Speaking at Responsive Day Out 2

At the start of this year I was over in New York. It was a long weekend away, and despite it being an East Coast timezone rather than the West of my recent trips stateside, I was pretty horribly jetlagged. Waking up ridiculously early usually meant an hour lounging around in bed, finding local diner locations to hit up for breakfast, checking some emails and catching up on everything that had happened in the rest of the world whilst my time- travelling body had slept.

One morning, I awoke to an email from Jeremy Keith, titled “Responsive Day Out”. Having been to a number of Clearleft events before, I know that Jeremy tends to send out friendly, informative emails in the run up to events. Clearly whilst I’d been asleep I must have missed a new conference announcement, and here was the mail shot to accompany it.

It was a little bit more than that. Jeremy was actually asking whether I’d be able to talk on a certain topic, and if so, whether I would like to do it at Responsive Day Out. The answer was immediately yes, absolutely. My response actually included the following:

“This has really made my day, and that’s saying something considering all of the awesome stuff I was already looking forward to doing today.”

I was going to buy a MUPPET that day, folks. That’s how excited I was.

So ever since January I have kept the secret, although I was dying to let people know. I received word that the cat was out of the bag when I got a twitter notification from my friend Gary:

Might go to the Responsive Day Out just so I can loudly heckle @sjenkinson ;)

— Gaz Aston (@gazaston) March 11, 2014

I’m not sure how much I can say and how much is meant to be a surprise, but my talk has some themes of attitudes and responsibility. It’s a very short one, as with the format last year, which is a new challenge for me as all of my previous ones have been around an hour. I’m still working on how to get the muppet in.

Last year was a very happy memory – the talks were wonderful, I loved the format and the low key atmosphere, and it was an enjoyable day all round. This year looks to be just as good if not better, and although I’m already extremely intimidated by the quality of the speakers I’ll be sharing a stage with (Ethan Marcotte! Rachel Andrew! Stephen Hay! Ida Aalen! Oliver Reichenstein! Stephanie Rieger! Kirsty Burgoine!), you should all come and join in the fun. Tickets go on sale THIS WEEK, on Tuesday 25th March through responsiveconf.com for the meagre price of £80 + VAT, and will likely sell out fast if last year is anything to go by. The event will be held on Friday 27th June in Brighton. Ask your boss, tell your friends! And please do come and say hi if you see me on the day.

Update: here’s a direct link to the ticket page, and you’ll be able to grab them from 12 noon.