Posts about News

In all my travels I’ve not yet been to Berlin. That’s changing in November when I’ll be appearing at the fabulous beyond tellerrand.

I couldn’t be happier than my friends Craig Lockwood and Amie Duggan, those wonderful people behind events like Handheld Conf, Besquare, FoundersHub and, later this year, The Web Is… have taken over at Five Simple Steps.

The sudden closure of Five Simple Steps came as a shock to a lot of people, not least authors like me who are forced to decide on new homes for their books with no notice.

Stuff and Nonsense has been shortlisted for Agency Of The Year at the Net Awards 2014 and so Creative Bloq wanted to know a little more about us, what we do and what sets us apart from other agencies. Here’s what I told them.

I’m not sure how I forgot to link to this last week, but our phone rang and I spoke to BBC technology reporter Dave Lee about Easter Eggs. Not the chocolate kind, but the much less tasty and much less interesting hidden delights in websites.

If you’re reading this in RSS, switch over to a browser, as we just launched ‘Go, go, go, rillas!’ It’s our late 2013 version of Stuff and Nonsense.

Yep. Number forty-one of one-hundred. To be honest, when I was told about being part of the Drum Digerati list I wasn’t at all happy about it.

Smashing Magazine are hosting a series of one day workshops across Europe throughout November and December.

2012’s Smashing Conference in Freiburg had the best atmosphere of any European conference I’ve been to and, while I wasn’t there, I hear this year’s was pretty special too.

I’ve just come back from a trip to beautiful Freiburg in southern Germany where I hosted my new CSS3 For Responsive Web Design workshop at Smashing Magazine. I went to Freiburg last September when Alex and I attended Smashing Conference and we had a brilliant time. The folks at Smashing Magazine were genuinely welcoming and I jumped at the first opportunity to work with them again.

People seem to like Rock Hammer, our little “curated project library for Hammer For Mac” We designed Rock Hammer to help us here at Stuff and Nonsense design faster using HTML and CSS and we use it every day to do just that. Talking about Rock Hammer, some news:

I’ve always had a soft spot for the people at Smashing Magazine and I loved being at their Smashing Conference last September, so when they asked me if I’d like to be a part of their workshop programme, I didn’t hesitate to say “yes.” This coming June my wife and I will be heading back to beautiful Freiburg where I’ll host a ‘CSS3 for Responsive Web Design’ workshop.

Back in 2009, I took what I thought would be a trip of a lifetime to Japan to speak and host a workshop at Web Directions East. I spent a hectic few days in Tokyo then set off for a place I never thought I visit, Hiroshima. I’ll never forget standing, in tears in front of the A-Bomb dome, or visiting the shrines on Miyajima Island. I met new friends and went home with stories to tell.

If you listen to Unfinished Business, you’ll know that I’m a big, big fan of Hammer For Mac, the app its developers say lets you create HTML builds & templates quicker, more efficiently & more conveniently. Hammer works for us because these days we mostly deliver static HTML and CSS templates, instead of static visuals, and we rarely develop complete sites.

I’d always admired the work of, and the people behind the Web Standards Project. What they had achieved in only a few short years in bringing browser vendors and tool authors together behind open standards was nothing short of magnificent, so when I was asked to join the project on March 31st 2005 it was an ambition fulfilled.

Handheld is “the conference for all things mobile” that’s happening in Cardiff, Wales on 27th – 28th November 2013 at the Wales Millennium Centre. Handheld has a fabulous line-up of speakers and tickets go on sale on March 1st, St. David’s Day. (You can get get 10% off your ticket with the offer code unfinishedbz.)

If you needed another reason to head to beautiful Cardiff Bay, I’m hosting a new workshop, “CSS3 for Responsive Web Design.”

I decided that this year I would spend more time in universities and with students than I would at conferences. Maybe that’s because my son’s a student and I’d like to think that he’d appreciate a visiting lecturer. Maybe it’s because I’m not ready for the pressure of larger events yet. Whatever the reason, this week was all about students and my visits to Winchester School Of Art and Manchester Metropolitan University.

With the help of Tapbots’ Netbot client, it looks like App.net might be gathering steam. If App.net’s your thing, you’ll now find me there too although I guess I’m not alone in being unsure when I’ll use App.net instead of Twitter.

Follow me on App.net. (Damn that name isn’t getting any easier to say.)

I know RSS isn’t perhaps what it was for a lot of people, but it’s still as important to me as Twitter as a source of good content, and well, you know what they say about eggs and baskets. Today I’m making some changes to Stuff and Nonsense’s RSS.

It was January, 2011 and an email arrived from a name I recognised.

Would you be available for me to phone you to discuss a potential project? I’ve attached an NDA. Could you sign a printed copy, scan and send it back to me?

John Jones
Jones Olson

Some conferences just have ‘that’ special feeling. @media was the first for me in 2005. The An Event Apart in Seattle in 2010 where Ethan Marcotte first talked about responsive design, another. Most recently, the first New Adventures also in 2010.

Sorry to break into your Diamond Jubilee celebrations, but my Flexible Responsive Web Design workshop on the 19th September in Freiburg in Germany sold out so fast that Smashing Conference and I are hosting a second day. That’s right. We didn’t want disappointed Germans. Especially after Engerlaaand will be beating them in Euro 2012.

This one’s the day before the conference, on the 16th September.

You know the drill.

• Places are limited.
• Found out more.
• Register. Now.

I’ve given Vitaly and his Smashing Magazine team some (good natured) stick over the years, but (to their credit) they ignored me completely and have built a fabulous business that publishes the website and books including Smashing Book #3 that I was proud to write the closing chapter for.

Now they’re organising what I predict with be one of the best web conferences anywhere this year. The Smashing Conference will be held in beautiful, historic FreibergFreiburg in Germany on 17^th and 18^th September and the speaker line up is tremendous. Heck. It has three of my CSS heroes, two of my favourite people in the whole world, AND more. What a show it’s going to be!

As you probably heard, I’m taking a break from speaking this year (apart from Austin (see what I did there?)), but I will be hosting a Fashionably Flexible Responsive Web Design workshop on the 19^th. It’s an updated version of the workshop that was so well received in Australia earlier in the year. (You can grab the slide deck from that from Speaker Deck to give you a taste.

You know the drill.

• Places are limited.
• Found out more.
• Register. Now.

I’m looking forward to the Smashing Conference so much. So much! It’s going to be super, smashing, great.

I guess if you’ve been following my tweets or Instagram photos, you’ll know that I’ve been in Australia presenting a series of ‘Fashionably flexible responsive web design’ workshops. I had the most amazing time in Australia and I want to say a huge thank-you to John and Maxine for helping me make it possible. I’d also like to thank everyone who attended for contributing to the discussion and sharing their experiences.

I couldn’t have built a full day’s workshop without referencing the work of others. So my special thanks go to John Allsopp (again), Mark Boulton, Brad Frost, Jeremy Keith, Ethan Marcotte, Brian and Stephanie Rieger, Luke Wroblewski and all the designers and developers whose work I featured.

With the Australian tour now over, I’ll be working on adapting the workshop’s content for a new video. More on that another day. But today I’m making available the slides from my Australian workshops on Speaker Deck. Of course slides without commentary and context are worth only so much. But hell, you just had to be there.