Whilst reading my latest RSS feeds on bloglines last night, I was reminded that Future of Web Design conference is on in New York on November 7-8. The line-up, location, and venue look superb.

New York is a fantastic place, and I’ve not had the opportunity to return there since my last visit in 2001 (pre 9-11) during my University days.

I do feel like it’s time to perhaps attend an upcoming prominent web conference, as my last attendance was @media 2006 in London, but FOWD is too far and too short notice, so perhaps @media 08 might be an option.

Anyways, I was scanning down the list of speakers and noticed a rather trendy looking chap called Elliot Jay Stocks is doing a talk called Destroying The Web 2.0 Look.

First thing that grabbed me was the name of his talk – sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would float my boat: take all that works and is good with some of the web2.0 visual and development ways of thinking, and spin it on it’s head, throw paint and gravel at it, whack it in a blender and then upload – lovely stuff. Not literally obviously, but you get my drift. At least, that’s what I imagine he means (correct me if I’m wrong)! Please note, I have written the description above based on the talk-title and Elliot’s photo alone (‘’,) ...

The second thing that grabbed me was that I recognised the guys name, and upon visiting his website all became clear:

I visited his website for the first time via CSS Beauty and was absolutely blown away by it. It is grungy, textured expressive and free, and yet has that considered, organised and attention to detail feel not unlike the marvellous veerle.duoh.com.

Naturally, I posted a comment:

On April 25, 2007 12:57 PM kevadamson said:
Beautiful and inspirational

and imagine my pleasant surprise to receive an email from the artist himself:

I came across your site via the comment you left on CSS Beauty about mine, and I’m here to say thanks and return the compliment: I think your site is excellent. Standards-based yet still very ‘scratchy’ and fun. There’s a lot of humour in there too, which I think people really go for. Plus – above everything else – your work is of a very high quality.

So well done, and thanks again for your original comment. :-)

Possible team-up one day?

Chuffed. ‘Team-up’? You betcha!

Anyways, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be great, or at the very least interesting and entertaining, if FOWD was actually like a WWE event, with all the FOWD speakers pitted against each other in a virtual (or actual, for that matter) Royal Rumble style cage-match battle – ‘Geeky Rumble’. My money would be on ‘the boy Stocks’! ...

<bodyslam>Alcantara, Bolton, Clarke, Davis, Fling, Hoekman, Kalmikoff, Li, Martin, Patterson, Robinson, Sims, Singer, Snook, Vinh, Williams, Zeldman</bodyslam>

C’mon! Don’t tell me you’ve never pictured the legend Zeldman in a leotard and mask?

‘Ang on? I’ve just realised the names in my bodyslam tag are actually an ordered list. Semantically incorrect jokes. Tut. Ah well …