Last weekend was the first <head> conference, organized by Aral Balkan, a web conference over three days and a new way to ‘attend’ conferences: from the comfort of your own sofa. :)
The sessions covered a wide range of timely topics including web standards, accessibility, web application development, flash, and scalability.
One of the great things about this conference is that is was green: an environmentally-friendly web conference as the speakers and attendees interacted with the conference locally – no aeroplane or train travel carbon footprint for attendees of <head> :)
The first day of the conference, Prisca, Brooke and myself attended the London Hub, held at The Magic Circle – a members-only magicians club in the centre of London. The magic was in the air, and apart from a few technical glitches, the conference was great and the speakers that day were fabulous.
To name but a few there were talks from Jeremy Keith, Ann McMeekin, Simon Willison, Gavin Starks, Chris Heilmann, Simon Wardley and Tim O’Reilly . Aral Balkan was a great host and made sure the first day of the conference kickstarted the event with a friendly and energetic atmosphere. The remaining 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, were held online with the speakers talking from their homes or work spaces.
Our team decided to watch the conference together so I moved to Prisca’s flat for the weekend, and Brooke came along as well. It was great to sit there in the comfort of Prisca’s house and watch the conference from the sofa.
It was quite hard to digest all the inspiring talks we watched, and there were more talks to catch up on that were going on in different rooms. On Sunday, I managed to return to my place in time to watch the two last talks and I have to say it was a brilliant end. Simon Wardley’s talk was great and the end of the conference with all <head> conference team members pulling their faces onto our screens was a funny and sweet moment.
Now, I will try to find some time to watch more videos from the conference and gain as much knowledge as possible.
Can’t believe I missed this when you blogged it :) Thanks so much!
Comment by Aral Balkan — February 18, 2009 @ 10:33 pm
Aral, thanks for the comment ;) we had a great time, now looking forward to the next one :)
Comment by laura — February 18, 2009 @ 11:14 pm