One of the things I got really geeked about (no pun intended) at the conference was the tools that allowed for open community.
iCal’s Rendezvous was the conference standard with almost everyone using it. You would be sitting in a room of about 50+ people and see them all online. Everyone would be talking to each other while listening to the panelist. Some panelist would turn iCal on and recommend people AIM them with questions during the talk. It not only allowed for them to keep talking but it kept things organized. They could filter out stupid questions and address the good ones with everyone.
I asked a few questions during an accessibility panel and discussed with some of the panel members when they weren’t talking. When it was their turn they would mention that someone named Aaron Schaap brought up a few good points and would address them right there (ok that only happened once).
It was also a great way to meet new people. Under each person’s name we would put which class were were in and where we were sitting. You could figure it out and begin talking to them and catch up after the conference.
Bringing this idea back home I now leave rendezvous on all the time when in public places. Sad thing about Holland is that not many people do this along with ya. So if you’re in a public place - turn on Rendezvous and see who’s around you. It’s a great way to meet someone new or at least talk to me if I’m in the area.
posted on March 25, 2005| 2:33 PM EST
The whole event was better than we all thought it was going to be. Not only was it nice to get out of Holland’s daily work but it was refreshing to hear what is going on in the web community.
This year the topics ranged from Design and How to run your business to Accessability and microformats. Microformats were a big discussion point in a variety of panels and personal conversations.
Joe Clark ended up taking some extremely good notes while liveblogging most of the event. I decided to link to his descriptions as well as my own below.
Events that I attented
- Saturday, March 12th
- Opening Remarks: Jeffrey Zeldman
- Blogs and Blockades: Forging a True Global Internet (my notes)
- How to Make Big Things Happen With Small Teams (my notes/their notes)
- Sunday, March 13th
- Accessibility: Can’t We All Just Get Along? (my notes/notes)
- How to be Beautiful: More Hi-Fi Design With CSS (notes)
- How to Use Accessiblity Guidelines, Standards and Testing (my notes/their notes)
- How to Build Your Brand with Blogs
- Monday, March 14th
- Does Design Matter? (notes)
- How to Inform Design: How to Set Your Pants on Fire
- The Semantic Web: Promising Future or Utter Failure
- How to Trick-Out Your Blog
- Tuesday, March 15th
- Web Design 2010: What Will the Web Look Like When It Turns 20?
If you would like, you can download all my notes and video that I took while at the conference. I was hoping to have this all organized and presented nicely online but that just doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon. So feel free to download (13.3 MB) what I have.
posted on March 20, 2005| 11:58 AM EST
I finally got my act together and Flickr’ed all of my Austin, Texas photos. As you can see, we’re having a ton of fun and sleep really hasn’t been a part of the every day activities. With nightly events, you need to keep moving.
It doesn’t help that it is also the self-proclaimed “live music capital of the world,” with a vibrant live music scene revolving around many nightclubs on 6th Street.
View event photos on Flickr.com.
posted on March 13, 2005| 8:22 PM EST
So you’re at a conference in Austin, Texas and you don’t know anyone other than the two jokers that you came with. You want to meet new folks but being it your first time - you find youself reading everyone’s RSS feeds to see if people are hanging out in a certain spot.
Zeldman will be taking the stage in a bit to kick everything off so you’re more than likely to bump into folks during the gathering. Heck, maybe Nathan Steiner will be there handing out free iTunes songs.
posted on March 12, 2005| 2:20 PM EST
After a few hours in the air and a twenty dollar taxi ride, Derik, Rich and I finally made it to the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas.
Tomorrow is when things really get started but for now, it’s 3:30am and it’s time to be sleeping.
posted on | 3:22 AM EST
