dConstruct 2011
This was my second dConstruct after last year's, and expectations were high. Have they been met? Ultimately yes, but not so much till after lunch, with the three final talks being especially brilliant in my view. This is not to say the morning talks weren't good though, and I particularly enjoyed Kelly Goto and Craig Mod - although the latter left me a bit puzzled as well!
Accidental Javascript programming
After doing some programming, starting a book about how to think like a Computer Scientist, and reading Javascript the Good Parts, 1.5 times so far (more iterations will follow), I now have a far better understanding of Javascript than say a year ago. Still, there is much more to learn.
Plans for the rest of 2011
For various reasons the start of this year was not that easy for me, and something I wanted to become a tradition already got left behind: To write down what I had done each year, and make plans for the new one. After postponing it a lot, I have decided now is a good time for plans, as I am between projects, and I start to see a little more clearly where I might be going.
VolunTree - Ideas for an app matching volunteers with causes
This is my report back to Local by Social, following an event in Bristol on 29 and 30 January 2011 that I took part in. The event was about using Open Data to improve services to the public. The first day consisted of a series of talks, followed by a brainstorming session about what comunity apps we would find useful. The second day was a 'hack day'. The ideas by then had been distilled down to five projects, which about 30 people worked on. (The audience at the first day had been at least a hundred.) Ours had a varying number of participants, but I think the final number was three: Mark Braggins, Tim Winship and me. It fell to me to present our ideas at the end, and write it up.
Workshop: Developing for the Mobile Web
Web developers flocked in their hoardes to two big events in Bristol last Wednesday: the Web Developers Conference and the Plone Conference, the latter of which is still going on as I write. Both are/were for sure excellent events and I had planned to attend WDC2010. However, I eventually chose to go to a third event that was also being held in Bristol and I did not regret it one bit.
dConstruct 2010
I have not been to many web design conferences. And still I'm pretty sure they won't get much more impressive than this. I heard some criticism before going. That dConstruct was not very hands-on and you didn't learn much that could be applied directly. That might be true. It is not so much for the hands than for the mind.
Plans for 2010
There is still snow in the streets and it is freezing cold. Yet after two days of closure, school is on again (starting at 10 instead of 9) and my girl has gone, somewhat grudgingly, her brother is off to nursery and their father off to work. Quiet, uninterrupted time, the time to be productive!!
1st UK Silverstripe Meetup
Thursday, 3 September 09: Off to my first ever Meetup, 120 miles from where I live. Crazy? Maybe, but it is on a topic I am really interested in, and so far I don't know anybody whom to talk about it properly : SilverStripe, a new CMS that has become my preferred choice for making websites.
Positively unsure
There seems to be a conundrum in my life, and this has been going on for a while. - How best to describe it? It has to do with the definition of a role I think. It is about being attached professionally in some way.
Summer of 09: Learning journeys and inhabiting the web
Is the web of today a place mainly for teenagers and geeks? You are reading the blog of someone whose "social network" (I mean the offline one) is in big parts not represented on the web, not even on facebook (which I myself don't like very much).