So, I am going to An Event Apart next month in New Orleans. It will be my first web design conference and with speaker of such caliber as Andy Clarke, Cameron Moll, Dave Shea, Jeff Veen, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Aaron Gustafson, and Jason Santa Maria just to name a few, it promises to be a good one. I am really looking forward to this conference.

When did this happen?

Today actually. My Dad offered to pay for air fair for a conference and I had been debating whether or not this would be the one or not. Jeffrey Zeldman made a quick post on twitter today and it pushed me over board. I called my Dad to make sure the offer still stood, check with the boss to make sure it was cool, and then booked everything then and there.  It would be nice if work was paying for it, but oh well. I am really looking forward to this conference.

Never Before!

As previously mentioned, this will be my first conference, but surely not the last. I originally hope to attend SXSW, but that didn’t pan out. Honestly though, I think this will be a better event to attend being my first time doing this sort of thing. SWSW is so huge and busy that it can be a bit overwhelming and hard to meet people. This will be smaller and more manageable for a newb like my self. I am really looking forward to this conference.

Any last requests?

I hope to meet some of my heros at this conference. I have followed Andy Clarke and Dave Shea for some time now, and I am a big fan of Cameron Moll’s work. And of course there is the great Zeldman and Meyer duo. You can’t be in the same room as those two without being greatly impacted. Did I mention that I am really looking forward to this conference?

So, if you have been reading my blog at all for the past few months, then you know that I have been dealing with problems with my family. My parents are in the middle of a divorce and my mom has been struggling with a lot for the past few months. She was really delving into alcoholism and she had sunk into deep depression.

I am glad report that she has made a complete turn around. It has been a long time coming (or at least it feels like it), but God has really reached out to my Mom and she is now listening. She is getting back into shape, she has stopped drinking, and she is really making an effort to get her life back together. She has started going to church again and she is really making an effort to make the right decisions and to get back with God.

This is an answered prayer that we have been seeking for the past… oh… five or six years now. I just fell that sense I had done such a good job bashing my Mom here, that I should share about how she has changed.

Thank you to all who have been praying about this. I don’t really think that many people read this (like two people), but thank you for your prayers.

Matt