@media 2007 America was quite a show and it seems like a good time was had by all. With any luck, the conference was enough of a success that it will be feasible to bring it back to the United States again next year at some point – I really hope so anyway. The venue was excellent (even though there were some pretty serious renovations going on in the hotel at the time) as were the talks and the panel discussion(s). It was really fun to make some new friends and get to meet and speak with some of the best thinkers in the Web standards community. (more…)

This coming Tuesday evening will be the first in 15 weeks that I will not be spending 3 hours with my Adobe Creative Suite CS2 students at Leeward Community College (I guess that means that summer is just about here again). I am going to really miss them, it was such a great group. Everyone really got along well and it was wonderful to have a bunch of talented, like–minded folks in the room at the same time. (more…)

I am so happy to relay the totally excellent news that Molly Holzschlag will be returning to Honolulu this summer and leading a workshop Aug 25–26 entitled “Hot ‘n Spicy Style with CSS” at Pacific New Media. Molly is such a tremendous web standards evangelist, speaker, and educator, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the workshop books up fast so… heads up. In my opinion this gathering is not to be missed and the $250 price tag for the 2 day event is an absolute bargain. See you there!

I am very, very pleased to relay the good news that one of the premiere conferences focused on the topic(s) of standards based web design, @media 2007, is going to get about as close as it could possibly get to Hawaii this year without actually being here. It’ll be in San Francisco on May 24th-25th, 2007 and wild horses couldn’t keep me away (well, OK – maybe a herd of Clydesdales might have a fighting chance at making me a few minutes late)! (more…)

I am happy to announce that I have recently joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii Leeward Community College Office of Continuing Education & Workforce Development (OCEWD). Coming up this February, I will be teaching a series of courses (78 in-class hours) which focus on the Adobe Creative Suite 2 and principles of graphic design / layout for both the Web as well as print media. I will be covering Acrobat 7 Professional, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and InDesign CS2. The course(s) can be registered for individually or as a complete series. There are 12 seats in the classroom, each of which has a new dual processing Windows based PC with a dual flat panel monitor set up – nice. In my experience, having such a limited number of seats in the classroom is terrific because it allows me to spend critical one on one time with each student addressing specific questions and solutions. That is definitely the aspect of teaching I enjoy the most. Classes begin February 6, 2006 and are expected to fill up quickly, so if you are interested in the course(s) (or know someone who might be) make sure to register early. It will be a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you there!

The Hawaii leg of the Photoshop CS2 Power Tour, fearlessly led by master pixel tamer Scott Kelby (pictured far right), went off without a hitch yesterday at the Hawaii Convention Center. It was such a fun, informative and worthwhile way to spend the day. It was awesome to see Scott in action and working his digital image manipulation magic. Needless to say, his enthusiasm and expertise rubbed off on everybody who attended. The old cliche, “time flies when you’re having fun” was, in my mind, proven true once again today. The seminar just flew by and it was fantastic to see many of my friends and colleagues there. One of the highlights for me was being able to meet Scott and ask him directly about some of the Photoshop questions I have had for years and finally get authoritative answers. If you are interested in digital imaging, I highly recommend attending one of his seminars. With any luck, this event was successful enough for his organization that he will be back again next year to share more of his knowledge and passion.

I’m writing to get the word out about a really great learning opportunity for beginning and intermediate web designers here in the Honolulu, Hawaii area that want to expand their web design knowledge horizons. I teach a 2 quarter long (approximately 6 month) program at Heald College, Honolulu campus, which is a series of short courses focused on web design, technology, and administration. (more…)

If you are in the Honolulu, Hawaii area and enjoy pushing pixels (and vectors for that matter) around with Photoshop CS2 as much as I do, you might be interested to know that Scott Kelby is going to be holding an all day seminar at the Hawaii Convention Center on December 4th, 2006. For those of you who are not familiar with Scott Kelby, he is the author of several outstanding series of very popular Photoshop how-to books. I’ve tremendously enjoyed the Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks series he has written over the years and I understand that he is a phenomenal teacher in person. I’m looking forward to the day of pixel pushing adventures!