I went to Webvisions PDX 2013 this year. This is the third year in a row I’ve been to Webvisions at the Portland Convention Center. It’s a good show but you can tell it’s struggling a bit to find it’s comfort zone. I usually attend the Web-related workshops and sessions. This year I did two workshops on CSS3 UI Design and CSS3 Animation. I really found Rachel Nabor’s CSS3 Workshop and session to be pretty enlightening but also got me thinking about ways in which to apply this fairly bleeding edge tech. The obvious downsides to CSS3 animation is that there are very few tools to animate with so it’s mostly code driven, which for longer animations can be awkward. However the trend is obvious that Flash as a Web animation tool is in decline. That said, many of these techniques work well in small doses – but for the most part you need to set up triggers and timing with JQuery (at least in the short term).

I also really liked Rafa Soto’s Build Your Brand the Rockstar Way session. It was funny, but resonated truth. It really helped underscore in my mind, how I wanted to build brands.

We’ll have to see what 2014 has in store for next year.

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