The last show of the year

I flew out to San Francisco last week for An Event Apart. This was the final event (apart) of the year so it was something of a bittersweet affair. This year the line-up for AEA was—with some minor modifications—consistent from city to city:

Seattle
Boston
Atlanta
Minneapolis
Washington DC
San Francisco

It was like a travelling roadshow, a carnival of web geekery. Next year's AEA line-up will be very different from city to city, showcasing lots of new speakers, so last week's San Francisco gig felt like the last concert of a tour before the band breaks up.

Well, we went out with a bang. It was a great conference. But then, every AEA this year has been pretty great (see my account from Boston, for example). I saw so many great presentations and met so many lovely people.

With An Event Apart San Francisco falling in December, I was able to extend my travel time into a Christmas-time trip to Jessica's family in Arizona …but not before spending a week in San Francisco.

I love that town. Admittedly that might be because there's so many people I know that live there but it's just a fun place to be a tourist. Coffee at Four Barrel, a Mission burrito, coffee at Blue Bottle, pizza in North Beach, beers at Toronado, wine-tasting in Napa—and all of it culminating in a once-in-a-lifetime trip to The French Laundry.

I put together a Map Tale of my trip, which turned out to be a great way of jotting down my experiences at the end of each day (or at the start of the next day if the day's exertions proved too much).

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