Of Books and Conferences Past  ## Metadata - Author: [[L. Jeffrey Zeldman]] - Full Title: Of Books and Conferences Past - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #webdesign - #community - #openSource - #wordpress - #publishing - #conferences - #career - #leadership - #funding - #developerRelations Author: L. Jeffrey Zeldman Source: Personal website Reference: https://zeldman.com/2024/12/05/of-books-and-conferences-past/ date created: 2025-08-21 00:00 --- # Title: Of Books and Conferences Past — reflections on building, impact, and endings ## Table of Contents: - [📌 Overview](#-overview) - [🗺️ Context: Bay Area “build to flip” vs NYC craft ethos](#️-context-bay-area-build-to-flip-vs-nyc-craft-ethos) - [📚 A List Apart: mission over monetization](#-a-list-apart-mission-over-monetization) - [📘 A Book Apart: early wins, lasting contributions](#-a-book-apart-early-wins-lasting-contributions) - [🎤 An Event Apart: single-track rigor and community](#-an-event-apart-single-track-rigor-and-community) - [⛔ Endings: COVID, costs, and care](#-endings-covid-costs-and-care) - [👤 Personal reckoning: strengths, blind spots, and fairness](#-personal-reckoning-strengths-blind-spots-and-fairness) - [🎁 Parting gift: still worth building](#-parting-gift-still-worth-building) - [📖 References](#-references) ### References: - Zeldman’s original essay: https://zeldman.com/2024/12/05/of-books-and-conferences-past/ - Historical context on HTML5/Flash: see “HTML5 For Web Designers” publication era - Industry concepts referenced: “Mobile First,” “Responsive Web Design” ## 📝 Summary: Zeldman contrasts two entrepreneurial mindsets: “build to flip” (Bay Area) versus “build to serve and endure” (NYC craft tradition). He recounts founding A List Apart (editorial mission over profit), spinning out A Book Apart (short, focused books that shaped UX/web practice) and An Event Apart (single-track, holistic conference that incubated big ideas like Mobile First and Responsive Web Design). He details how COVID-era economics and six-figure event contracts ended the conference, and how declining revenues pressured the press—despite prioritizing fair pay to authors, editors, and staff. He reflects on his strengths (creative leadership, community building) and blind spots (finance, lack of exit planning rooted in personal history and fairness ethics). He closes by encouraging creators to build anyway—pointing to past successes launched during downturns—and notes Happy Cog continues under new ownership. ## 📖 Main Content: - The essay positions entrepreneurship as values-driven craft: serving clients and sharing knowledge rather than optimizing for acquisition. - A List Apart prioritized editorial integrity, sometimes at personal cost, reducing ads and paying contributors despite limited revenue—mission-first sustainability challenges. - A Book Apart emerged at a pivotal moment (HTML5’s rise) and created a format—concise, practical monographs—that materially improved practitioners’ work and careers. - An Event Apart innovated on conference design: single-track, tightly thematic curation; speakers attended each other’s talks and iterated live, raising discourse quality and community cohesion. - Endings are treated with candor: COVID decimated events with high fixed costs; volunteer-heavy or adjunct conferences survived more easily. The press faced multi-factor revenue declines. Personal debt and emotional toll are acknowledged. - Zeldman self-assesses leadership: excels at creative direction and community stewardship; struggles with finance and exit planning, tracing this to formative experiences and a fairness ethic that deprioritized self-interest. - Final counsel: building is still worth the risk—even amid macro uncertainty—citing companies founded during crises. ### 🗒️ Notes - Mindsets - Bay Area: build-to-sell examples (Typekit→Adobe, Blogger→Google). - NYC craft: build to serve, no default exit plan. - A List Apart - Started 1997 for “sheer joy of sharing knowledge.” - Monetization via one careful ad per page; used to pay contributors. - Post-ads: slowed cadence, paid from pocket; sustained by volunteers. - A Book Apart - Co-founded with Mandy Brown (later CEO Katel LeDu) and Jason Santa Maria. - First title matched inflection point: HTML5 post-Flash era—strong initial sales. - Editorial mission: polished, fluff-free, first-time authors uplifted; created real practice impact. - An Event Apart - Co-founded with Eric Meyer; single-track, multi-day; unified themes. - Platform for “Huge Ideas”: Mobile First, Responsive Web Design. - Speakers embedded with audience, iterating talks in real-time. - Production excellence (Toby M.), community joy (Marci E.); growing diversity over time. - Endings - COVID + hotel contracts + paid staff = unsustainable; personal six-figure debt; partners earned nothing in final years. - Publishing: multiple financial pressures; leadership paid others first, not themselves. - Personal reflection - Strengths: starting/creative continuity; community. - Gaps: finance, exit planning; roots in family dynamics and fairness obsession. - Emotional residue: regret for authors affected by press closure. - Closing counsel - Still worth starting non-VC web businesses. - Precedent: Happy Cog during dot-com crash; A Book Apart during 2008 crisis. - Happy Cog thrives under third-party ownership. ## 📖 References: - Original essay: https://zeldman.com/2024/12/05/of-books-and-conferences-past/ - Contextual reading on Mobile First and Responsive Web Design for historical grounding: - “Mobile First” concept by Luke Wroblewski - “Responsive Web Design” by Ethan Marcotte ## 🗣️ Paraphrase: - On A List Apart’s ethos: - Original: “I started my personal site… and co-founded… A List Apart… for the sheer joy of sharing knowledge, with no concept of making money…” - Paraphrase: He launched his site and A List Apart purely to spread know-how, without any intention to monetize or sell; the drive was communal learning, not profit. - On conference design and impact: - Original: “Web designers liked our innovation of a multi-day, single-track conference… Huge Ideas including Mobile First and Responsive Web Design…” - Paraphrase: The industry embraced their curated, single-track events that advanced pivotal concepts—like Mobile First and RWD—arriving precisely when practitioners needed them. ## 📰 Newsletter: Learning web development this week is a reminder that craft and community outlast hype. From the archives: Jeff Zeldman reflects on building A List Apart, A Book Apart, and An Event Apart—ventures that elevated Mobile First and Responsive Web Design while paying writers and staff fairly. As we onboard new devs, let’s pair tutorials with the “why” behind the web’s best practices. Recent updates - WordPress: keep an eye on performance wins in Core and evolving block theme tooling. - New plugins: explore lightweight accessibility helpers, image optimization with modern formats, and GitHub Actions for automated plugin testing. Community highlights - Mentorship cohorts for first-time contributors are open—bring a friend. - Funding sustainability conversations are heating up; transparency matters. Resources - On craft over exits: Zeldman’s reflection at “Of Books and Conferences Past.” - Refresh RWD fundamentals: Ethan Marcotte’s seminal work. If you’re building in a downturn, you’re in good company. Keep shipping, keep teaching, and share what you learn—our community runs on generosity. ## ✅ Action Items: Strategic prompt for aligning articles with your role (GoDaddy Developer Advocate, OSS/WordPress educator, aspiring OSPO director): - Mission alignment - Identify how the article models transparent leadership, equitable compensation, and community-first decision-making. - Map lessons on exit planning and financial sustainability to OSPO governance and funding frameworks. - Contributor engagement - Extract tactics that foster inclusive participation (e.g., single-track focus = shared context; uplift first-time authors). - Design contributor pathways: authoring docs, speaking, mentorship, code review. - Education design - Translate “fluff-free, focused monographs” into modular curricula for PHP/JS/HTML/CSS/Git. - Build iterative feedback loops (speakers iterating - Summary: Of books and conferences past: A maker apart looks back on things well-made but no longer with us. - URL: https://zeldman.com/2024/12/05/of-books-and-conferences-past/ Some of A Book Apart’s 50-odd primary paperbacks, arranged like a color spectrum, and photographed against a piece of wood. Just as nobody who marries spends their wedding day planning their divorce, almost nobody starts a business contemplating what rocks it will eventually splinter and break upon, and how to build a life raft for themselves. **I take that back**. Some folks I know, who played pivotal roles in the evolution of the web, actually started their businesses with a clear goal of selling them to somebody bigger. Like Typekit was designed to sell to Adobe. Or Blogger was designed to sell to Google. Such folks, several of whom are now post-economy wealthy, lived in the Bay Area in the 1990s and early 2000s, where building to flip was widely discussed and accepted. #### Meanwhile, in NYC… I, on the other hand, live in New York. So I started my web businesses (like [Happy Cog™ design studio](https://web.archive.org/web/20060428152733/http://happycog.com/)) to serve clients, as NYC creatives have always done, and with no understanding that I would one day need to leave the company and should have an exit plan. Why would I exit? Why would I ever stop doing work that brought excitement and meaning to my life? Similarly, I started my personal site with its “Ask Dr. Web” tutorials in 1995, and co-founded my web design publication, [*A List Apart*](applenotes:note/59e3ffd7-b15d-4a8e-93a4-c4412d03f487?ownerIdentifier=_ab35500906b57133eafa73464d88463e), in 1997, for the sheer joy of sharing knowledge, with no concept of making money, let alone of one day selling the business. Eventually, despite my naivete, and mostly thanks to [Jim Coudal](https://alistapart.com/article/beyourownclient/) and [Jason Fried](https://world.hey.com/jason), *A List Apart* began making money by running one carefully screened ad per page. I used that money, as you will expect, to pay our writers, editors, and producers. And [when it came time to stop running ads](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/29/r-i-p-the-deck/), I slowed our publication schedule, paid writers out of my own pocket, and worked with a small crew of fellow volunteers, who published ALA because we believed in the mission. (Still do.) If I had come of business age in San Francisco, I likely would have sold *A List Apart* to somebody like [O’Reilly](https://www.oreilly.com/), but that was never my plan because I make toys to play with, not to give away. #### An ecosystem apart In spite of A List Apart’s running at a loss, in the early 2010s I co-founded two businesses that spun out of it: [An Event Apart design conference](https://web.archive.org/web/20160306165608/http://aneventapart.com/) with [Eric Meyer](https://meyerweb.com/), and [A Book Apart](https://abookapart.com/) with [Mandy Brown](https://aworkinglibrary.com/) (later replaced by CEO [Katel LeDu](https://liminalbloom.co/)) and [Jason Santa Maria](https://jasonsantamaria.com/). And during those first years, business was great. We published [*HTML5 For Web Designers*](https://abookapart.com/products/html5-for-web-designers.html) the day after Steve Jobs, waving an iPhone on the world’s biggest stage (okay, sitting at his desk), [announced that Flash was dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash) because HTML5 would bring app-like dynamism to the web using open standards instead of proprietary code. It (our first book, I mean) sold brilliantly. “Gee, publishing isn’t that hard” I naively told myself. (No, I *knew* it was hard. My favorite publishers had been laying off my favorite editors for ten years before my partners and I took the plunge. But the early success did make me think the books we published about web design would always find a large, eager audience. In time, I would learn otherwise.) And while we began the publishing house by relying on the best writers we knew personally to write about the topics they were most passionate about, I’m proud to say that, as we went along, we also discovered brilliant first-time book authors, helping them create perfectly polished, fluff-free manuscripts that made genuine contributions to our readers’ understanding of UX and all it entails. (And not just to our readers. The insights *they* brought to their work after digesting our books rubbed off on their colleagues.) In giving these brilliant writers a platform, we not only helped them take their careers to the next level, we also helped people who create web content think and work better, which in turn helped the people who used the websites, applications, and products our readers designed and built. Of that, I am proud. #### Stay hungry [An Event Apart](https://zeldman.com/category/aneventapart/) (RIP) was also a damned fine early success. Web designers liked our innovation of a multi-day, single-track conference, with a holistic approach to web design, code, and content, and unifying themes between the individual talks. Our freaking-amazing speakers debuted Huge Ideas including [Mobile First](https://talks.ui-patterns.com/videos/mobile-first-luke-wroblewski) and [Responsive Web Design](https://vimeo.com/groups/106374/videos/34662135)—ideas which, like perfect contextual menus in UX, arrived at the very moment designers needed them. Not only that, but these humble geniuses also sat in the auditorium with our audience for all three days of each conference event: listening to each other’s presentations, and updating their own presentations to better bounce off each other’s ideas and the evolving themes of that particular show. I could spend hours telling you how our producer Toby M. made miracles happen at every show, or how person-in-charge Marci E. brought joy to our community. How many of our speakers became authors. How some “graduated” from An Event Apart as newcomers replaced them. How the diversity of our speaking line-up, which wasn’t terrific in 2008, improved greatly each year. (Not that we ever said, “We need another black speaker” or “We need a trans speaker” or what-have-you. Just that we learned to swim outside the pool we came from, and discover great talent everywhere.) Our speakers were also almost uniformly Just Nice Good People, which doesn’t always happen when you’re collecting the greatest minds in an industry. That’s not even to mention the incredible people who attended our shows, some of whom became lifetime friends for me. So why, given the joy these businesses brought to everyone connected to them, including me, would my partners and I have even conceived of an exit strategy? We wanted the Good Times to roll on forever. But of course they never do. #### Things end COVID did in An Event Apart. Some conferences survived, of course. Different priorities, different overheads, different business models. Some that survived do not pay their speakers. Others, where the conference is an adjunct to a bigger business, laid off or reassigned conference staff while the pandemic made live events impossible. Others that survived mostly rely on volunteer labor, whereas we had paid staff. They were worth their weight in platinum, and we’d have paid them more (because they were worth more) if the pandemic and six-figure hotel contracts hadn’t made continuing the show impossible. My partner and I earned nothing during the business’s last five years, and got personally stuck with a six-figure debt when the event closed. It is what it is. Although books should be COVID-proof, multiple financial problems eventually beset our publishing house as well. For most of the run of the business, my partner and I earned nothing beyond the glow of contributing to our community’s knowledge. We paid our CEO, authors, and editors, kept nothing for ourselves, and tried, oh how we tried, to keep the business going as its revenues tanked. Speaking only for myself, I’ve learned that I am good at starting businesses and keeping them going creatively, as long as somebody else figures out the money. I suck at that, and I’m obsessed with the notions of fairness and self-sacrifice that were drummed into me by a narcissistic family that valued me for taking on the roles they were emotionally incapable of handling—such as bringing up my baby brother in my father’s absence, which no child is equipped or should be asked to do, and yet it happens all the time. Growing up this way made me put my own self-interest last. Which is also why it never occurred to me to plan an exit. And by the time I needed to do so, the businesses were not in shape to sell. Closing a conference is bad, but attendees can go to other conferences, and speakers can speak at other conferences; closing a conference doesn’t end a community. It sucks for the business but doesn’t strand participants. But closing a publishing house hurts like hell, and you feel you let everybody down. I know how much our closing hurt some of our authors, and I think about that, instead of the good we achieved, when I look back. No doubt when my partner and I write the large personal checks to cover our deceased business’s outstanding debts, we’ll be regretting the harm our closing caused, not basking in the warm glow of how many careers we changed for the better. Like the standup comedian who obsesses about the guy who’s frowning at table 3, and doesn’t hear the laughter of the rest of the crowd. We also, hopefully, won’t focus too closely on our financial wreckage. Just pay the bill, and move on. Anyway, I hadn’t publicly addressed the endings of these businesses, so I figured it was time to do so. I’m sharing my experience only. If you ask any of the people I worked with on these projects, they might have a different story to tell. And that would be their story, and it would be every bit as valid as anything I’ve said here. I also didn’t ask permission of my partners, speakers, or authors before sharing these thoughts. Probably I should have. But, hey. As I’ve said. I’m speaking here only for myself. So, anyway. #### Parting gift Is it worth the risk of starting a web-related business that isn’t a venture-backed startup? I still think it is, and I applaud all who try. Heck, I might even do so myself someday. If you’re doubtful because of (((gestures at everything))), it might be worth noting that I started Happy Cog™ during the dot-com crash, when studios were closing all around me. And we launched A Book Apart during the world financial crisis of late 2008. Don’t let (((all this))) deter you from trying something bold. Let me know when you do. I’ll keep watching the skies. P.S. Under swell third-party ownership and management, [Happy Cog](https://www.happycog.com/) is still going strong. [Check it out](https://www.happycog.com/)!, Of Books and Conferences Past, L. Jeffrey Zeldman, 01jens914sray9746t7rp9gt1r.