The day began with "Docathon for Conference Organisers" hosted by Kudra. For me it was definitely the one session I had the most to input and think I managed that. I had previously given kudra a working document that I'm planning to hand back to Jim and the guys at TPF. However, my document is very YAPC specific and this session was aimed at looking at a general document that could be used by anyone organising any kind of open source conference. The mix of people was good and the conference experience was quite varied. The previous day I met Ryan Carson, who runs a business organising conferences, and at the end of EuroFOO, Gina from O'Reilly, came and found us expressing interest about getting involved. Since the conference there are moves to actually do something too, which is always positive.
After the allotted hour was up, I headed over to the 'Ask Later' session. I had hoped to catch Piers doing his photography spot, but it appears he'd done it in the first hour. Perhaps I can persuade him to do it again if ever he gets to come to a Birmingham.pm tech meet. The second hour featured some good presentations though. Basically the idea of 'Ask Later' is similar to lightning talks, except the requirement is 20 slides/photos with just 20 seconds each. The format is known as Pecha Kucha (TM) and originates from Tokyo, although the creator appears to live in Milton Keynes (how on earth can something so creative ever come out of Mk!!! ... apart from our Tom of course). It's an interesting idea, and I note that OpenOffice can manage the timing for you, so I may start investigating doing more presentations with Impress.
The 'Ask Later' talks I did see included one about Playground, which seemed to be a similar idea to OpenGuides, Tom Steinberg did a talk about mysociety.org and the offshoots such as TheyWorkForYou, which I'm going to investigate further. The last slot was by Andrew Turner and his 'Your House is A Robot' talk. The idea being that we can pretty much enable the electronics in the house to respond to our movements and daily schedule. So heating can be timed more accurately, even remotely, the security system can enable/disable depending whether our mobile phone is in range, and morning alarm can trigger all sorts of things to help get you up in the morning. The most surprising thing was how cheaply this can all be done for these days, without any additional internal wiring.
I next went to see '4 reasons the web sucks'. I'm not sure what I expected to hear, but I kind of felt the presentation didn't really go far enough. The bullet points were:
They're all points that are easy to mention, but to actually qualify why they are a problem and way in which to improve or fix them is not so easy to do. It felt like trying to put the world to rights with a taxi driver. Yes you have a good discussion, but nothing ever comes out of it.
Gervase Markham did however, take the opportunity at the end to step up and highlight an issue of security that is quite annoying. He used the Nominet letters that most of us get in the UK as an example, to show how the "tamper-proof" seal of the passcode can actually be read with just the aid of a torch shining on it! Apparently banks used to use this method (and I do recall PIN codes being sent like this), but changed rather rapidly once the security issue was raised to them. Nominet don't seem to be so eager to bother.
Next up, I went to see two presentations, 'Flash and Accessibility' followed by 'AJAX and Accessibility' both by Giorgio Natili. I've long had an interest in accessibility, and have had to code for it on several occasions. However, I have lapsed and wanted to get a bit of a taste of some the issues that we still need to resolve. As AJAX is a hot topic at the moment, this seemed a good opportunity to see what was happening at the moment. Giorgio gave a very well informed talk, and I'd be interested in presenting a similar talk about general XHTML at some point, unless I can find a speaker to do it for Birmingham.pm :) I was pleased to note that Giorgio not only was considering the problems for blind users, but also those who are hearing impaired, have motion disabilities, cognitive disabilities and may have imperfect eyesight (colour blind specifically), as there are many more problems to deal with than just whether a screen reader can access the page. The outcome was that Flash can be accessible, if the programmer remembers some basic rules, while AJAX is mostly not. A valuable talk and something I aim to come back to again.
The last session of the day I was planning to attend was 'Semantic Web Apps with Standards', but it was considerable more specific code based than I was expecting. And from the look of it, it didn't involve Perl, Javascript or XHTML, so opted to bail and attend a session with Schuyler Erle talking about GeoShape. The idea that GPS tracking systems will soon be available to all, probably via mobile phones, so that previously expensive data can soon be gain for free. But what do we do with it? Currently there are several system doing useful things with limited amounts of data, but as Schuyler points out, once it's all free and people can freely play with it, they'll start doing some useful and interesting things with it in ways you never imagined.
The day ended with a windup session back in the tutorial room with everyone together. It was an interesting event and I hope I get to go again sometime. I didn't get to stand up and say hold a session, but did at least contribute to a few. Now that I do understand how the format works, I will be a little more interested in doing a session next time around (if they invite me back). One point that was raised at the end, was the fact that so many session involved the web. While there is obviously a lot of interest still in the web, there weren't so many cool things on show that didn't involve the web.
It was a really interesting and in many ways productive weekend, and I got to speak to many people I wouldn't otherwise have met. I got to talk to kudra about YEF things, met with several people who went to YAPC::Europe and got some good feedback. I would have loved to have stayed for the EuroOSCON, but other commitments meant I had to return. It was also interesting to see so many Perl people arriving for EuroOSCON, even though there isn't a Perl track. Either they are moving onto other things, or they are looking to see how things are changing elsewhere and plan to move Perl forward to keep ahead ;) Either way, the hallway track looks to be very interesting.
The evening ended with me meeting Robert Lefkowitz. Apparently he now has another sequel to his Semasiology talks that I now have to go and listen to. One day I'll get to see him talk in person, as he seems to be a very impassioned speaker.
A very good conference and I'm feel fortunate to have been invited. Should ever get invited along, enjoy the chance to meet other talented and insightful people.
