Back from @media 2006
The trip to London and @media 2006 was a real success, for me at least. I had so much fun and listened to so many great people and talking to many interesting people. It was simply a blast to be there.
Me and my colleague came to London the evening before the event started. We had quick walk, it was just around the corner to the pub where the pre-party was. There we quickly met Jim from Pool which was also staying at the same hotel, what a coincidence. The pub didn’t have any food so we went to Pizza Express to have a slice. After the dinner we went back to the pub. We had a beer and talked to a few people like Roger Johannson and Faruk. We did not stay that late as we where so eager to get up next morning.
Next morning started with my shower didn’t work, so I had to take a bath instead. Luckily I did have the time so I was soaking in the bathtub for an half an hour, then down for breakfast. Quick continental breakfast and the away to the congres. We thought it would take about 15-20 minutes of walk to get there but the place was just a block away so we where there almost first, great, no cue.
The day went by with so much interesting things to listen to. The promised wifi was terrible, I never got my smart phone to connect to the network. Too bad. The lunch was not a standard Swedish lunch if I can say so. More sandwich than food, but what the heck, we where not there for the lunch. At the event we meet a few other Swedes, the whole gang from Net Relations was there. It was nice to meet them all. We also met a guy who is working with online banking on Åland, we had a lot in common as I have worked with online banking for Nordea.
The afternoon went on quickly with a lot of interesting speakers. The highlights from day one was
- Listen to Eric Meyer who talked about how CSS has progressed through the years
- Jon Hicks, Cameron Moll, and Veerle Pieters spoke about design, nice with something less technical
- Jeffrey Veen talked about Web 2.0, Ajax and such, really great speaker
After the daily event we quickly went back to the hotel to drop of all the free stuff we got. Me, Anders and Jim walked up to Piccadilly circus, had quick bite at Burger King, then straight off to the party that was held at some club. We stayed at the party all evening, talked to a bunch of people. It was really nice to meet Roger, Veerle, the gals who worked at VG (hi Norway), the British dudes from South Hampton (I think) and Jim. This was really a nice evening.
Next day was quit busy, we started by getting late as the check out from the hotel took such a long time. Then all day went fine with great speakers, the lunch was the same as the first day. Day 2 highlights
- Listen to Robin Christopherson who talked about accessibility
- Molly E. Holzschlag’s great speach about internationalization
- Nate Koechley’s three busines cases around Yahoo, Yahoo photos and Yahoo mail.
We could’t go to the two sessions as we needed to hurry to the flight back to Sweden, that was really bad as I really wanted to listen to Tantek Çelik and Microformats. Hopefully there will be podcasts and videocasts up shortly.
To summarize. The two days whas really really excelent. Nice to listen to all speakers, It was great for us with two tracks. Then both could go and then we summarize the to each other in the end of the day. The food was not so great. The wifi sucked. Best was probably to meet all people and ‘network’. Talking english went fairly well, well I didn’t need to talk that much english as most people I talked to understood Swedish, even the bartender and the club. Overall, two thumbs up.
Update: All my photos at flickr
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Sounds like you had a really good time in London! Nice to see the guys behind Netrelations.
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:23 pm
IM sooo jealous at you Jens!
June 26th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
It was a real blast, you should make shot at next years event.
July 4th, 2006 at 8:47 am
It was nice meeting you too and nice to see you found my blog. Maybe I will have to write more often now that I have had my first real visitor.
July 4th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Sure, I’ve added you to my feedreader.
July 6th, 2006 at 1:19 am
Hey, I was there but didn’t know what you look like otherwise I’d have said hello and bought you a drink!
I really enjoyed Jeff Veen and Robin Christopherson too (despite the awful wifi problems) but found the panels a waste of time. You had probably left already, but Andy Clark gave a great closing presentation about moving CSS design to the next level… with the mandatory ‘book to follow’ lol.
July 6th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Ahh, too bad. A drink and nice chat would have been great, mayby next year?