What a day.  This is all I can say. Inspired, invigorated & thoroughly enjoyed are some of the words that come to mind.

I will fill you in…

The Conference Started with a bight and I must say breezy talk from Tim Van Damme, (No not Claude, Tim) on Passion. It was nice too see someone as equally as passionate about design as me, although if im honest he has every right, some quality work from the man. I unfortunately didn’t get to take many notes as I was trying to be uber designer cool and use the wireless, which as per usual at these things it fell over and decided not too work #waterfrontwirelessfail

Although it improved throughout the day, so it wasn’t all bad.

Andy Budd was next and an Inspiring talk was delivered on the Art of Seduction or should I say Seductive Design.  Yea I know I was struggling to see where he was going with it at the beginning, but it turned out too be an epic talk with some great Metaphors.  Approach, being a particular favourite as he said… ‘What is Beautiful is good’.

Next up was Mark Boulton from Mark Boulton Design, see what he did there. Nice.  This guy LOVES the Typography Shizzle Majjizle.  I particularly enjoyed the font-face talk on how we will potentially be able to use any typeface on designs in the future in CSS, but the problems we will face and how it will hopefully evolve.

Ryan Sims from Virb was next.  He is a chilled out dude.  But a man of great lines.  ‘Talent is the desire to practice.’ Get back to the Basics and take a look at how we can become good, better or even great.

My favourite was next, Wilson Miner from Every Block.  This dude had Beautiful slides.  Maybe one to many though, ha joking Mr Miner ;) I get asked all the time what do you do and my analogy is ‘Imagine if you are a builder, you do all the dirty work, and I come in and do the interior designing’.

The thing is I am wrong.

Designers and Developers work so closely now that they are a hybrid, code is design just as design is code.  The two together are mashed so that in turn you can see a project from origin to completion so that its finished just as you intended.  Its all about Design AND Build.

Eric Meyer took the stage at the last to speak on a more tangled web, it was a privledge to hear him as I had read some of his CSS Books in the past… Hes also hilariously funny.  He talked about how things are moving faster on the web like online operating systems and how we will adapt as designers to keep up… Unfortunately I had to leave early so I missed the end, if anyone wants to fill me in leave a Comment!

Congratulations to @goodonpaper for a fantastic job, and all other involved it was so good to see the web design community in NI together for such a fantastic event right on our doorstep… :) Here’s too Build 2010! And I reckon we may have given someone with a ‘Gimmick Hat’ something to think about ;)

Tim Van Damme, tweeted a great line… ‘Conferences should make you feel really small, but leave you inspired to grow. Build is doing that.’

And let me tell you it did.

So in the Leadup to Build Conference I attended an ‘Evening With Airside’ a Design Company in London.  Sometimes its good too feel inspired and after I had heard them I felt just that.

These guys are competent in all things Design, Web, Graphic Motion, Video all the Shizzle Majizzle.  It was interesting how they work on Projects and what their thought and Processes are.

However then came the icon line of the talk.

‘We should care for our websites, continue to evolve them and challenge boundaries.’  This struck a cord, sometimes I can get stuck in a rut, I need to rediscover the passion that I once had and push my own boundaries both design and life.

Thanks Airside (even though I didnt get a free calender) #badtimes

Airside Online

Courtesy of IFA Website

Lets get a few things striaght here:

1. I love football
2. I love the country I live in (Hi, Im Kyle Boyd im a Web and Graphic Designer I love it here and I love what I do… sounds familiar?)
3. I love my countrys football team

So I had a major surprise to find out out that the IFA (Irish Football Association) has a Cerebral Palsy Squad.  Brilliant.

The squad meets every two weeks since its formation in 2005 and is coached by the IFA Disability Football Department team of Alan Crooks and Mal Donaghy. It recently secured its first away win with a 5-1 thrashing of the Republic of Ireland.  I am so excited to here about this as I always dreamed of playing football.  Its probably all too late for me now but its great knowing that their is a CP Squad for those with the condition that if they want to play some great football they can.

This is in itself can only raise awareness of CP and for that I am grateful.  I can only hope are boys can do the business as they prepare for the Home Nations Cerebral Palsy Tournament in England this July!

For more info see the IFA Website