So, late on Saturday afternoon I took the hour and a bit journey to Birmingham for the first Multipack presents meet up.
I am not really very good at these things, especially at remembering who I’ve met and who I haven’t, as was made clear by me introducing myself to Stuart Langridge who reminded me we’d met at the Science Museum. The same place, Bruce Lawson reminded me, I had met up with many other highly influential people for a total of about 5 minutes before I got separated from the crowd, got lost, and ended up in the Natural History museum with my son instead. I think that was about 3-4 years ago and apart from the Stockholm incident and one Oxford Geek Night, I haven’t really been out as a geek since. Networking, I must admit, has never been my strong point.
Things got off to a flying start, though. As I approached the bar, Andy Higgs rocked up and introduced himself and said he owed me a beer for a tiny piece of writing I did a few years ago! Isn’t the internets great? He also turned out to be a thoroughly nice chap, double bonus!
I couldn’t write this post without mentioning the offices of One Black Bear. They were just fantastic, I was very jealous.
The reason I went to the event was because I have been extraordinarily lazy about keeping track of what’s going on with HTML 5 and WAI-ARIA. Thanks to Matt Machell and the man from Opera I feel somewhat better informed.
What I learned, clue being in the title Emerging Standards, was that these technologies aren’t ready yet and there is no way I would seriously consider implementing them at the day job. But I am enthused by what I heard and I will be having a play around with the two technologies as a result of going to this presentation.
I did come away feeling a little bit concerned that people behind ARIA, HTML 5 and Microformats aren’t talking to each other enough but that may not be the case at all, there was a lot of information for my somewhat tired head to take in.
I didn’t stay for Stuart’s JavaScript talk, I was tired, I had a long journey and I didn’t think my head could cope. I’d have liked to, though, and had I been closer I may well have stayed. That said, I am sure there will be many more chances to here him talk.
As I said, it is a bit of a journey for me to make, and I do have the three young children who, rightly, should be getting my time at the weekend. For those reasons I think I’d have to be interested in the topics of discussion on offer to make the trip again, which is basically the same approach I have to Oxford Geek Nights. But for people closer or more able to free up a Saturday evening and go along, I’d say it’s very much worth the trip, there was even free pizza!
Nice work chaps!