Fantastic talk tonight out at Refresh Boston from Fred Leblanc. Really great content and an equal blend of concept, business and practical considerations when designing and developing for the mobile space.

The talk really solidified once again for me how utterly vital it is for the design community to investigate as much of the current trends and patterns that are already established, but then take another step and ask the vital question, 'Is there another way? A better way?' ... that more than the visual design, more than the 'look and feel', we need to always consider the delivery. The WAY we use these new technologies. And what sort of information suits the experience and our relationship with these devices.

In the follow up casual chatter a few people were gathered around Fred and of course we were all discussing the iPhone and the iPad. Of course, I was wearing my iPad ( SO uncomfortable ). Jist of the afterglow ... the current conventions, as established as they seem, as smooth as they might be, are relatively new conventions. We need to all take 2 steps back as often as possible and constantly ask ourselves 'How can we make these experiences better? What's this device best suited to tell us? What is the story of these machines and how we use them? How can we innovatively connect the available dataSets 'out there' to the people using the technologies? And to the places they use the technologies?'

We can make these movies better.

And a fantastic use of humor to keep the group engaged + having fun ;]

Fred gave one of the best presentations I've seen in my life tonight at Refresh Boston, hands down. His use of humor was absolutely perfect and his slides were both useful and interesting, but the focus remained on what he had to say and not necessarily on what he had to show.

If you've ever met Fred, you know that he's easy going and is the kind of person you can talk to for hours. That showed tonight, as Fred smoothly transitioned from slide to slide, never losing the audience and keeping us all engaged. I feel like he could talk to us about the mobile web for 3 hours without any of us losing interest.

The most important thing that Fred accomplished, and something I wish more speakers would do, was the real-world examples that included code that was well explained and just enough of it that it wasn't overwhelming. He walked through how he built link text, a little geolocation-powered web app that tells you how close Fred is to your current location. It was a rare behind-the-scenes look at how another developer/design works, and it was both intriguing and educational.

I can't think of a single criticism to give on Fred's presentation, and that's the honest truth. Hopefully this isn't the last we see of him as a speaker, because it would be a real shame.

Seconding @PatrickHaney - the talk was great, and major props to Fred for walking us through the technical implementation of a mobile web app, in a way that was clear and easy to follow along. Thanks, Fred!