@media 2008
So, @media 2008 came and went. My first trip to the a-list web conference was well worth the trip, but was all in all a bit of a mixed bag, I have to say.
There were flashes of brilliance, intertwined with poor speakers, poor presentations and poor preparation. Still, I managed to bag myself a couple of t-shirts (why do they assume all web-geeks need a large?) and some Silverback badges which helped make everything seem worth while.
Let's start with the good. Andy Clarke, predictably, was excellent. His session, Underpants Over My Trousers, centred on drawing inspiration from comic books and applying some of the techniques used to the web. It was packed with useful information, insight and above all Andy Clarke's passion for what he is doing. Inspiring stuff.
Equally good was Dan Rubin (of Sidebar Creative fame) who talked about patterns and details in user interfaces. Dan was the only speaker who offered up some techniques to go away and try for yourself, which was nice.
Due to getting stuck in the London traffic, I unfortunately missed Jeffrey Veen's keynote on the first day. Thankfully I caught him in the Hot Topics Panel, where Andy Clarke again shone, especially when expressing his distaste at the Americanisms being banded about and ranting about harmony in browser rendering engines.
As for the bad, well, the talk on HTML 5 was pretty awful. Perhaps I misjudged the audience, but I had expected the talk to be more than just an introduction to HTML 5 that covered nothing you wouldn't find out if you took a cursory glance at the HTML 5 spec.
Day two, on the whole, was much worse than day one. Nate Koechley (Yahoo) was good and John Resig (of jQuery fame) gave an interesting, if not particularly practical talk. But other than that there was nothing to write home about.
I enjoyed @media 2008, but I can't help feeling I'd have been disappointed if I'd paid the £400+ ticket price out of my own pocket, as opposed to my employer picking up the tab.
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Kitsimons...
...is the online home of Simon Kitson, a web designer with a healthy enthusiasm for standards-compliant, accessible design and a penchant for blogging about nothing in particular.
Notes
- Nice Nike Football ad from Madonna's better half.
- Top marks for the realigned BBC News website, bringing it more in line with the lovely new, jQuery driven, BBC homepage.
Beautiful full-screen image browsing served up by the snazzy PicLens plug-in. Impressive, though practicality is debatable.- Yahoo shifts to search the
semantic web
. Potentially huge, and very welcome news for usstandards nuts
. 
The Coke Zero Game. Latest masterpiece from the infuriatingly talented North Kingdom.
It's sites like the Red Bull Flight Lab that remind you what Flash is for. Brilliant application and an awful lot of fun.- Rejoice! The new Indiana Jones trailer has finally made an appearance. Can't wait.
- Help the Email Standards Project get Google's attention in the hope they will finally improve Gmail's awful rendering of HTML email.
- Awesome panoramic view of the Airbus A380 cockpit interior. This is the super-future.
- Excellent article from accessibility supremo Roger Johansson on how inappropriate, or overuse, of HTML features meant to aid accessibility can actually have the opposite effect.
mood
2 June, 2008
Large t-shirt to fit for everybody and they are cheap ;)
kitsimons
2 June, 2008
Except those that need an xx-large ;-)
Jonas Strandell
7 June, 2008
Oh yeah, I completely forgot I got a shirt as well. Discovered it in my bag when I unpacked. On another note I (allegedly) wrote Bronwyn Jones a mail expressing my feelings as well – sloshed out of my mind :-(
Shawn Adrian
21 June, 2008
Haha, I totally related to your “Why do they assume all web geeks need a large?” comment.