Yesterday at Web Directions North was crazy excellent. I had some great conversations with people about how the use of the Internet expresses certain kinds of frustrations and preferences about the nature of work, civic participation and personal development. It’s an audience I would never otherwise have been able to meet and interact with, and I am stoked to continue having the conversations I started in the hallways between talks, during the drinks and appies event, and over cups of tea at the breaks.
I went a little pedal-to-the-metal yesterday, hopping over to the Vancouver Blogger meetup at Our Town Café on Broadway to say hi to the blogging peeps. The entrance fee was considerably less steep, but the conversations were just as interesting and it was great to catch up with Al, Jan, Isabella, Gene, and David and to meet Katie, the peeps from Dabbler.ca, Raul and probably someone else that I’ve forgotten.
The sessions I attended rocked my socks off. Tara Hunt featured some great stories from Citizen Superheroes across the world, from New Zealand to Canada to the UK. I talked to two people after the session who expressed to me that they weren’t sure about the presentation initially. I shared some of my reflections and insights into the topic she was tackling, abstracting a few of the concepts Tara was going after, and I hope they walked away from the conversation with me feeling that they grokked her talk a bit more.
Brian Oderkirch‘s “Plays well with others” talk rocked. my. socks. (as well as Boris‘ and, I’m sure, many others). It was a great look at how a lot of the protocols on the horizon can mix and mingle into pretty experiences.
I’m going to stop being rude and blogging in the session, but here’s what I’m planning on running off to today:
- Innovation is Overrated – Indi Young
- 10:45 The 3 Stages of Dynamic Systems – Boris Mann
- 11:45 Information Visualization as a Medium – Eric Rodenbeck
- 13:45 Serious Business: Putting Social Media to Work – Anil Dash
- The Mobile Web Landscape in Canada and Beyond – Brian Fling
- Movement (Closing Keynote) – Matt Webb
I had been thinking of going to the Drupal theming session tonight after the conference wraps, but I’m considering ditching it because, well, there are lots of cool people here and conversations are possible. Will need to weigh the benefits and pitfalls of each.
One Comment
if you have any energy left at the end of the day, i would definitely encourage you to stop in at the drupal night, in particular if you are interested in the design aspects of drupal sites. it’s pretty much guaranteed to blow the drupal-theming part of your mind!
but if not, hope you enjoy the rest of the conference!