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Hello, my name is Aaron Gustafson and I’m a delinquent blogger. It’s been over a month since my last confessionpost.

If it makes any difference, I’ll say that I am sorry, I’ve just been a little busy of late. Those of you keeping up with me via my Flickr stream or Plazes will see why: lots of travelling. It doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon, but I have a bit of downtime today so I thought I’d post some updates.

First off, I have a new article up on Digital Web Magazine that is all about the button. If you spend as much time with web forms as I do, I highly recommend checking it out. For some of you, the techniques may seem like old hat, but there are a lot of people out there who still haven’t realized the real power of the button element. On another publishing note, I’ve gotten a promotion to Technical Editor at A List Apart, which is sweet. Many thanks to Erin, Jeffrey and the rest of the team.

Also, if you haven’t been to this site lately or don’t follow my events feed on Upcoming.org, I will be speaking at The AJAX Experience in Boston late next month and I have also been booked to speak as part of Web Directions North in Vancouver early next year. I will also be co-leading a one-day workshop with Malarkey while I’m there, if you’re up for some serious CSS-meets-DOM scripting magic.

Finally, I’m starting to do some tidying up with regard to my feeds. I’ve had a FeedBurner account for ages, but hadn’t ever really used it until today. I’ve created a new feed for this site which also incorporates my ma.gnolia bookmarks and Flickr photos (which, of late, have seen a lot more attention than this site). For the three of you using the old feed, I’d appreciate it if you could move over to this new one as I may disable the old feed at some point.

Anyway, back into the fray… I’m sorry for not writing more often.

Mea culpa,
Mea culpa,
Mea maxima culpa.

I know, I know, I haven’t posted anything in the aftermath of AEA-NYC. Things have been a little busy on the homefront (new roof, kitchen remodelling and the firing of a lazy, lying contractor) and since moving into the new office, I haven’t really felt much like bringing my laptop up to blog in the evening (instead choosing to enjoy spending my time with Kelly). Sorry.

To create a nice triumvirate of excuses, I’ll toss in this one too: I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time off-line, working on a chapter for an as-yet unannounced web standards book (more on that soon) in addition to plying my technical editing skills to the latest edition (3rd, I believe) of Jen’s Learning Web Design (note: the link still goes to the 2nd edition) and Andy’s Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design.

Anyway, so, An Event Apart…
I had such a great time at this conference. Not only was it a pleasure to speak at, but I met some awesome folks and got to spend more time with Jeffrey, Eric, Jason, Khoi, Tantek, and Rob. It was also great to spend more time with (Dr.) Kat and Carolyn (Eric’s family) and to finally meet Carrie and Ava (Jeffrey’s family) and Liz (Jason’s bride). I also got to hang out a bit more with Dan & Jon (both formerly of Pixelworthy). They are two truly fantastic gents and they played their roles as the AEA go-fers/whipping boys with gusto. Seriously, these guys rock. From purely a social aspect, AEA was fantastic; like an intimate SXSW.

As for the sessions, I thought they were incredible. I thoroughly enjoyed all of Jeffrey’s talks. He is such a great speaker, capable of moving an audience with even the simplest turn of phrase. It was nice to finally see Eric giving a CSS talk too. I’ve only seen him talk microformats (at SXSWi 2005) and general web standards stuff relating to search (on one of my panels at SXSWi 2006). I was delighted to find that he and I tackle layout problems very much the same way… making my methods not seem quite so mad. “Stan” was also a fantastic solo act (I’ve only seen him on panels) and he walked us through how the ALA redesign came to be. Being that I came on board just after the relaunch, it was nice to get some of the backstory.

The guest speakers were also a lot of fun to listen to. ze frank had me in tears I was laughing so hard and I had no idea just how much work Khoi puts into blogging and other non-NYT-related activities. It’s amazing he gets any sleep at all. Tantek’s microformats talk was also good because it helped amalgamate a lot of the disperate (and not always clear) information available on microformats into something usable, allowing me to take it beyond the simple hcard and hcal stuff I’ve been using for the last couple months.

I also thought the design and code critiques were excellent. The design one could have been a little more hmm, how to put this… aggressive? But design is such a subjective area, it’s hard to critique without some semblance of a creative brief or at least an understanding of the audience. Eric, Tantek and I were a little less forgiving in the code critique, but I think we brought up some really important points and kept it educational for everyone. Tantek’s got a nice write-up of the proceedings over at his site.

In all, I had a great time at An Event Apart. You may be thinking sure, but you were a speaker, but I am positive I would have enjoyed it equally as much as an attendee. There were great people, great talks and the food was fantastic.

If you feel so inclined, you can check out my photostream from the event as well as the AEA-NYC group photos over at Flickr.

That’s right, I’m coming to NYC to join Jeffrey, Eric, “Stan”, Khoi & Adam to deliver An Event Apart in its new 2-day format. It’s gonna be a blast and I’m incredibly honored that I was invited to join in the fun. I’ll be dropping a few teasers between now and July on what I’ll be talking about, but it’s gonna rock your socks off… At least I hope so.

Anyway, you can read the official teaser over at the AEA site.

In case you missed the real thing, you can now listen to the podcast of How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting, the presentation international male model Jeremy Keith and I gave at SXSW this year. And If you want to follow along, you can pick up the slides on DOMScripting.com.

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.