Dan Rubin's SuperfluousBanter

Recent Appearances

I’ve been doing so much lately, and neglect­ing to blog about it all, so here’s a quick catch-up on some of the places and peo­ple I’ve had the recent plea­sure of visiting.

Refresh ’06 Conference

Way back in Novem­ber, there was a tiny con­fer­ence held in Orlando, Florida (about 3 hours drive north of Fort Laud­erdale). I decided to attend, partly due to the speaker list and of course because of its prox­im­ity to my home­town (it’s nice to get to a con­fer­ence by car, rather than fly­ing). The con­fer­ence itself was fine (not stel­lar, and well under-attended, but the sin­gle track was a nice change — I didn’t have to worry about miss­ing one ses­sion because of another), but as usual the peo­ple made the (short) trip worth mak­ing (for more com­plete cov­er­age, check out Andy’s and Jeremy’s write-ups). Gar­rett and I always have fun at the bars, and Jina/Patrick/Jeremy/Andy/Faruk all kept up fairly well (check out the Flickr stream for some pics of the Howl at the Moon duel­ing piano bar), and I got to meet Paul Boag, Cindy Li, Nate Koech­ley, as well as finally meet Cameron Moll in per­son (this whole web thing is some­times a lit­tle too soli­tary for my tastes…).

For a short con­fer­ence, I had a blast, and I think every­one else did too.

Refresh D.C. Guest Speaker

After meet­ing Cindy Li at Refresh ’06 in Novem­ber, I was offered the chance to speak at the Refresh D.C. meet­ing if I was going to be in the area, and as luck would have it, I was going to be return­ing from Boston the day before their Jan­u­ary meet­ing. After a sim­ple adjust­ment to my travel plans (which actu­ally saved me money on the trip), I was all sched­uled for my D.C. visit.

The meet­ing (held at the Mot­ley Fool office in Alexan­dria, VA) had a great show­ing (a lit­tle over 50 peo­ple), and I had the chance to give my first pre­sen­ta­tion since Pro CSS Tech­niques started ship­ping (that’s the book I haven’t really pro­moted but will be). See Cindy’s write-up for all the details (and her Flickr set to fol­low my trav­els around D.C.). Suf­fice it to say I think it was very well received, espe­cially by design­ers want­ing to learn more about retain­ing con­trol over their ideas through the use of CSS (some­thing I want to talk more about in the near future).

The rest of the trip was a whirl­wind, thanks in no small part to the good graces (and seem­ingly lim­it­less energy) of Cindy. In a short 4 days, I attended a Wiz­ards game (sit­ting in the AOL box suite), played with a Wii for the first time (and became hooked, so much so that I bought one a few weeks later), went swing danc­ing (again, first time ever), vis­ited the National Cathe­dral, went to the top of the Wash­ing­ton Mon­u­ment, saw the WWII Memo­r­ial, attended the D.C. Mayor’s Inau­gural Ball (had to buy a suit for that…), and expe­ri­enced Cindy’s Hello Kitty Waf­fle Break­fast. Phew!

I’m cer­tain I’ve left out a few things, but you get the idea… what a great way to start the year!

Web Direc­tions North

What’s the next log­i­cal step after start­ing the year off trav­el­ing to Boston, D.C., and a quick busi­ness trip to NYC? Well, another trip, that’s what, and where else would I want to go in the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary than Van­cou­ver, B.C. for another conference?

My trip started with a brief visit on Fri­day to Seat­tle to check out the city and hang with Mike David­son. Just enough time to grab lunch at The Red Mill (ter­rific burg­ers, cash only), work for a few hours in the Newsvine offices, grab din­ner with Mike and Tom Wat­son (of Blue­Fla­vor), then meet­ing up with D. Keith Robin­son and a few other folks for drinks, before catch­ing a few hours of sleep and hop­ping the train up to Van­cou­ver early on Sat­ur­day (if you ever get the chance, take the Amtrak Cas­cades line — it cost me $28 and was a beau­ti­ful, easy trip).

I was a bit late decid­ing to attend WDN, so I wasn’t in time to get on the speaker’s list (next year per­haps), but I could still lend a hand as a vol­un­teer, which I’m always will­ing to do (many years of ser­vice as a Boy Scout trained me well…). I had the plea­sure of stuff­ing bags, slid­ing name tags into badge hold­ers, run­ning (lit­er­ally) to Sta­ples to buy last minute sup­plies, live blog­ging, and even intro­duc­ing a ses­sion (by the Flickr’s lovely George Oates and Yahoo!‘s Paul Ham­mond… or, “Paul & Oates” ;) Want pics/write-ups? Check out Flickr, the live blog­ging on the WDN site, and Jeremy’s sum­maries (one, two, three). The week also gave me the chance to spend a lit­tle time with my friend Jeremy Hubert, who was kind enough to let me use his apart­ment in North Van­cou­ver as a crash pad for the week, even when I was sick.

Many thanks to John All­sopp, Max­ine Sher­rin, Dave Shea and Derek Feath­er­stone for putting on one hell of a con­fer­ence, and allow­ing me to lend a hand.

Whistler Snow­board­ing

What would a trip to Van­cou­ver be if I didn’t also hop up to Whistler Black­comb? Well, luck­ily for me that was part of the plan for WDN, and along with about a 3rd of the con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants, I made my way to Whistler (infor­mally voted one of the worst web sites many atten­dees have had to use, ever), and though sick as a dog (with what­ever was going around that week — if you were at WDN, you prob­a­bly caught it) I man­aged to get through a 3+ hour les­son on Fri­day with­out too many bad falls (my tail­bone will be sore for years I fear…), and did much bet­ter on Sat­ur­day, even attempting/completing a short run with­out spend­ing all day try­ing. Jeremy was kind enough to post videos of me and Cindy try­ing to board (Cindy did much bet­ter than I when faced with the pres­sure of a per­ma­nent record­ing), and pho­tos on Flickr cover the moun­tain quite well.

I also got the chance dur­ing the week and at Whistler to spend time with some nice folks from Microsoft — aside from the free drinks from 12pm-6pm at the Garibaldi Lift Co. Bar & Grill both days, and the few din­ners I was priv­i­leged to attend, Angela Bax­ley (project man­ager for Expres­sion) and Pete LeP­age (project man­ager for Inter­net Explorer) were both excel­lent ambas­sadors for Microsoft, and I think they made the same impres­sion on everyone.

I’ve nearly nursed myself back to health since return­ing from Van­cou­ver, so now it’s time to con­tinue prepa­ra­tions for SXSW (includ­ing some small changes around this site), and get back on top of the cur­rent workload.

This item was posted by Dan Rubin on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007.

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