My boss gave me this book to read. I don’t normally read business books because so few of them explain anything in a way that you can actually put to use. Usually it’s all theoretical and the authors never address their natural gifts… or luck… or massive fortunes. The Business of Expertise is different though. Not only does David C. Baker explain the importance of expertise, he tells you how to define your expertise and become an expert in your field. Its plain spoken, logical, and objective. Most importantly, with just a little bit of focus and hard work the goals are achievable. No jargon. No bullshit. No “advice” that requires a pantload of money; living in New York City; or, being profoundly lucky.
Author: RustBeltAdmin
The Event Apart 2017 – Day 3
I had every intention of getting my Day 3 take-aways up on the day of, but after a great talk with two other awesome AEA attendees after the show; a four hour drive home (featuring a minor fender bender—not my fault); I was too burned up to even start it. I still want to give a summary though. It helps me cement what I learned, and I apparently have a reader or two now. Neat!
The Event Apart 2017 – Day 2
Day 2 is in the books, and what a day it was. Brad Frost, Una Kravets, Val Head, Derek Featherstone, Eric Meyer, and the incomparable Gerry McGovern gave incredibly good talks on working together, image optimization, animation, accessibility, real life design and measuring customer experience, respectively. Continue reading The Event Apart 2017 – Day 2
The Event Apart 2017 – Day 1
It’s the end of August again, so that means I am back in Chicago for my yearly recharge, attending An Event Apart. This is the fourth year I’ve come, and once again the show is living up to it’s billing. A few of the talks felt a little too familiar and others were so crammed with information that the speakers were breathlessly racing through them. I suspect that is only because I have been to enough of these conferences (and read enough books, and listened to enough Podcasts) that what I am learning is sticking! I’ve caught up (for now). I’m not drinking from the fire hose, and I guess, in a sick sort of way, I miss that. Chris Coyier and Rachel Andrews gave me my fix though, and by the time things wrapped up I had a head full of ideas and was getting excited about some new possibilities all over again. Continue reading The Event Apart 2017 – Day 1
The Book Report: Atomic Design
I first heard Brad Frost give a talk on Atomic Design back in 2014 at An Event Apart: Chicago. I didn’t understand everything he was saying, but it looked like a glimpse into the future of development. Up until that time, I had never heard of Atomic Design, modular design, or pattern libraries. When it came time for me to build a site, I just sat down and built it. Top to bottom. You know the drill; header, navigation, main content, side content, footer. Copy. Paste. Repeat. Changes sucked, but whatever.
The Round Trip
Finally getting back into this. It’s been too long since my last post on the site, but a lot has been going on with family and work.
The Handmade and the Automated
“A build tool is a name for any bit of software that facilitates tasks that help us build better websites. […] You know, things computers are faster and better at than humans.” — Chris Coyer, Practical SVG
This sentence perfectly clarifies the answer to a long running problem I have had with myself. That being, where to draw the line on when to create by hand, and when to use software. I suppose the answer was there in front of me all the time, I just needed to read it exactly like this to finally get it.
The Discovery
This is the second post in my series on Clarity, the website development process I helped create for LABOV where I am the front-end web developer. This post will cover the first of six phases, Discovery.
The Event Apart 2016 – Day 3
The third day of any Event Apart is a full-day workshop on one topic. This year in Chicago, we were privileged to get Brad Frost’s first full workshop on pattern libraries (a.k.a. “style guides,” but I prefer pattern libraries because I am partial to Brad’s product Pattern Lab). He covered everything from selling pattern libraries back at work; to kicking off a project; to making sure everyone is reading from the same script; to common patterns; and, of course deployment. Needless to say, it was a lot to learn after two days of heavy learning.
The Event Apart 2016 – Day 2
Day two of An Event Apart Chicago is typically where you realize this is an educational marathon, not a sprint. Everything you learned on day one (and are still trying to absorb); the late nights; the deep dish pizza… it all begins to catch up with you on day two. Let’s go second wind!