Teach Me the Web

November 11, 2008

On November 4th at 1:15am I woke up to my alarm blaring. I crawled out of bed, started the coffee and began my drive to work. Am I crazy you say? Is this one of those stories where I find out after I get to work that my clock was wrong? No and no. I was meeting my Advanced Web students and a few Web Design kids at Damascus HS at 2:30am to jump on a bus headed to New York City. We were headed to the Carsonified Future of Web Design Conference of course.

I was planning a massive article about the experience dripping with detail. However, I thought that you would probably rather hear from my students about the experience through their eyes rather than mine.

But before I hand the floor to them I would like to point out a few of my personal highlights from the event.

• Getting up at 1:15am and getting home at midnight - 23 hours of fun, I felt like I was in college again.
• Hearing so many cool people talk about so many things I am interested in, like Dan Mall on Flash, Paul Boag on clients, Ryan Singer on design, Nick La on his stages of work, and all the others.
• Seeing New York City
• Hearing the Carsonified team root for the cause of sending High School students to the conference
• Meeting Dan Mall (again), Paul Boag, Patrick Haney, Jason Santa Maria, Ryan Carson, and the Nclud team and getting to introduce them to my students.

That was awesome but my three shining moments I think I will never forget are the following:

• Seeing two of my students sheepishly approach Paul Boag and introduce themselves. That was awesome to see them have the gumption to approach them.
• Just yesterday a student said to me, "After going to the conference I'm starting to understand it all better. I think it finally clicked for me and I'm getting really passionate about it. It was good to see those guys (the presenters) are as intense as you (me, Mr. Brown) are about Web Design."
• Overall the kids are so much more passionate about what we are doing, they are asking me when we are getting to Javascript and if I don't teach that much Flash because of the things Dan Mall spoke about. They are making connections and getting hungrier for knowledge. That is freaking awesome.

So in a rather large nutshell there are my thoughts and take-aways, below are my students thoughts. I asked them to give their honest reactions and not just blow sunshine, if they hated it, tell us that. Below are their thoughts, untouched by me, spelling and grammar mistakes and all. I've posted a few pics below.

Thank you

And one last thing, a huge thank you to Nclud, Samantha Warren, Scott McCaughey, and the great John Croston for their gracious donations to help make this trip possible.

Erick Hodge on FOWD

My trip to NYC was unforgettable. I didn’t sleep the night before the trip because the excitement for trip was making my mind wonder about the experience i would have. When arriving to school in the morning only two other cars were there which scared me and made me think Mr. Brown left with out us or changed the date and i never got the info. Well when everyone FINALLY came and we left to pick up the kids at Spring brook it was so quite on the bus but i knew inside everyone was so excited to arrive in NY. The drive was long as usual because i have taken it many times before. Arriving in NY 4 and half hours later safely it was great to see the sky scrapers towering above and the dirty streets.

The Roseland was not what I expected it was worn on the outside and you could tell much history occurred. After going inside it looked newer then the outside of the building. Two British people were giving out or name badges and we were dying laughing at the way they pronounced our names.

The actually conference itself was not really for me. It was way over my ahead meaning I didn’t have enough experience or knowledge about web design to know about everything they were talking about. Dan Mall briefly described about the art of what you do. From that i took that you need to focus find your niche and work hard at it and don’t be afraid to think outside the box but still keeping your theme. If you didn’t understand that basically use your creative side and use to full potential. This kinda inspired me more because i would like to one day design my own website for my t-shirt brand. I wanna know how to do everything myself. But what i did learn from the conference was the technique of art.

I also got to play with the Microsoft Surface a computer basically like a table. It was cool to play with, but not something I would like in my room. I think it would be great use in a meeting with a few people gathered around it. I think ill stick to learning on the Promethean board. Later on after all the breaks to Starbucks, the delicious lunch to Chipotle, New York expensive large slices of pizza my Dad came with us to enjoy it all. I was happy to see my Dad and it was even more exciting that he meet some of my friends for the first time ever! My friends Nick, Mauricio, and Carlos are all different and unique in their own way. This makes everytime we hang out soo much fun and very funny. My Dad fit in good with all of us because he has that young interesting kid inside of him.

Well after lunch my Dad had to head back home and we had to head back in for another portion of the conference. In all this meant more SLEEP but this time in the corner so no one could see us. Carlos made a comment saying we were like homeless people sleeping in a corner which i thought were hilarious and the best way to describe us. We slept like we've never slept in our lives.

Well later we wanted to go walk around times square and just experience the night life we all see on TV, in movies, in magazines, and what we hear in real life. We walked to MTV and went to the MTV shop and look around. Then walked some more and went to the Hershey and M&m store. Who thought a candy would have it own store??? Not only was it 3 stories high but it felt like Willy Wonka needed to step his game up SERIOUSLY. While going to all these wonderfully random huge stores we meet Kanye West i think.. It was a guy dressed in baggy worn out clothes with the fakest diamond chain. The diamonds were blue and clear but not shining at all. He told us to buy his album and that it was just like Kanye West and that his album came in different flavors. Meaning each Cd was in different color cases was a flavor. I guess if you got a purple one it was better than a red one.

In the end I had a great time, good laughs, and meet some interesting people. I got some more inspiration to be even more artistic and pursue my t-shirt brand. Thank you Mr. Brown for letting my Dad hang out with us and thank you for letting me come on this awesome trip to NYC!!!!

Nick Frymark on FOWD

New York was a memorable trip. I first arrived at the school at around 2:30, after getting about 15 mins of sleep that night. Once we got on the bus and picked up the Springbrook kids the entire ride was pretty much silent. Everyone was trying to sleep, even though at times it was hard because it was so cramped. When we first arrived in the city and entered the convention everyone was all excited to see what this web-design conference was all about. Basically the conference was many well known web-designers giving presentations about how to improve working with your website or client. Some presentations were more interesting than others and you could defiantly distinguish the difference between the more designed oriented and the more programming oriented presentations. At lunch and during the breaks we had to opportunity to walk around the city. I learned a lot about web-design and about NYC by going on this trip. I will remember it forever.

Bobby Walsh on FOWD

The FOWD Trip was awesome, i got to meet Paul Boag and listened to his speach about getting to the client, like helping them understand your ideas and understanding theirs without them taking over the meeting. group meeting of a small company should try to be avoided because the head person in their group would put their opinion and everyone else would agree. Paul Boag is more into the managment part of web designing instead of coding and designing. IMO the 3 best speakers were Paul Boag, Dan Mall, and Mike Kus. even though their presentations werent more informative they caught my attention alot more than others such as Ryan singer and Karl Swedberg. Other Fun stuff for going on the field trip besides meeting people and listening to speeches was going around NY because ive never been to new york before. only sucky parts to the trip was when we had to drive for a long time and there was no Wi-Fi all day.. :/

Nick Wodoslawsky on FOWD

Basically the Future of Web Design conference we went to in New York City was awesome. I learned some really valuable information that can benefit me in making websites. Ryan Singer the first person to speak at the convention really talked about how if you are making a website for a customer its what the users are going to want not what THEY want. Also to organize the site by what the users are going to use the most. Paul Boag also spoke at the convention, that was awesome because he not only taught the audience stuff but he made his talk interesting and funny!. Mike Kus was another one of my favorite speakers at the convention and i wished he had a bigger time slot to talk. The only negative remark i have about the conference was it was really long and at times boring, because all you were doing was listening to people talk and if you were not interested in there topic then you were basically stuck to listen to them for a half hour. But other than that i really enjoyed the conference!

Tyler Heishman on FOWD

I think that trip to The Future of Web Design was really really cool. First of all most of the speakers were very entertaining and funny plus very instructive. Although i didnt know alot of what was talked about but they did a great job explaining most things. I really enjoyed Paul Boag, Nick La and Dan Mall. The designs and techniques they use/showed us were amazing. Along with presentations of there own work and projects, the opionions and suggestions they talkeked about when it comes to work with clients and/or developer and designer realtionships will be very useful if i pursue a web design career or not. Also the city was pretty frickin amazing! Besides the food just walking in times square and meeting all different types of people, the views were sick. Altogether i had a blast! Thanks Mr. Brown.

Rachel Macklin on FOWD

The Future Of Web Design field trip was so sweet. It was really cool to listen to the different speakers talk about the future in web. I really enjoyed hearing about how styling on your web page should apply to how much it will be used and stuf like that. I also enjoyed listening to Nick La talk about how he comes up with designs. Although I don't think I could ever draw like him or even come up with all his different aspects. For example the peacock with rooster tail, and snake in the design. He also showed us how he made his pheonix design. It was pretty awesome and it would be fun to go again.

Matt Yaniga on FOWD

The Future of Web Design Conference that was held in New York City was one of the coolest experiences I've had. Being able to count myself as a web designer in a huge crowd of professionals and aspiring designers gave me the chance to listen to what others had to say about web standards, out sourcing, photoshop in the design process, clients, and many other topics concerning the present and future state of web design. The amount of things that the speakers talked about that I didn't know or have even heard of was huge, but it showed me how much I had left to learn in the field. Overall, it was a great experience that showed me how the world of web design functioned and how the people who worked in the field wanted to change how things were done and how the user experience needs to be enhanced.

Michael Burke on FOWD

Overall, I really enjoyed the trip. For the most part, the presentations were great and I learned a lot. However, some of the topics they talked about I didn't really follow. I loved walking around the city and seeing Times Square, especially since I have never been. For lunch we ate at a pizza place and the food was great. I got to walk right through Times Square to take a whole bunch of pictures. My favorite speaker was Nick La because he was very talented and I want to do graphic art for a living like he does. My favorite part of the whole trip was just walking around the city and seeing Times Square. I am very greatful that we were able to go the New York and learn a lot about the future of web design from experts.