slidingdoors/

I remember implementing this exact article in high school and being absolutely blown away at actually creating something "on my own."

That is interesting. Thank you for the capsule description.

I read ALA religiously when starting out, and attended one of the earlier AEAs that happened in SF. Crazy to see it ending but it had a great run.

I had a chance to attend An Event Apart ... er, event, in Chicago somewhere between 10-15 years ago and it was downright inspirational. There was a real sense of being together with other professionals to better learn about our craft. And there was so much back then that was still new! Amazing times

I also attended Chicago event a few years ago. I absolutely loved it, including the city of Chicago. My favorite part was accidentally having lunch with one of the attendees who happened to a speaker. https://gerrymcgovern.com/

I feel like UX as a discipline has changed so much particularly in the past few years that I've lost my love for it leading me to leave my job couple months ago to take a break.

To me, the Event Apart / A List Apart represent the golden days. While I'm sure the latter will live on, I will miss the Event Apart.

How has the UX discipline changed for you to such extent that you left your job?

I'm speaking about the UX at multi billion dollar US companies because those are my stomping grounds.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but the discipline has become unnecessarily complicated in terms of processes, toolsets / systems, and organizational structure.

Also I feel like we have giant chip on our shoulder and have a desire to incessantly reinvent and come up with new things, positions, and processes to keeps ourselves relevant.

UX was always a bullshit field. Large tech companies learned they could spend A LOT less time and money by adopting boring homogeneous design instead of paying artists to create beauty. See anything Eli Schiff wrote circa 2015-2016. He covered all of this in detail. Design used to be a respectable field. Now it’s all would be business analysts larping as UX designers who couldn’t draw their way out of a paper bag. They use big words and complicated methods to “design” systems that are intentionally ugly. You could say the same thing about a lot of fields I guess. The world is a now a very dull and ugly place. Just look at how at the past (the distant past), and how much artistry and thought went into even the smallest of everyday objects. This same process of modernization has happened to software. Except it didn’t take hundreds or thousands of years. It took a decade.

Small world. I, too, attended that event in Chicago and it's there that Twitter was the buzz and I first created my Twitter account, nearly 15 years ago.

Wow - it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about this site. I remember … wait this isn’t the same as https://alistapart.com/

I wonder if there is a relation between the two.

There was historically, not sure if there still was recently.

Hmm it seems like they're associated, the A List Apart site links to this in the footer as part of the same network.

That said, I do wonder what happened over at A List Apart. Not sure if I'm missing something, but it feels like it's been way less active in recent years in general, with the last post earlier this month, the previous two posts in June and May, and the ones before that back in 2021. It's a shame too, since it's a good site with some interesting web design/development related articles, just one that gets updated so rarely it's not worth keeping track of anymore.

I was watching wild kingdom, with my mother. At the end of the show it said produced by Wolfgang Bauer. Directed by Wolfgang Bauer. My mother asks, do you suppose thats the same

Just attended what I guess was the last conference a couple of weeks ago in SF. Attendance was about 250. It was a solid group of speakers, and yes, front end/ux centric, but not limited to that. Unfortunately I got covid on the trip, and then gave it to my wife and 7 year old, which essentially took us all out for the holiday.

Really sad to hear this. I attended one AEA a few months before the Pandemic and it was amazing - expensive, to be sure, but totally worth it. The one thing it did really well was "breadth"; presenting on both design and technical topics and finding a way for them to fit together.

I was hoping to go to another this year maybe. I think (?) they still do Smashing conf so maybe I'll try that.

I enjoyed attending ALA events in the past. I met a few interesting folks and always learned something at each event.

It’s sad to see it come to a close but all things have their cycles, and I suppose ALA events are no different.

PS. Over the years, I purchased many of their books on topics like information architecture, accessibility, customer research, etc. The content is usually written with a practical lens and I found the advice easy to action.

It looks like while there front page doesn't have any links the rest of the site is still up. Hopefully they will keep making that content available.

https://aneventapart.com/news/videos/

I enjoyed attending in years past.

Between the years, some of the content was largely similar, which is understandable. But always really well put together.

Will miss the energy of those folks.

I went to the Denver one this year. Great speakers and great time, but not well attended. Maybe 40% capacity which was a shame for such a good event. In person events are hard now. I hope they come back in a few years.

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