The end of SXSWi 2007

So it’s more than a week after SXSWi 2007 and I’ve not reported on any of the events. Really whats the point. As I sit here on a Saturday morning drinking a cut of coffee and reading my bloglines feeds of other’s experiences during SXSWi I agree it was as expected, fantastic.

Sure I enjoyed the many sessions offered and as usual I really wanted to split myself in two sometimes due to key sessions offered during the same time slot. Thankfully the podcasts for the 2007 sessions are starting to already role in. I think by next year we should be seeing videos of the conference.

So here are some of my highlights for this year.

  • Thursdsay evening drinks with Peter-Paul Koch, Alex Jones and Ryan Joy at 219 W. Good times had by all.
  • Saturday, the first full day for Interactive. Spent most of the day just following the crowd and mesmerized by the Twitter screens. Watch as many others pulled out their cell phones and post a twit just to watch it on the big screen. Wonder if this was the precuursor to twittervision.
  • Sunday, concentracted more on a specific session track. Wanted to learn all that could about cell phone and mobile use. Great sessions.
  • Monday and Tuesday were also great just being together with other like minded folks. I meet so many interesting people every year.

I still have about 20 pages of notes I’ve not had a chance to review. Client work seems to be taking it’s priority position. Darn clients.

Adaptive Path and Access U 2006 conferences…Thanks to all

Just spent the previous week in DC for work. It was really nice there. Stayed at the Mansion on O again. Wow, what a place.

Return to Austin this week and only spent two days in the office. Was out of the office to attend two conferences over the next three days.

First on Wednesday attended Designing & Building with AJAX hosted by Adaptive Path. This was a very good conference. The best of the speakers was Bill Scott from Yahoo. His team manages to new YUI library. Also, James Craig from Frog Design offered some thoughts on AJAX and Accessibility. This was somewhat of a segue into the next event.

At the happy hour also hosted by Adaptive Path at 219W I was able to meet Jesses James Garrett from Adaptive Path, James Craig from Frog Design. Also met Glenda Sims (www.glendathegood.com). Glenda is a quite brilliant person. She told me all about her museum ideas. She works at UT in the Accessibility area. I also met Bill Woodland. I’m not sure what Bill does. But he is Mr. charming and has a way of talking to people that invites them in for the conversation.

My Thursday and Friday spent at the Access U 2006 hosted by Knowbility. What a fantastic time. I learned so much from these great speakers. I also learned that I know virtually nothing about building accessible web site. Of the many speaker I would like to thank Derek Featherstone for coming all the way to Austin again since his last trip for SXSW. Since I’m interested in JavaScript and the newer AJAX concepts he presented many good ideas on keeping your sites lean and clean and to consider that just because you can add some cool wiz-bang feature with AJAX, should you. Also Randy Horwitz and Rhodes Gibson who presented two very detailed classes on Accessible forms and tables. Again, I felt so humbled walking out of these three classes. Just when you get the feeling you know what you are doing as far as HTML development goes. Can’t remember the last time I felt like such a newbie.

Thanks to everyone from Knowbility to hosting this great event.