I made the trip to Portland, Oregon today to attend the WebVisions conference that starts tomorrow. This is the first time I've been to Portland and so far it seems like a nice enough place. The conference is a bit unique in that its a combination of workshops and speaker sessions.

I've attended many conferences over the years - SXSW, An Event Apart, Web Design World, Webmaster Jam Session - and they're all really good. An Event Apart in San Francisco last year was particularly good, but I thought it would be a good idea to try something different this year. I chose WebVisions this year because of the workshops they offered in addition to speaker sessions.

I'll be attending two workshops tomorrow: Good Design Faster, by Leah Buley and Designing for Content-Rich Sites, by Jared Spool. I've heard Jared speak before and he's excellent and I've heard good things about Leah, so hopefully tomorrow will be a super informative, educational day.

Here's a sample of sessions I'm thinking of attending later in the week:

Interaction Design in the Designer's Hands - Ryan Stewart
Bringing Design to Life: What Every Designer Should Know About Interface Engineering - Bill Scott
All Together Now: Aligning the UX Behind Your UI - Melissa Casburn
How To Win Projects and Influence Budgets - Daniel Schutzsmith
Process Meets Presentation: Visual Interaction Design - Jina Bolton

I'm hoping to post some notes and thoughts about some of the sessions here later in the week.