Todd Commits a Conference Faux Pas

This weekend I was at An Event Apart Seattle and happened to bring my digital camera with me. I snapped a shot of Eric Meyer giving his advanced CSS presentation (see above—man, did he look like crap. The camera doesn’t lie).

Jeffrey Zeldman came on a bit later and did a great talk about client relationships. I had the camera ready, waiting for him to come out of the shadows into the light (my BFA in Photography never fails me). He’d almost come out, and I’d turn the camera on—chirp!—then he’d shuffle back to the shadows, and the dying battery turned the camera off—dee-dee-dee-chirp!. Then he came out again—chirp!—and Zeldman said, “What’s that noise, a cellphone or something? Cool sound.” The woman in front of me turned around and drilled gory holes in my forehead with her eyes, and I felt myself going beet red. My wife reached over to my notebook and jotted, “Step away from the camera.”

Other than being the asshole with the chirping camera, it was a good conference. I have yet to find the widget that turns the camera’s speaker off though.