Minnebar was fun.
I managed to FINALLY be talked into dragging myself out on a spring Saturday to Minnebar this past week thanks to Ben who asked me to be on a panel to discuss the age old Designers vs. Coders issue that still seems to plague way too many web projects. Seems as if we’re still talking about the same issues we were frustrated with 10 years ago.
But, hey, it was fun. And I got to meet some very nice, smart folks including those that were on the panel with me: Norm Orstad from Slantwise, Mike Bollinger from Livefront and Margeret Andrews from Vita.mn.
Alas, given that it *was* a Spring Saturday–albeit a wet one–prior commitments prevented me from sticking around past the noon hour. However, I did manage to sneak into the ‘Why Drupal?’ session presented by the very articulate and knowledgeable Allie Micka. (I came away with the opinion of “wow, that is cool, but, of course, really complex”). I also managed to get to the Refresh TwinCities session hosted by Thomas Knoll. I’ll need to ponder that latter session a bit before presenting a full opinion of it, but, on the surface, it seems like a great idea for a broader web organization that is going to struggle against the competition from all of the existing niche web community/orgs around town.
In the end, I remembered that the web still is a lot of fun. I had lost a bit of that excitement these past few years sitting in my admittedly cushy, yet rather bland gig. I’ll definitely be going to the next Minnebar…no matter how nice that weekend might be weather-wise. ;0)
