@media: Day two

The second day started out with Doug providing an insight into the Blogger redesign, along with a few tips along the way. Man, that guy had some smooth presentations. Jeremy's presentation was another of my favourites. He's such a fun bloke and I had the joy of sitting next to him at the meal the night before. But his presentation helped me see that I've probably become more interested in scripting at the best possible time. I've never been a particularly big fan of JavaScript, and I dreaded getting too into the messy implementations that it harvested, but I've dabbled with DOM scripting more and more over recent months and now I feel much more confident with it.

I really enjoyed the other presentations too. I was looking forward to Molly's presentation on workflow and she was great. She talked a bit about the WaSP and Web Standards, as well as workflow and the impact of modern approaches to design.

In Joe's second presentation, he demonstrated the thoughts behind the zoom layout and gave some examples. The ideas are mostly theory at the moment – they need testing out. So, Joe gave us some homework: put the theory into practice and see what comes of it. This is something I intend to add in when I finally get around to redecorating around here!

Derek had me bricking myself through his presentation. We thought we had found his laptop – he was sat with us briefly in the break just before his presentation. Turns out the laptop was Pete's. Got back to the lecture theatre to find that Derek had set up and was ready to go… “Must've found his laptop”, I thought. It was a few minutes into his presentation that he told us that he was using Ian Lloyd's laptop. “Oh bugger – didn't he find his? Where the hell is it then?” Turned out Derek had just forgotten his video adapter. Phew.

Andy Clarke gave a stellar presentation. Controversial? Genius? Or both? I say both – Andy likes to be controversial, but I really do admire his approach to design. I think I must “over-value” accessibility. Of course, I try to involve accessibility considerations from the outset – as it should be – but Andy was trying to get across that accessibility should not mean that other issues should get foresaken. Accessibility is important, but so is design. I'm not much of a “designer”, but I really can appreciate that. Accessibility comes part and parcel, but we shouldn't allow it to be detriment other aspects of our profession.

Wind down

The wind down was a great way to polish off the conference. I managed to chat to some of the people that I'd not really met at the @media Party. A bunch of us went for pizza and I ended up sitting opposite Doug Bowman – who for some reason I find scary. I had a good chat with Tomas Caspers about the state of legislation that covers Web Accessibility in Germany, some of which seems utterly ridiculous. I also ended up talking to Joe Clark about how crap I found the Circuit Theory module of my Electronics degree (which I'm sure ultimately led to my loss of understanding/interest in Electronics).

Then came the late night/early morning drinks (and sandwiches) in the Novotel bar and the rise and collapse of the Magnificent @media Seven (as mentioned before). Lots of fun. I was knackered the next day.

Looking forward…

… to next year. It was great to meet everyone this year – I will definately be putting my name down for next year. Patrick, you'd better book a larger venue!