I got home from Beyond Tellerrand two weeks ago. I really enjoyed reading everyone’s recap posts the week of the event and I’m of course finally now just finding some time to write mine out.
The overall experience of being there was just fantastic and as great as I’d hoped it’d be. People were extremely friendly and I made a bunch of new friends from across northern Europe. I found myself hanging out with a different group of attendees each day of the event. I also snuck in a quick trip to the local art museum specifically to check out their Paul Klee collection and it didn’t disappoint.
The travel time and slow mornings gave me a little time to slow down and think about everything I’ve been doing which was much needed. The conference was celebrating its 15th anniversary which coincidentally lined up with my 15th wedding anniversary and also 15 years having passed since I graduated from design school.
While meeting new people is always the highlight of conferences for a remote worker like myself (I loved the intentional long breaks) the actual conference talks were also quite good and thought provoking.
The 2nd talk of the conference was by Niels Leenheer and I think it was my favorite of the whole conference.
I think after 15 years I’ve started to get, I wouldn’t say bored, but restless from 100% of my work being building UIs for rectangular screens. I’m extremely grateful for the rectangular screens that need software but also I’m itching for something more. I used to do a bit of print work but it’s been 100% screen-based for the last decade now.
Niels talk really fired me up! He was using the web technologies I’m familiar with but using them to literally set off smoke machines on stage and build a crazy part functional and part art installation clock with a Raspberry Pi. I bought my first Raspberry Pi last year and definitely feel more embolded to try more things with it as well as perhaps ordering more things from Amazon solely to take them apart.
Jumping to the end, Lauren Celenza wrapped up the conference and gave a really interesting talk with a lot of big picture thinking about AI. It was really nice to be at a conference where every other sentence wasn’t about AI but I felt like her talk was a good closing and prompted a good conversation over dinner that night with others who have been in the industry for awhile.
As the AI models continue to improve, I think we’re all grappling with the question of where does that leave us who have spent years learning the craft of coding, what work is truly human work, and, for me at least, how can I use these tools to help the independent web win.
On my flight across the ocean home, I re-took Shawn Blanc’s Focus Course. I’d planned on attending an all-day Zoom earlier this year but something came up so I took the 7 hours disconnected from the world to work through the workbook I printed before the trip.
The last time I took it I came up with a verbose focus statement that I did quite (and still do) like but this time I came up with something really short:
“Care deeply and believe in something bigger than myself”
The summarises everything I’m trying to do in my work, my family, my church, and my neighborhood. I don’t think I’m necessarily the kind of person that makes people feel deeply cared for after a conversation but I do really try in all the actions I take to be a person who cares deeply about their impact and doesn’t shallowly check off to-dos not thinking about their implications.
When I got off the train home from the airport, I noticed Philadelphia had fully bloomed in the time I’d been gone. I felt really grateful because for the first time in 15 years I live in a place I have no plans of leaving. Time to dig in. The arc of the spaces we occupy is long and I’m grateful to be here right now.