David Kreps Blog

@media2007

@media07Introduction
So here I am again at the @media conference – the third in a row – and this time in Islington. Unfortunately there is no wireless at the venue so I can’t post live, and this blog will have to be a bit of a digest – notes taken during the day and thoughts at the end, all posted on Saturday afternoon.

@media 2005 was excellent – a real wake-up that so many of us existed – though the majority of the speakers seemed to be preaching to the converted, and pitching below the level of the audience. There was a great moment when one of the speakers asked people to put their hands up if they’d been making websites for more than two years. Everyone put their hands up. Now keep if your hand up if over three years, four years, etc etc I was quite surprised and pleased to be amongst the two or three people in the hall with their hands still in the air when it got to ten years. See my 1995 website for Tamworth Arts Centre – the first Arts Centre website on the web, remembered by some web surfers who were around at the time, like Mike Ryan of Idaho.

@media 2006 was bigger, broader, pitched better, but somehow less exciting than the first one. Unsurprising you might say. At the end of Andy Clarke’s closing keynote, however, in response to a question from the floor complaining about the state of education in web design, to which Andy Clarke responded with an anecdote about his son correcting his secondary school teacher, I got the microphone and said – “speaking as a university lecturer teaching Web Standards at Bachelor’s level…” but was unable to finish because the whole hall burst into applause! A guy from Yahoo Europe turned round from the row in front of me once I’d said a few more words and sat down, and introduced himself, and there was a buzz of people around me for a while, including Andy Budd from ClearLeft. It was quite fun. In the year since, the Web Standards Book for the University sector that I was supposed to be principal author and editor of for Freinds of Ed (A Press), never came to fruition – Andy Budd dropped out, without giving any reason, and the publisher I think lost interest after that. I have plenty of material towards the three chapters I was supposed to write, and a first draft of a chapter from Phil Morle, but nothing else. The Yahoo guy never did reply, despite writing to him twice, but I have had at least one or two people write to me over the year, who took my card at @media2006, looking for my graduates!

The lesson of course is that the things that arise from contacts and meetings at conferences only rarely come to anything…

Let’s see what @media 2007 is like. (more)

09 06 07 - 16:34 - da5idk - default| No comments - § ¶ Share on Facebook