An Event Apart

What can I really say about the conference called An Event Apart? I fell in love with web design. My training, for lack of a better name, is in Computer Engineering. With capital letters. I have a diploma with a degree that takes the better part of a page:

Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering

What does that mean? It means that, in theory, I can do whatever I want with a computer. No less. Also, if all I have is a bunch of silicon chips and electronic components, I can design and build a computer from scratch, running an OS designed from scratch as well, with all that that implies. Would I do something like that? No. It's done already and it would be a waste of time to be that hardcore. Commercial computers are perfectly good for whatever I want them.

With all this knowledge in one of the most complex and broad disciplines, I still prefer to do web development. What kind of development? Simple stuff. I'm not really into creating new technologies, although that would be nice, but I like to take technology that someone else created and apply them in new creative and unexpected ways. More than anything, the conference opened my eyes to the visual and graphic design of the web, and how important it is. Most people make decisions based on what they can see. If you use a service like Flickr, for example, you can understand that most people are not interested in what advanced technologies are going on behind it, or who created them. What matters is that it looks good and works.

Last night I was talking to Anwar, who studies graphic design, and I was telling him precisely this. I told him how I have all this great knowledge that goes far and beyond what I'm really interested in. He responded something simple, but it went down deep. He said "No doubt about it, you're an artist. You just don't know it yet."

Wow.

He left me totally confused. Have I been in the wrong place all this time? I mean, I enjoy immensely what I do. Programming all these advanced and complex systems that no one understands but my fellow geeks is fun and all, but my real pride and joy is when people that's not from this side of the geek force see an advanced software and decide that they like it, not because it's high-tech, but because it's appealing to their senses (or interests). Example? This website. I feel the need to express myself artistically, be it by writing, creating something visual, or cooking. But I discovered that my passion is not even to create something, but to inspire.

Inspiration.

When I write an article like this one, I want to somehow inspire those who read it. When I take a picture, I want someone to say "wow" and hate me, not because I can take a nice picture, but because I was there and could experience it's content from a first-person view. If I cook something, it's all good: it can be the best dish in the world (it most likely isn't), but if there's no one to share it with, or to tell about, it's bland. Same with a website. At my current job I'm building a very "prefessional" and "corporate" website for a very specific list of clients. My happiness in such a project comes not from creating quality stuff, but from pleased customers that tell me that they like the fact that I put attention to the details that make the use of the website a pleasure. It doesn't even matter that there's a fat user manual that they need to read to be able to use the website. What matters to them is that even that manual interacts with the user in the way they would expect something appealing would. It feels good and makes me feel good about it.

I don't really want to give up my engineering roots, but I don't want to be a proper "engineer" either, in the traditional sense of the word. I want something more. I want my work to inspire. Each day I feel a greater gap between the engineering clan and me, and a stronger bond between the misfits that are called artists. And I realized all this while at the conference.

There is so much I want to learn. I want to learn visual design to apply it to my web development. I want to learn how to cook well to share my culinary creations by means of this same web-based medium I am hopefully helping to shape, and I want to travel all around the world to see everyone's perception of what I'm saying, and a bit more.