It’s going to be a busy few weeks coming up for me: next Friday morning I’m flying to Boston for an appearance at the annual Society of News Designers conference. I’ll be on stage with New York Times Assistant Managing Editor Tom Bodkin — who is the top dog when it comes to design at The Times.

The joint appearance is being billed as something of a “print versus digital” face-off, but in actuality Tom and I get along very well. He’s a brilliant guy whose seen The Times through more than a handful of major changes over the years, and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him since I started working there. All the same, he and I have sometimes dramatically divergent approaches to our respective domains, and so our talk should be a lively one — if nothing else, Tom is deeply opinionated about the roles, responsibilities and rights of designers. This is a rare opportunity to see one of the most influential designers in media take me to task for all the compromises we make in the name of Web design. Come watch me sweat.

Unfortunately, I’ll only be in Boston for half a day, as I’m flying to Denver that evening to attend AIGA Next, the organization’s biennial design conference. I’ve been lucky enough to have been asked to give a talk on the main stage which is a very flattering honor. In hopes of living up to the occasion, I’ve been working away on a brand new talk that wraps up much of my current philosophy about design and digital media. It’ll post it here soon after the conference.

Then, later in the month, I’ll be in Philadelphia with the Adaptive Path gang for their MX East conference. On Mon 22 Oct I’ll be giving a talk about my experience at The Times, hopefully offering some valuable insights on building a creative team. It’s going to be fun, but really, this is my chance to see some of the terrific speakers that Peter Merholz and Jesse James Garrett have assembled.

A little further off, in November, I’ll also be running a workshop at Carson Systems’ Future of Web Design conference, making its first appearance in New York City. Back in February, I spoke at Carson’s Future of Web Apps conference in London and had a great time, so this should be at least as fun. Oh, the topic of the workshop is, if you can believe it, grids, though it will be a revised and expanded version of the talks I’ve given earlier in the year.