Disco Liam

For the second year in a row, I have visited and indeed enjoyed the Web Developers Conference here in Bristol, set up and run by my good friend Alex Older. Now in its 3rd year (I missed the first one for reasons I can’t remember) the conference seems to be getting bigger and better, and getting picked up Smashing Magazine shows your doing something right at least. I thought Id throw together a quick review of the event, and wrap up some thoughts that have been floating around my head for the past 2 days.

The speaker list was impressive as ever, with Elliot Jay Stocks and Dan Donald (who was on a pannel last year) returning, and Jon Hicks and Sarah Paramater making their first trip to WDC.

Jon was first up with his talk “How to be a Creative Sponge“. Id seen the slides for a previous version of this talk that Jon gave some time ago, but it was great to see it given properly, with a few important updates added. Its worth having a look over yourself, but I felt really inspired by his ideas, and have already started to build up my Inspiration Libraries, and I’m quite determined to to keep up with it. I think a nice box full of cool things I find will soon appear on my desk.

Dan’s talk “The C Word” was probably one of the most interesting talks of the day for me. He had some really interesting ideas, and I found my self scribbling down every word into my notebook. He sums up his talk pretty nicely on his own blog, but I’ll share the two main ideas I took away with me, and looking forward to playing with.

• Tracing where a user has come from to your site to offer them specif content e.g. if a user has followed a link from twitter, they might be interested to know about that sites own twitter stream, thus you could make this obvious.
• Using location aware technologies and do something cool with it. I like the idea of going to a Cornish Pasty shop (hehe) and the site automatically working out where I am and telling me how to get there though google maps, or something.

Sarah’s turn after lunch was also a rather interesting affair. The idea of using TV or Print advertising in web design is something that really hadn’t occurred to me before, and one I will ponder further. There where some cracking examples in her presentation, and its certainly something Id like to explore further. Talking to some of my contemporaries from the Web Design Course at UWE afterwards, they where similar impressed with what she had to say.

Elliot’s talk was similar to the one he did at the FOWD Tour here in Bristol, but it was good to see it again as last time I totally forgot to make notes. I liked the ideas he put across, and a lot of them I had been trying to implement with Beef during my time there to little avail. Hopefully with big names putting some effort in promoting Progressive Enhancement and new ideas in web design, we can be innovative with out design and development.

Thought the day was good, and I enjoyed everything I saw and herd, the highlight for me was certainly hitting the bar(s) afterwards. It was lovely to sit down and chat with some of the designers and developers who have inspired me so much over the past few years. It was also a good chance to meet some of the students on the course, and share stories of placements, nightmare tutors and late coursework. Its good to see that a lot of the students are taking an active role in the Web Community here in Bristol.

As the evening drew on I spoke to many ladies and gents, and its very possible I managed to embarrass myself in front of a few of them, but oh well. I personally blame the pitchers of black larger that where floating around. But, even though I suffered all of Thursday, and a little of Friday, it was worth it to make some new friends, and meet and speak with some really awesome people. Bring on WDC 2010!