I'm currently bobbing up and down riding economy class all the way from Cardiff to Norwich, feasting on WiFi provided by Galaxy S4 via mobile tethering. I have nothing better to do for the next two hours, so I'll just give a summary of Handheld 2013 which I don't believe many regulars here attended.

 

It was okay. That's it. I hadn't built up tremendous expectations in my head leading into the event but, to be perfectly honest, the entire conference probably would've crashed into hurdle rather than leaping over it. Only a few of the speakers were contextual, powerful and drove their stories home. A sad majority of the nine speakers failed to enlighten, teach or inspire at least myself, I obviously can't account for the alleged 'thousand' in attendance.

 

Syd Lawrence bless his heart fumbled the introduction, although his winning personality kept him buoyed. Eddie Machado, the designer of the Handheld 2013 site, was off his game and moaned about JavaScript and Photoshop, snore. Andy Clarke you could tell was insightful and a likeable fellow, but failed to articulate his topic of 'how to tell your client he's an idiot without getting fired', which he barely touched upon. Worst of all was Ling.

 

People found her funny, sure - and they probably won't ever forget her bouncy, bubbly rant. But, speaking from a genuine web designer's perspective (a perspective I maintained throughout the conference), she completely and utterly failed in her attempt to bury mobile/responsive design.

 

Her principal arguments were that "you couldn't fit anything on a mobile screen" and "nobody buys a car on a mobile so why bother", referring of course to her legendary animation site. She didn't talk about tablets. She didn't give an alternate solution. So she failed. Maybe I need to lighten up, but if you're going to try and kill the thing I love then at least bring a deadlier weapon.

 

I actually had a small Twitter spat with Ling after the event: https://twitter.com/simonrawks/status/406146765533245441 - followed by this - https://twitter.com/simonrawks/status/406356874410618880.

 

Some of the other speakers were good on their delivery and presented some enjoyable stories, but many of which were completely irrelevant to mobile web design. So I'm not walking away with a grin from ear-to-ear, and the fact that Ling's session is the most socially active right now is a conclusive indictment of the entire conference.

 

Kudos if you read all that. I also met Jack. He was cool. No mention of cats though. *sadface*

I really enjoyed a lot of the talks, but yeh, I agree with the speakers on your bad list. I was glad it wasn't entirely around mobile design, I kinda thought it wouldn't be anyway, but it was cool how it involved the business side too. I enjoyed the talks about changing your process, the data visualisation stuff and Zeldmans was just all around good advice. I didn't mind Andy Clarke's talk, I took quite a lot from it.

 

The biggest issue I found with a lot of it was it all seemed to be very 'high budget' stuff they were showcasing. It's always hard to see how you could altar your own processes when it's like that. They're obviously talking about some projects that are easily over the 100k mark.

Apologies for the lack of cat stuffs, I was actually wearing cat socks (I think, might of been the day after though) but I must of forgot. I was a bit drunk by then, I'd been in the bar since just after 5:00.