Posts Tagged ‘conference’

Full Frontal 2009 - Back to Brighton25
Nov

Last Friday I got up early and headed south on the train. My destination was the Duke of York Picturehouse in sunny (couldn’t be farther from the truth) Brighton. The reason for this outing was the first ever Full Frontal JavaScript conference, organised and curated by Remy Sharp (@rem).

full-frontal-conference-2009-1full-frontal-conference-2009-2full-frontal-conference-2009-3

On arrival in Brighton I was faced with a 10 minute uphill trudge in the rain. This was not an ideal start to the day but, before too long I had successfully navigated to my destination, which as had been pointed out to me a couple of days earlier “cannot be missed” due to a massive pair of stocking-clad legs sticking out of the roof. After a well needed cup of tea and two (yeah that’s right, two!) pain au chocolat I settled down into what must have been the most comfortable conference seat ever and prepared myself for the day’s talks.

Full Frontal 2009 Itinerary

A day of firsts…

Full frontal was a day of firsts… It was the first time I had been to a purely javascript conference, it was the first time I had properly understood closures (thanks to @robertnyman) and most importantly, it was the first time I had ever been to a conference where I had enjoyed every single talk. This was a brilliant suprise because in the past at conferences I have always found myself clock-watching in at least one presentation and wishing it would finish so I could go and get another free tea and danish.

The highlight of the day for me was Robert Nyman’s talk, which was a fantastic (albeit heavily Ben Affleck orientated) summary of everything you needed to know in order to be a JavaScript wizard. I also really enjoyed Jake Archibald’s talk on performing your own JavaScript performance research and how best to incorporate JavaScript libraries. The humour and enthusiasm he put into this potentially very boring topic was excellent.

Original presentation methods

Another thing that really impressed was the quality and originality of the presentation materials used, with three out of the seven talks not using powerpoint or keynote. Jake Archibald’s presentation was done entirely in flash, which despite being a little controversial for a JavaScript conference was incredibly well designed and animated. Stuart Langridge had made his own Javascript/CSS3 web-based presentation software, which he later told me would be available to download once he could sort out all the “fucking trigonometry”. Last but not least was Simon Willison’s presentation, which consisted of an original and brave navigation around 16 Mac OSX spaces arranged in a 4 x 4 grid, it was pretty hectic but it worked.

All in all the conference was a wonderful success and I really hope it happens again in 2010. The night ended with what was possibly the best burger I have ever tasted and a few beers at the OHSO Social on Brighton beach. Higher resolution versions of my photos are available on flickr along with many others in the Full Frontal Conference pool.

2 Comments | Posted in: Events

Geek in the park 200916
Aug

Yesterday I spent an enjoyable afternoon in Jephson Gardens, Royal Leamington Spa, for this year’s Geek in the Park event. The afternoon consisted of lounging in the sun, feasting on our picnic and drinking rather a lot of red wine. This was interspersed with several somewhat amateur rounds of ‘keepy uppy’ none of which lasted very long because of the glorious heat. Later on in the afternoon we were lucky enough to get ringside seats for a drunken brawl between two of Leamington’s finest skinhead cider connoisseurs. This incredibly one-sided fight disbanded after the three rounds of pummeling and was then cleaned up by the local police.

Jephson Garden's band stand, geek in the park 2009

As seven o’clock approached the geeks gathered in the south east corner of the park, between the bandstand and the Royal Pump Rooms, our home for the evening. The conference room was smaller than I had expected but was very pleasant. I decided to get the beers in before the first talk, however this turned out to be a lot harder than I had expected. Both Carlsberg and John Smiths had run dry and then the barkeep proceeded to tell me that the single bottle of corona was only in the fridge ‘just in case’. Eventually, armed with a bottle of Bud I settled in my seat ready for the first talk.

Simon Collison - ‘Nailing your own projects’

Simon Collison, nailing your own projects

First up was Simon Collison (@colly) who was talking about project management and process. Particular focus was given to the strategies used at Erskine Design when redesigning their own portfolio website. Simon sung the praises of several project management/planning tools including basecamp, codebase and some hexagonal magnets for team brainstorming from logo visual. Simon then went on to share some of the tools he likes to use to collect inspirational materials and share them with his team online. Using LittleSnapper and Dropbox Erskine are able to create communal, collaborative mood boards. The talk was an interesting insight into how Erskine design approach a project as a team and I found it quite motivating.

Remy Sharp - ‘HTML5 and friends’

Remy Sharp, HTML5 and Friends

After a short interval and more amusement from the barkeep pooring coke all over his hand instead of in the glass I returned to my seat for the second half of the evening. Next up was Remy Sharp (@rem) who was here to talk about ‘HTML5 and Friends’. I had already read a fair amount of Remy’s HTML 5 work on his blog and on the HTML 5 Doctor website so I was familiar with a lot of his material. Despite this it was great to have these ideas reinforced and demonstrated in person. It was also nice to see the personality behind the pages of words that had filled my screen over the previous weeks. The take home message from the talk was HTML 5 is ready to start implementing now and with minimal effort the core features can be made to work in all major browsers.

All in all it was a great day and I will definitely keep an eye open for more geek in the park events. You can see the rest of my photos on flickr. Big thanks to @doodlemoonch for driving to Leamington Spa and back.

Slides from the presentations

Simon Collison - ‘Nailing your own projects’
Remy Sharp - ‘HTML5 and friends’

1 Comment | Posted in: Events