4/3 … or “I don’t need Christmas this year, I’ve been to Eyeo” When I think back to my childhood, all of the good Christmases sort of merge together in this one really awesome event where I spent lots of time in magical anticipation and where the holiday itself exceeded my ridiculous expectations and surely raised them for the next year.  This was sometime before I got all Charlie Brown about things and started to complain about the commercialism and reasons for the season and agonize about what to get people or how to react when I open gifts.  At one point in my life Christmas was better than I expected it to be and I expected it to be the most awesome thing ever. Eyeo has been the same sort of expectation exceeding event — a Christmas for a conferenced-out Charlie Brown — and it has been that way from the beginning. I suspended my jaded outlook on conferences for this one, willingly.  I told complete strangers about how excited I was about it, months ahead of time.  I expected it to be the most awesome thing ever. And it sort of was.  As I tweeted at the end of day one, it seemed like the creators looked at how conferences are typically run and asked in every way, “How could we do this better?” The days began at 10am — waking wasn’t stressful and the extra time allowed for a brief check-in with email before being away from it for several hours.  There were enough breaks, but they weren’t too long, leaving me with the sense that I needed to *do* something in between them.  There was another break at the end of the day to check-in with work again before festivities continued into the night.   Each morning was filled with inspirational talks, each afternoon with hands-on workshops, each evening with blockbuster speakers and free alcohol. Wash, rinse, repeat.  What I’ll take away: #1 - As readers may already know, I spent last December trying to learn Processing and ultimately gave up on it, frustrated with the lack of practicality in the tutorials I was following.  I decided to give it one last chance by attending a Data Viz-specific workshop with Jer and Eyeo.  Over the past two weeks, I feel like Processing won an argument I’d been having with it for months.  Beck in December: Whine, whine, whine… Processing you’re too hard! Processing in June: Suck it up, Beck. Good work is hard. So I’m going to try again.  There are just too many awesome things to be done to not try. #2 - I’ve always leaned toward sharing my work and when asked to share code or PSDs, I always oblige.  Now I’m going to make it explicit.  I registered a new domain name during the last session of the festival and am committed to launching it with my first processing project.  More details about this one soon.   #3 - The start of something. At the end of his last talk, Jer compared Eyeo to the root node of a Cascade and said that he hoped that in 10 years, we’d all look at Eyeo as the root node to really successful projects careers.  I want that as much as he does and can see the trajectory unfolding already.   #4 - The end of something. As much as I enjoyed myself and was inspired by Eyeo, I think it would be sort of awesome if it didn’t ever happen again.  Or if it didn’t happen again for another 10 years.  The line-up was awesome, the energy, the time, the place… it all worked.  It doesn’t have to be bigger or better. In fact, I think it would be more special if it stayed what it was.  Eyeo, avoid the mistakes of Christmases past. Let us miss you.

4/3

… or “I don’t need Christmas this year, I’ve been to Eyeo”

When I think back to my childhood, all of the good Christmases sort of merge together in this one really awesome event where I spent lots of time in magical anticipation and where the holiday itself exceeded my ridiculous expectations and surely raised them for the next year.  This was sometime before I got all Charlie Brown about things and started to complain about the commercialism and reasons for the season and agonize about what to get people or how to react when I open gifts.  At one point in my life Christmas was better than I expected it to be and I expected it to be the most awesome thing ever.

Eyeo has been the same sort of expectation exceeding event — a Christmas for a conferenced-out Charlie Brown — and it has been that way from the beginning. I suspended my jaded outlook on conferences for this one, willingly.  I told complete strangers about how excited I was about it, months ahead of time.  I expected it to be the most awesome thing ever.

And it sort of was.  As I tweeted at the end of day one, it seemed like the creators looked at how conferences are typically run and asked in every way, “How could we do this better?”

The days began at 10am — waking wasn’t stressful and the extra time allowed for a brief check-in with email before being away from it for several hours.  There were enough breaks, but they weren’t too long, leaving me with the sense that I needed to *do* something in between them.  There was another break at the end of the day to check-in with work again before festivities continued into the night.  

Each morning was filled with inspirational talks, each afternoon with hands-on workshops, each evening with blockbuster speakers and free alcohol. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

What I’ll take away:

#1 - As readers may already know, I spent last December trying to learn Processing and ultimately gave up on it, frustrated with the lack of practicality in the tutorials I was following.  I decided to give it one last chance by attending a Data Viz-specific workshop with Jer and Eyeo. 

Over the past two weeks, I feel like Processing won an argument I’d been having with it for months. 

Beck in December: Whine, whine, whine… Processing you’re too hard!

Processing in June: Suck it up, Beck. Good work is hard.

So I’m going to try again.  There are just too many awesome things to be done to not try.

#2 - I’ve always leaned toward sharing my work and when asked to share code or PSDs, I always oblige.  Now I’m going to make it explicit.  I registered a new domain name during the last session of the festival and am committed to launching it with my first processing project.  More details about this one soon.  

#3 - The start of something. At the end of his last talk, Jer compared Eyeo to the root node of a Cascade and said that he hoped that in 10 years, we’d all look at Eyeo as the root node to really successful projects careers.  I want that as much as he does and can see the trajectory unfolding already.  

#4 - The end of something. As much as I enjoyed myself and was inspired by Eyeo, I think it would be sort of awesome if it didn’t ever happen again.  Or if it didn’t happen again for another 10 years.  The line-up was awesome, the energy, the time, the place… it all worked.  It doesn’t have to be bigger or better. In fact, I think it would be more special if it stayed what it was.  Eyeo, avoid the mistakes of Christmases past. Let us miss you.