WDC2008, It’s over….for now
It was one hell of a week last week!
First off since September 2007 I’ve been planning the second Web Developers Conference event, WDC2008. It started off having to find a date people could make and one which didn’t clash with event’s going on at the Watershed. Now you’d think this would be pretty easy, but it really isn’t!
It has to been a Wednesday so students like myself on UWE’s Web Design degree have the time away from lectures to attend the event. It has to be long enough to get everyone who is there to speak/sit on a panel a chance to speak, but short enough so students don’t walk off half way through the event. Last year it was horrible seeing students walking away but we hope to have got that sorted. What student doesn’t like a free beer?
Once the date was confirmed I had to find speakers and people to sit on the panels. For some of these web types it’s easy, just open up Contacts and pick and random, for me it wasn’t. Being the little guy it was pretty hard to tempt speakers and panel members along to the event as I’m probably still an unknown. Though thanks to Andy Budd who spoke last year it was pretty easy to get James Box along who is also an ex UWE student.
I found Patrick H. Lauke thanks to the Boagworld podcast and I’m glad I did. His talk was a huge help to students, if not a little rushed! Chris Garrett is thankfully a local developer who I’d met around at OpenCoffee who has spoken before and the idea of showing students what else you can do on the web aside from web sites was great.
The speakers shared loads of great knowledge with everyone at the event. James Box covered the “web of data” a term mentioned so many times in my second year. He explained how when a word or number is left on its own it has no context but linking it with meaningful markup in terms of XHTML it gives us something we can understand.
Chris Garrett was up after lunch and took everyone away from a computer and show us how knowledge of web design doesn’t always lead us to a web page but can lead us to thinks like using bluetooth to track footfall in a shopping mall. Not spying just gathering data!
Patrick showed us why accessibility is so important in web design, but why you shouldn’t over-do it. Remember than not every image needs an alt tag!
Now I had the speakers I had to work on the panels, these are one of the most important pieces of the WDC events as it gives students a chance to ask questions to developers that they’d never get a chance to ask. WDC2008 had 2 panels, the first was Working in the Industry and Loving the Web! made up of Elliot Jay Stocks, Dan Donald, Jon Gibbons (dotjay), Dan Williams and Elliott Kember.
This panel was a chance to let students and the professionals ask questions either about the person, or about the web. The panel was given an hour which with 5 people was a perfect amount of time to ask 5 or 6 questions.
The second panel was Working in the South West are instead of companies this year was focused a little more of those little freelancers than never get a word in (apart from Joe). A load of great questions and answers were covered in the 45 minute session. Thanks to Jon Tan, Mel Kirk, Peter Coles, Joe Leech and Rick Hurst.
The idea of the panel was to try and save students running off to London to follow their dream of being an all star web designer/developer and keep them in Bristol which has a huge Web/New media base.
The best bit of news for this years event was Matt Wood (Existem) were putting up the bar tab. This was missed last year as it was such a small event. All you need to mention is a free bar to students and they’ll come running and they did. Watching 4 or 5 students attack Jon Tan in the bar afterwards was great. It showed exactly the community there is in the world of the web.
I’d like to thank Jon Tan, Jon Gibbens, Joe Leech, Patrick, James, Mel, Peter, Matt, Elliot, Dan W and Rick for dinner as they were all nice enough to put in that little bit extra for me. Guess I owe all of them next year!
That’s it, WDC2008 has finished. It’s taken me over a week to sort out my write-up and the page with links to presentation slides and MP3 recordings of the event, but thats life. I hope to see everyone back at WDC2009!