We held the third gathering of the Markup & Style Society last night (a local Boston-area meetup for web geeks that Ethan Marcotte and I started a while back). This one was different and contained more awesomeness, for a variety of reasons.

The kind folks at Filament Group hosted the event at their downtown Boston studio. The incredibly generous Freshview donated 18 pizzas, beer and wine for all 50 attendees. Freshview are makers of Campaign Monitor, the popular email newsletter campaign app, as well as creators of useful tools and resources for newsletter designers. Thank you thank you, Freshview.

Adobe donated two copies of CS3 Web Premium that we raffled off along with a few books at the end of the night. So we knew at least two people would go home happy no matter what happened.

While previous meetups have all been about beer and socializing, we may have surprised people with four short talks. A free, mini conference if you will. Ethan gave a brilliant presentation on some tricks he's enabled in his freakishly bulletproof, fluid layout (Ethan's write-up). I rambled on about "Gridlasticness": taking an em-based approach to a strict grid. Josh Porter talked about craftsmanship as it relates to the web -- a topic near and dear to my heart. It was sprinkled with "right on" moments and quotes like this, regarding the Shaker design philosophy:

Don't make something unless it is both necessary and useful, but if it is both necessary and useful, don't hesitate to make it beautiful.

Scott Jehl closed the show with an excellent talk on how progressive enhancement plays a big role in the projects he tackles at Filament Group. Read more about Filament's process over at their newly launched lab (Filament's Maggie Costello Wachs' write-up).

All in all, 'twas a great night, and it made up for seeing just one single panel at SXSW just days earlier. We'll have to do it again soon. Blatently tooting our own horn here, Patrick Haney dug it, evidenced by his tweet:

Really felt like I got more out of the four short talks tonight at M&SS than I did at a week of SXSW

Thanks to the speakers, sponsors and especially Filament for the venue. We've also been planning on adding more formal workshops or full day conference-style events to the mix in the future. New England needs more of this, methinks. Stay tuned.

Update: Jenny Bergman has posted some wonderful photos of the event. Thanks, Jenny!