@Media 2006 Saves England World Cup Dreams

A week sure goes quick, this is my first opportunity to write about this year’s @media 2006 conference in London. Bigger and better than last year we all had the awful decision to choose who to see with the two-track schedule but I had to keep it real and inline with what I’m most likely to be doing at work so the decisions were made slightly easier for me. So, onwards with my tale of @media 2006, England, the World Cup and link-lovin’ name dropping.

I travelled from Ipswich at midday in order to avoid any need to rush about and panic and just in time to see Spain kick off against Ukraine, I took a seat with my good friend Stella Artois in the Premier Travel Inn at County Hall (where the London Eye is). For the rest of the week however the hotel was to be referred to as “Accessify Towers” as at least 10 members of accessifyforum.com had booked rooms there. It was great to finally meet a lot of people face to face and come dinner time Ann, Andy, Blair, Dan, Gez, Jon, Jim, Mike, Paula and Rob trooped off first to a Cuban restaurant (which couldn’t handle the party size) and then to Tas Restaurant — an excellent Turkish eatery. It was impossible to pronounce anything other than “kebab” correctly but I think I’m safe in saying that everyone really enjoyed the food they chose nonetheless. I went for the Choban Kavurma which is diced lamb, tomatoes, onions, peppers and mushrooms all cooked in herbs. It was very delicious and although a hot dish it was very suitable for summer. Afterwards we made our way to the pre-conference party at The Feathers pub, which until the Friday night I didn’t realise is practically next door to New Scotland Yard. The place was packed upstairs but we eventually elbowed in to meet some people from last year, two of which I can name as Sir Peter of Pixelicious and Sir Gareth of Morethanseven.

Next morning we was up early to get registered and there couldn’t have been more than 6 people in front of me in my queue — I’ve been amazed at people’s Flickr photos of the queue running outside the building. Wow. After coffee and biscuits we met a few people from other hotels including fellow government-type Jack Pickard and secured almost front-row seats for the keynote speech to be delivered by Eric Meyer. Whilst he was sorting his mic out I stood reasonably close to him to get a group photo (and trying not to disturb him) but on noticing my England shirt (this is the day we played Trinidad AND Tobago) he asked me who he should support today. Well, what was I to say? We had a brief chat about the apparent lack of fervour in London — certainly not as many flag-touting cars there as back home that was for sure, but I assume it’s because the tourists out-number Londoners around Westminster. Anyway, I digress — did I mention yet that England will win the World Cup? Eric’s speech was very enjoyable and although he later fretted a little that it was similar to Jeffrey Zeldman’s keynote last year, I neither noticed or minded — to hear how our founding fathers got us to where we are now is always interesting and inspirational.

With the keynote over and a fresh cup of coffee consumed it was on to the meat of the conference and choosing who to go listen to. First up for me was “Good Design versus Bad Design” panel hosted by Jon Hicks, Cameron Moll and Veerle Pieters. I wasn’t overly convinced by the panel format, Veerle was a little nervous at the start and it lacked the punchiness of a single person presenting their view, but the discussion on layout (grids), typography and colour was welcome and I took plenty of notes ahead of a major redesign project I have at work. Next up, was Dave Shea’s “Fine Typography on the Web”. I was hoping for some real insight into what fonts say about your content — we all know Comic Sans is a “fun” font ideal for info aimed at kids but what about Trebuchet MS et al? We are so limited with safe font-families for outputted text and Dave also covered image replacement techniques too, highlighting their advantages and drawbacks. After a lunch consisting of thick-filled sandwichs and a bowl of noodles it was onto “The New Accessibility Guidelines: WCAG 2.0″ with Andy Clarke, Patrick Lauke, Gez Lemon and Ian Lloyd. Not many people had read the documentation and of those that had, including the panel, not everyone had read everything on the subject. I’m one of those that has not read it, put off as I am about the sheer size of the documents, the obtuse language and reports from around the community about just how much hard work it was for them to read it. The discussion was interesting and Ian has produced a little work guide to help break the mammoth task into less soul-destroying chunks and Patrick announced a link to the WCAG 2.0 Quick Reference too. The final presentation of the day, spanning both tracks was Jeffrey Veen’s excellent “Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps”. He had the unenviable task of being the last speaker inbetween England football fans and the pub and fortunately the organisers, Vivabit had shuffled the day for an early end of 4.30pm. Having sat at the front of every presentation thus far, tactical seating was adopted and we sat nearest to the exit this time. After a very well delivered and inspirational presentation we got away on time for the brisk walk to Sugar Reef, Picadilly that Patrick Griffiths had negotiated to open for us especially to watch England versus Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup.

I think only two people beat us all there and we quickly secured front row seats in front of one of the TVs. Some bright spark came up with the idea of a sweepstake for first goal scorer and I got Crouch. I was miffed somewhat because I don’t rate him at all but in a fantastic twist of irony he did in fact win me £5 in the 82nd minute. Another goal followed shortly thereafter and I can exclusively attribute the win to my advice to Eric Meyer who to cheer for — thanks Eric, we couldn’t have done it without your support!

With the game over, it was time for a Chinese in China Town of course before returning to the party for the rest of the overpriced-drinks fuelled night.

Day 2 report later! Phew.