After two weekends of conferences in a row, life is starting to settle down a bit. We didn’t actually get back until Monday morning. My suitcase is still partially packed and laundry needs done, but life is mostly restored to a relatively comfortable pace.
I had delicious chicken curry and kothe (essentially a very yummy fried dumpling) for dinner from Highland Cafe and Bakery (oddly enough, neither appear on their menu online). The suitcase and laundry will be handled. I will teach the cat how to do housework, never fear. He’ll eventually pull his weight. It’s just that right now he’s napping and cannot be disturbed.
Speaking of cats, lolcats specifically, Matt and I drove to Chicago last weekend for Social DevCamp Chicago. After my amazing She’s Geeky experience, both professionally and personally, I had extremely high hopes for the weekend.
In some ways, my expectations were met. The keynotes were amazing – Chris Messina (Google) on pop computing, being a webinist, and the ‘death’ of the web; Andrew Mason (Groupon) on product development and humility; and Ben Huh (Cheezburger Network) on success, agility, and Potato Head Development (interchangeable pieces such that if one things break, no one dies). Several of the other sessions were equally excellent and left me with plenty food for thought and useful takeaways.
What the conference lacked was exactly where She’s Geeky excelled. Social DevCamp was more of a traditional conference complete with the anonymity of being in a large group, 
minimal personal interaction, and a didactic style. It wasn’t about learning from each other; it was about learning from an “expert.”
The conference certainly didn’t lack in experts and many of the presenters were certainly more than worth the price of admission, but as I learned at She’s Geeky, there’s something special about learning from each other in a group where everyone is on equal footing. It builds confidence, knowledge, and camaraderie in a way that doesn’t happen in a speaker/audience session.
With that said, I am glad I went. The keynotes were intellectually stimulating and inspiring. Chris really made me think about how I learned about the internet and honestly, how I learned to build websites. We are not the only ones who got started with html using View Source. With so many layers, proprietary parts, and other complexities, you just can’t learn that way anymore. The web has been “dumbed down” to be simple and easily accessible, but in doing so, it’s no longer, well, accessible (e.g. view source in Chrome now appears under Developer Tools instead of under View). It’s a tricky balance. It used to be that not everyone even had access to the web, but now, nearly everyone can be on the web, but could they learn how to build their own site, understand how the web works, and really become part of the group building new, important content if their access is solely through couch computing – apps, iPads, Kindles, etc?
Chris is passionate about keeping the web open to everyone and, somewhat jokingly, calls himself as a ‘webinist’ – a web activist. I like it. I think he should start a movement.
Andrew was funny, humble, and smart. He talked about not sitting on your laurels and really building for and talking to your users, not just marketers or developers. Perhaps most poignantly, he talked about how small victories have a much greater impact on team happiness than one big win – lots of small releases vs. one really big one.
Ben was brilliant and absolutely hilarious. His lolcat and Fail-peppered talk was smart and funny. Rather than just grinning at funny kittys, graphs, and human stupidity, it made me look at their network of sites as a viable, profitable, smart business venture. The business model and execution are just plain impressive – less than $2,000 and 2 hours to put up an entirely new site. Eighty percent of the sites they put up are profitable.
All in all, the weekend was good and definitely an enjoyable learning experience. The drive to and from Chicago was long – particularly since the drive home extended itself by nearly 3 hours thanks to Chicago traffic. Would I do it again? Yes, but I’d also take off the following Monday.
And now, I’m going to go have a few bites of the delicious chocolate cake that made its way home with me. Either that or I’ll save it to eat with my tasty leftovers tomorrow for lunch. I haven’t decided yet.
p.s. If you’re interested, several of the slide decks from Social DevCamp Chicago are available here on SlideShare.
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