d.Construct Experiences
Well I am back from Brighton now and sitting at home contemplating d.Construct.
The range of speakers was wide and varied and each seemed to have their own take on what web 2.0 actually is. I think this just goes to reinforce what Andy Budd said in his introductory session "What is web 2.0?" - Web 2.0 isn't a thing... It's a state of mind.
My take on the situation is that Web 2.0 is whatever it means to you as a web designer/developer.
The stand out presentations for me were the first 3 of the day. Probably as these appealed most to the geek in me.
To Andy Budd, Web 2.0 is using existing technologies in innovative ways, community features, open data formats and users owning their data.
Andy's presentation was a great pace and scene setter for the day. When he had finished there was a full understanding of the main concepts. Andy didn't try and claim that he knew exactly what Web 2.0 was and he concentrated mainly on giving attendees the facts so that they could decide for themselves. Which was certainly the best way to go about it.
Next up was Stuart Langridge who aside from being some sort of Javascript/DHTML genius is an air guitar/keyboard legend too!
Stuarts presentation content was spot on and so was his presentation style; just the right mix of information and humour.
Stuart talked about DOM scripting, unobtrusive javascript and also highlighted the importance of making sure that there is a graceful degradation when javascript is unavailable or turned off.
Again Stuart agreed with Andy Budd's theme of taking existing technologies and using them in new ways. Stuart said "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants". I am pretty sure he wasn't the first person to say it but it is sage advice.
Simon Willison of Yahoo! was next. Simon's presentation was very focussed on what Yahoo! / Flickr are doing with AJAX and their API (Not really a surprise as the presentation was called "Ajax and the Flickr API").
We all know that Flickr is one of this/last years great success stories. Most people "in the know" have been using Flickr for some time now, but I think that people are just starting to using Flickr in the way that they want to.
This is made possible through the Flickr API and the excellent API documentation
So next time you see clever people using Flickr on their own site you will know how they managed it.
Simon has forgotten stuff that I will never know. I am also now "in" on the joke that all the speakers seemed to share at @Media when they said that Simon couldn't come as he couldn't get the time off from Hogwarts. Very true, in the nicest possible way of course. I am sure it isn't the first time he has heard it and I am sure that he doesn't mind. Magic would explain how he does all the things that he does though.
Overall the conference was a big success. Based on the amount of time the Clear:Left guys had to organise the event it was very impressive. The social after the event was also great and I got chance to put a few names to faces and meet some people for the first time.
I met quite a few people including Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, Stuart Langridge, Ryan Carson, Paul Hammond, Mike Stenhouse, Ben Ward and Steve Marshall
Finally, A big thanks to Clear:Left for putting on a great (well priced) event and thanks to all the speakers and the people I met for being nice guys.
Same time next year?
The range of speakers was wide and varied and each seemed to have their own take on what web 2.0 actually is. I think this just goes to reinforce what Andy Budd said in his introductory session "What is web 2.0?" - Web 2.0 isn't a thing... It's a state of mind.
My take on the situation is that Web 2.0 is whatever it means to you as a web designer/developer.
The stand out presentations for me were the first 3 of the day. Probably as these appealed most to the geek in me.
To Andy Budd, Web 2.0 is using existing technologies in innovative ways, community features, open data formats and users owning their data.
Andy's presentation was a great pace and scene setter for the day. When he had finished there was a full understanding of the main concepts. Andy didn't try and claim that he knew exactly what Web 2.0 was and he concentrated mainly on giving attendees the facts so that they could decide for themselves. Which was certainly the best way to go about it.
Next up was Stuart Langridge who aside from being some sort of Javascript/DHTML genius is an air guitar/keyboard legend too!
Stuarts presentation content was spot on and so was his presentation style; just the right mix of information and humour.
Stuart talked about DOM scripting, unobtrusive javascript and also highlighted the importance of making sure that there is a graceful degradation when javascript is unavailable or turned off.
Again Stuart agreed with Andy Budd's theme of taking existing technologies and using them in new ways. Stuart said "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants". I am pretty sure he wasn't the first person to say it but it is sage advice.
Simon Willison of Yahoo! was next. Simon's presentation was very focussed on what Yahoo! / Flickr are doing with AJAX and their API (Not really a surprise as the presentation was called "Ajax and the Flickr API").
We all know that Flickr is one of this/last years great success stories. Most people "in the know" have been using Flickr for some time now, but I think that people are just starting to using Flickr in the way that they want to.
This is made possible through the Flickr API and the excellent API documentation
So next time you see clever people using Flickr on their own site you will know how they managed it.
Simon has forgotten stuff that I will never know. I am also now "in" on the joke that all the speakers seemed to share at @Media when they said that Simon couldn't come as he couldn't get the time off from Hogwarts. Very true, in the nicest possible way of course. I am sure it isn't the first time he has heard it and I am sure that he doesn't mind. Magic would explain how he does all the things that he does though.
Overall the conference was a big success. Based on the amount of time the Clear:Left guys had to organise the event it was very impressive. The social after the event was also great and I got chance to put a few names to faces and meet some people for the first time.
I met quite a few people including Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, Stuart Langridge, Ryan Carson, Paul Hammond, Mike Stenhouse, Ben Ward and Steve Marshall
Finally, A big thanks to Clear:Left for putting on a great (well priced) event and thanks to all the speakers and the people I met for being nice guys.
Same time next year?
2 Comments:
Sounds great Andy, wish I could've made it. Fantastic to see podcasts appearing and being made freely available, much kudos to the event organisers. I can at least pretend I was there now.
By Dan, at 5:36 PM
Good to read your thoughts Andy - I couldn't make it, but I've just downloaded the podcasts so now I can have d.construct in my front room :)
By Alex, at 9:08 PM
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