Bellingham is not too distant from Seattle. In fact, it’s less than a two-hour drive for most of my friends (who may or may not be driving like maniacs. I’m not sure how long of a drive it is for people obeying traffic laws.) So when I learned that An Event Apart would be in Seattle this year, I wept openly (but in a manly fashion, like an action star weeping over the death of his partner in an explosion-filled cop movie.)

Why? Because I knew I wouldn’t be going, mostly due to finances. The budget allotted to conferences already had been committed to Web Directions North. Now, WDN was worth it in every way, and a great experience. But as it lacked the notable Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, it left me craving.

As AEA: Seattle drew nearer, I concocted a plan. I would not be going to AEA, but if I arranged a road trip with some Mindfly co-workers, I could attend one of the fabulous evening parties, perhaps, rubbing elbows with important web folk and picking up some new CSS tricks by osmosis. I discussed this in a post last week (having contemplated abducting speakers in this comic) and managed to round up a full squad of Mindfliers to roll south with.

Then, on fateful Monday, things started to go wrong. Like the Fellowship of the Ring, things seemed peachy at first, but then like Gandalf toppling into a pit the first person canceled. After a brief pause people started jumping ship left and right, with Boromir stepping in front a few arrows and Samwise and Frodo ditching on the group. I felt like Aragorn, stuck with an elf and a dwarf, and instead of Seattle decided to head to Isengard… er… home.

The Twitter stream of AEA attendees that night was like a punch to the gut. However, it’s presence illustrated the next best thing to attending: cyber-stalking.

Thankfully due to the presence of web-geeks at a web standards conference (surprise surprise) a great deal of the material and experiences of An Event Apart Seattle are present for downloading and consuming. You can’t taste the lunches or feel the giddiness of standing in a crowd of people as far down the rabbit hole as you are, but you can learn quite a bit about what was said and how it went.

Here’s a skimming of offerings from the hearty soup of the Internet:

Zeldman’s AEA:Seattle After-Report

Warren Parson’s Massive Photostream of An Event Apart: Seattle

Think Brownstone’s AEA Sketches

Twitter Stream of AEA (With All the Numerous Hashtags Used)

Dan Cederholm’s Presentation Slides

Dan Rubin’s Presentation Slides

Aaron Walter’s Slides

Tara Hunt’s Presentation Slides

There’s probably many more sources out there. If you know of ones I missed, feel free to link them in the comments, please. As for you, AEA, maybe next year!

In one week, An Event Apart will be in Seattle. Seattle is less than a two hour drive from Bellingham, which is where Mindfly Web Studio is located and where I live.

It’s a gorgeous town. It’s also a bit too small to attract the conference circuit.

Having never been to An Event Apart, I would love to attend one that is so close. But the conference budget was used to attend the fabulous Web Directions North 2009 in Denver, and I’m additionally in the process of getting ready to move to a new apartment, so I can’t justify the expense.

Poor me. As tempting as it would be to go Annie Wilkes-style and abduct a presenter as today’s comic suggests (featuring Eric Meyer in the role of victim), I think I’ll pass on becoming a kidnapper and just cope with the disappointment.

However, along with a couple other Mindfliers, I am looking to see what interest there is in the local web developer community in forming a wagon train and crashing whatever social events are occurring in the evening after the conference stops for the day. Details are sketchy on who, how, or with what vehicles, but if you’re local, and you’re interested, feel free to start tweeting me about it.

The real debate is what day, and what venue. Perhaps some Seattleites or AEA organizers could shed some useful light into this? Monday seems like the right night, but the MT Opening Night party is likely an attendees-only event that would take up a huge chunk of the available social time, resulting in us Bellinghamsters crouching outside in some sort of tent city, hawking “Death to IE6″ wares and playing the bongos.

Actually, your average Bellinghamster doesn’t need an excuse to start playing drums and making hand-made necklaces. Things get a bit granola-esque up here.

Of course, even if I miss the event and it’s pool of attendees completely, I plan to haunt the web’s stream of useful notes, presentations, and articles that will pop up in it’s wake. I love that part of this industry.

Speaking of conferences, Jeremy Keith put up a blog post discussing his presentation at Bamboo Juice, which helps illustrate his impression of thinking long term (which I touched on in my last comic update). I’d like to point out in particular the line: “Think about what you would put on the gold disc attached to Voyager; now publish that material online.”

As of yet, I can think of nothing that I’ve ever generated as content, online, on paper, or otherwise, that deserves to take up space on a probe’s first contact disc. That is, unless topical humor about web standards counts as memorable. Which makes me wonder, what was humor like in Sumer? I can’t help but feel that largely the jokes wouldn’t translate well.