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I have now been full-time self-employed for six months now and I’m amazed at how fast it’s gone. I’ve had some incredible supporters and I’d like to take the time to thank them:

To Nate, Mike, Julian and the rest of the Bolt|Peters crew: You guys rock! Were it not for your support (and coaxing), I may not have made the leap so soon.

To Lane, Todd and all the folks at Adaptive Path: Our projects together have been challenging, but also incredibly rewarding and I’m very thankful to have you guys as clients, partners and friends.

To Gavin, Susan, Rose & the whole fassforward team: Your words of encouragement and advice on growing this business helped prepare me more than you know.

To Jeffrey, Erin, Erin and my other fellow A List Apart-ians: I’m floored that I’ve only been working with you guys for a year; it’s seems like I’ve known you all forever. Each of you brings a unique perspective to the magazine and I think it’s better for it; we’ve put out some remarkable issues and it just keeps getting better. This is one of the best teams I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

To my friends in the web standards community: You are a group unlike any other I’ve encountered in my working life. You are always looking for ways to help one another without letting ego get in the way. So many industries are stuck in that dog-eat-dog mentality that’s such bullshit; you are a breath of fresh air and I am thankful to count myself among your numbers. I hope that I can do as much for others as you all have done for me. Were I to name each and every one of you, I’d be typing all day, but I’d be remiss if I did not single out one of you…

To Molly: You’ve done so much for me, it’s hard to find the words. You’ve been a tremendous mentor, a fountain of encouragement, and an incredible friend. You are one of the most genuine, thoughful and loving individuals I’ve ever met. I know you have a hard time seeing it sometimes, but you really are fucking awesome!

And finally, to my wife, Kelly: Thank you for pushing the fear aside and taking this leap with me. Thank you for your support, friendship, and, most of all, love. You are my partner in business and in life. You are my muse. You mean the world to me.

SXSW has released their “Honor Roll” for 2006 and “How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting” managed to make it pretty darn close to the top. I had no idea there was such a thing, but apparently audience feedback is tallied and the sessions are graded and then ranked. I’m pretty proud of our 4.69 “GPA” too — it put us solidly in the Top 10. The two other sessions I participated in (“Web Standards & Search Engines” and “Web Standards & SEO”) also garnered some respectable scores (4.01 and 4.06 respectively) and made the list.

My co-presenters/panelists all did an incredible job (Andy, Ed, Eric, Jeremy, Molly, Peter, and Tim: my hat is off to you), but my greatest thanks goes out to everyone who took the time not only to to come to our sessions, but to provide us with feedback on them as well.

The feedback provided by an audience is invaluable. I know it’s sometimes annoying to fill out those comment cards (especially when you’re racing to get a seat at the next session), but it is those very comment card that help us hone our skills as speakers/presenters/teachers. Your feedback is what makes us better the next time around. Seriously, it means a lot — evenespecially criticism.

When developing a session, you write the description to capture the essence of the talk and (hopefully) set expectations for the depth and breadth of coverage, but you’re never sure just how that will be interpreted by attendees. The only way you can know how successful you were at planning, describing and giving the presentation is by receiving audience feedback. That’s why it is so crucial.

To me, a session is a success when the majority of the feedback tells me

1. I didn’t lose anybody, and
2. people learned something.

But it’s hard to strike that balance too. You never really know the audience’s comfort level, especially on the more technical or programming-related topics. That said, you do know you’ve hit the mark (at least for most people) when you receive feedback like this:

Great breakdown of concepts…

…interesting to even an experienced DOM coder

Broke down things to a real level…

…well organized and not so deep that beginners would get lost

Great/useable content that we can take back to the office.

I’ve learned something useful today!

Thank you very much for all of your feedback and please keep on commenting.

After her very successful run for office last year, Kelly has become quite the thought leader here in Hamden. She was just named Chairperson of the town’s Clean and Green Commission and was asked to pen a biweekly column for Hamden Daily News, an online-only newspaper for our town. She cleverly named it “Politics Aside”.

Her first column ran today and I think it’s very timely: our proposed budget is under review right now and has a lot of oddities in it, including the elimination of the Traffic Director position and the reorganization of the Traffic Department under Engineering. If you know anything about traffic planning on a municipal level, you know this is going to cripple our efforts to get a handle on the traffic issues which keep sprouting up and ensnarling our roads. And then consider the fact that some of our roads haven’t been paved in over 35 years and… I’ll stop now. Anyway, I’m obviously a little biased, but I think it’s a great first piece and I’m looking forward to seeing her develop her column and public voice.

Congrads Kelly. Good Luck. I love you.

So, upon returning home from SXSW and cracking open the new issue of Seed, I read something I wish I’d known before:

Having sex is the best way to prepare for a speech.

How did I miss that? Where was I when that little nugget was passed out?

Prior to SXSW, Dave (and his many commenters) had given some great tips for giving memorable (and coherent) presentations. I had kinda skimmed over it at the time, but, after re-reading it, I didn’t see that mentioned anywhere.

To make sure the clever editors at Seed were not simply pulling my leg (or some other appendage), I did a little digging and found that this story was everywhere in late January. Where the hell was I?

Well, it settles one thing… Kel is definitely travelling with me everywhere I speak now ;-)

I had a fantastic time at SXSWi this year. It was great to catch up with old friends, make some new ones, and see what everyone’s been working on for the last year. If you’re interested in seeing the shennanigans you can check out my SXSWi 2006 photostream. Highlights are below:

“How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting” — Jeremy and I had a blast walking the audience through the wonderful world of DOM Scripting. And, based on the audience feedback, we made quite an impact too. Hopefully we managed to break down some of the misconceptions about JavaScript and the DOM being hard to work with. After all, DOM Scripting doesn’t suffer from nearly as many compatibility issues as CSS. There are some great reviews and blow-by-blows out there if you’re interested.

“Web Standards and Search/SEO” — It was nice to finally get some dialogue going between the web standards community, the search engines and the SEO folks. It was great to have such incredible people working to make it happen too. Many thanks to Molly, Peter, Tim, Andy, Ed and Eric for putting in the time (and putting up with a little abuse) to get the ball rolling.

The people — Cameron Adams, John Allsopp, Faruk Ateş, Kimberly Blessing, Nate Bolt, Kyle Bradshaw, Andy Budd, Tantek Çelik, Andy Clarke, Craig Cross, Mike Davidson, James Edwards, Derek Featherstone, Nick Finck, Jesse James Garrett, Porter Glendinning, Jenifer Hanen, Jon Hicks, Kenneth Himschoot, Molly Holzschlag, Shaun Inman, Lauren Isaacson, Leslie Jensen, Chris Kaminski, Jeremy Keith, Jessica Keith, Geert Leyseele, Cindy Li, Ian Lloyd, Stuart Langridge, Ethan Marcotte, Tim Mayer, Eric, Kat & Carolyn Meyer, Drew McLellan, Chris Mills, Cameron Moll, Peter Morville, Matt Mullenweg, Dunstan Orchard, Veerle Pieters, Jeff Robbins, Jen Robbins, D. Keith Robinson, Richard Rutter, Jason “Stan” Santa Maria, Christopher Schmitt, Maxine Sherrin, Eris Stassi, Greg Storey, Elly Thompson, Mark Trammell, Jeff Veen, Sergio Villarreal, Khoi Vinh, Rob Weychert, Meri Williams, Simon Willison, Jeffrey Zeldman, and a bunch more I’ve probably left out (but not forgotten, mind you).

Getting my wings (and stinger) — Faruk and I were asked (and agreed) to join the Web Standards Project (WaSP) while at SXSW. As the new kids on the block, we’ll be dealing with comment moderation on the new site, so please… be gentle.

The partiesy — I didn’t make it to many parties this year, mostly because Kel was ill, but the one I did make it to—hosted by Adaptive Path, Odeo, and Consumating—was fantastic. Next year, Kel & I will take lots of vitamins to make sure we’re in top form for the evening activities.

So now, after a long night of flying and a few days of recouperating, it’s back to work.