On April 23 and 24, I will be heading to Toronto for one of Canada’s main design events: FITC (Future, Innovation, Technology, Creativity). François Hoang, Montreal Meets‘ creator, was giving away a free ticket last week and I won! So thanks a bunch François!
Because of the high entrance price of the event ($699 for the 3-day pass), one could easily assume the design conference will be mind-blowing. I am on my guard though, especially after checking the schedule and the selected topics. They are numerous but several are aimed at an audience which consists of beginners in the fields of web design and programming. While I would never call ourselves gurus (we know lots, but let’s not be too cocky; there ARE people who know more) I do not need to be explained how HTML5 and CSS3 work, how they are the future and how Flash for web is losing terrain more and more every year.
Flash, really?
Speaking of Flash, FITC’s choice of using flash for their header made me cringe; who would think Canada’s most renown design event would willingly decide not to make their website mobile-friendly? I’m not even going to tackle the W3C standards that they did not follow. But I saw at least 3 conferences about Responsive Web Design in the schedule so it puzzles me that they would choose to promote a good practice and then act otherwise. But hey, at least they have an app! It’s low-res, allows no interaction whatsoever (you can star your favourite presentations but then have to go through the whole list of events again to find them – cute) and badly needs to be refreshed. But at least they tried! I’ve got to give them points for that.
So yeah, although some speakers seem neat, my expectations aren’t very high. All the better though as if the event is as great as its price suggests, I will be very impressed and inclined to write a very sweet review when I come back to Montreal on the 25th!
At FITC, you’ll find me in any of those four presentations:
- April 23: Responsive Web Design by Frederic Harper at 3:05PM
- April 24: Moving forward with Flash (or not?) at 2:15PM or Tall Tales from a Large Man by Aaron Draplin at 2:15PM
- April 24: How to give everything away by Kyle McDonald at 3:30PM
I might attend more of them and you may also find me walking around, snapping photos of this and that, but from the all synopsis I read, those seemed like the four most interesting to me. For your information, James White’s The Renegade also promises to be pretty awesome but I’ve already watched it.
Once again, big thanks to François Hoang for inviting me to this event! I hope it will be at least as great as MMTWO was so that I have something to talk about when I come back home as well as good memories.
If you’re reading this and are heading to FITC Toronto too, let me know! I’d also be interested to know about the fun things to do in the area. I’ll be with my partner Emilio for those 2 days and although I’ve visited Toronto before, my stay was too short both times to do anything. Just leave a comment or tweet me!
P.S. In case you’re wondering, the image for this blog article is a doodle parody of James White’s very awesome FITC wallpaper. Drawing it was the best part of writing this post. No really.