What I Loved About Brooklyn Beta

• The wonderful lessons Chris Shiflett shared
• An incredibly passionate call to arms from Todd Park of the US Department of Health and Human Services
• Erin Kissane’s newly pinked hair
• Simon Collison demoed the awesome Fanzine
• A long-awaited sneak peek of Caravan by Nate Abele, Erica Heinz, and team
• Cameron Koczon’s crazy-inspiring rally for designers at the C-level
• Dan Rubin’s attempt to woo me with a Cap’n & Coke
• Meeting Joshua Blankenship in person and learning how a church can value design
• Speculating with Sean Gaffney about 3-year plans
• Meeting Tyler Thompson in person and acknowledging that we’re both frauds
• Being too shy to introduce myself to Luke Wroblewski
• Finally meeting Dave Desandro and professing my love for Isotope and Masonry
• Reminding Dan Cederholm that the last we hung out, he showed me a idea for a little app that lets people post screenshots of what they’re working on
• Apologizing to Creighton Mershon for waving creepily at him in the streets of DUMBO
• Pontificating on the meaning of “product designer” with Cennydd Bowles
• Meeting the lovely Naomi Atkinson in person
• Recounting Philly neighborhood experiences with David Kaneda
• Meeting Eli Rousso of Girlfriend fame in person
• Lamenting the lack of Amsterdam hangout time with Deroy Peraza
• Confessing my gratitude to Dave Rupert for his great jQuery plugins like Lettering and FitText
• Being challenged by Andy Budd to talk about real issues that designers face
• Meeting Mike Fortress and Skylar Challand of Oak
• Getting excited with Trent Walton about bringing our families to Nottingham for the New Adventures in Web Design conference in January
• Discussing the gravity of naming a child with Aarron Walter
• Talking about church planting with Adam Clark
• Having pizza with a cornmeal crust with Brian Hoff and Kathleen Watkins (and Connor!)
• Sitting next to Cameron Moll for exactly one talk
• Trying to convince Chandler Van de Water to launch his app early and revise quickly
• Getting my picture taken by Chris Glass
• Highly recommending Jeff Sheldon as a speaker for next year’s #brooklynbeta (already can’t wait)
• Continually feeling bad for calling #brooklynbeta a conference (it’s way more)
• Chatting with Dan Leatherman about when we went from “Daniel” to “Dan”
• Lefty handshaking Dave Dawson, who hurt his right elbow (get better, Dave!)
• Marveling at the amazing community Matthew Smith has helped shape in Greenville
• Fanboy rambling with Jack Cheng and David Cole about Disrupto and Memberly
• Awkwardly admitting to Drew Wilson that I was thinking about him that morning
• Giving Elliot Jay Stocks and Keir Whitaker incorrect directions for the train
• Meeting Kevin Smith and Emily Smith
• Missing getting a web fonts beta code from Jonathan Hoefler
• Marveling at the type of work Travis Schmeisser gets to do every day
• Finally meeting Greg Wood in person
• Getting excited about Greenville Grok with Jeremy Jantz
• Sitting behind Jenni Schwartz and talking about indoor golf courses
• Suggesting the “name badge flip”
• Given Jon Snook a hard time about SMACSS (even though I really do love it)
• Reflecting with Sarah Parmenter on the state of conferences
• Amazed at everything Jessi Arrington did for and at #brooklynbeta
• Chatting with Jim Jones and Samantha Warren about mutual friends
• Disappointed that Val Head was at my office more than I was this week
• Ecstatic for John Ford and his upcoming world tour
• Brainstorming with Jon Tan about things people need to hear
• Josh Stewart reminding me to come borrow some comic books from him
• Yaron and Adva Schoen had a baby!
• Making mutual connections with Jamin Jantz
• Hearing about Lachlan Hardy’s incredibly awesome entrepreneurial ideas
• Eating a mozzarella and tomato salad in front of Lizzy Galle days before
• Meeting Zach McCullough of Behance
• Getting Ethan Marcotte to give his excellent Responsive Web Design talk at Big Spaceship while he was in town
• Being able to congratulate Mandy Brown in person on the acquisition of Typekit and for the incredible work in Made by Hand
• Seeing Maria Popova after a few years
• Running randomly into Mark Weaver
• Finally meeting Matt Brown
• Hearing about the cool things on Jessica Hische’s horizon
• Talking about company sizes with Matthew Buchanan
• Sitting in front of Meagan Fisher and Jason Hawkins
• Comparing church design teams’ problems and agencies’ problems with Naz Hamid
• Initially ignoring Noah Stokes because he looks so awesome with his long hair
• Finally getting some QT with Phil Coffman
• Running into Rob Hunter for 30 seconds
• Convincing Robert Eerhart to let me sneak into EECI
• Hearing Rob Weychert’s pitch for a better music metadata manager
• Realizing and Joshua Sortino and i have a friendship solely based on #brooklynbeta
• Talking about sketchbooks with Steven Ray
• Finally meeting Tyler Galpin in person
• Cooling off outside with Kyle Meyer

Definitely coming back next year.