This saturday, I attended Pittsburgh Tech Fest, a local one-day conference.  I was still a little worn out from MidwestUX (and the con crud cold that followed), but had a fantastic time learning a few new things and hanging out with friends.  The recent growth in Pittsburgh’s tech community is very exciting, and events like this are a prime example of that growth.

Michael Norton did a great keynote about being a better software developer.  I have heard a lot of the pieces before, but they definitely bear repeating, and it was nice to see them combined into one talk.  We also had some interesting conversations between talks and at lunch.

I was glad Steve Klabnik did his talk about “Designing Hypermedia APIs” because I missed it a couple months prior at Pittsburgh Ruby.  It was engaging, educational, and included a nice mix of philosophy and politics.  We also had an interesting conversation about the protests going on in Quebec prior to the talk – this is something I (and you) really ought to know more about.

I continued my efforts from MidwestUX by sketchnoting several of the presentations.  Check out my favorites below.

Node.js: A Guided Tour

Exploring UX Techniques by Ari Font

Designing Hypermedia APIs by Steve Klabnik