When I see an announcement about a conference I've never heard of shutting down after 17 years, it's eerie. I've been in the software industry for more than twice that time. But I'm guessing this is in the UX part of the space.
Interesting to reflect how there the computing industry is like a galaxy. You can spend all your career in just one star system.
This is why I like HN. It's the only place I know where I can get eclectic exposure.
An Event Apart was started by the A List Apart people. ALA was/is a website that was very important for front-end development during the 2000s and early 2010s. Famously, the article that outlined the technique and name for"responsive web design" for the first time was published there in 2010: https://alistapart.com/article/responsive-web-design/
It wasn't UX focused, it was specifically front-end focused. And it was a hugely important part of the evolution of that domain.
Cool find! I had not seen that before. But I still think the one I linked to is the canonical origin since it actually named it and described the method we ended up using (media queries) but this article definitely seems like an important precursor as well - and it strengthens my point of how important ALA was that this post was also posted to ALA.
I think if you were not in the front-end scene during the 2000s, you don't understand how miserable it was. For most of that decade, we had to make sure our sites were compatible with IE6. Flash was vying to take over. Without the work that publications like A List Apart did (along with Mozilla) the web might look much different (worse) today. They were thought leaders.
They shaped what was actually happening in the industry in a time when front-end development was changing dramatically year over year. It makes me sad that they seem to be slipping from our collective memory a bit.
Interesting to reflect how there the computing industry is like a galaxy. You can spend all your career in just one star system.
This is why I like HN. It's the only place I know where I can get eclectic exposure.