opinios

Getting In Touch

I have been absolutely hopeless at getting back to people lately. I have long, thoughtful emails from dear friends sitting in my Inbox unanswered. If this is you, I apologise. I am working my way through; Kim and I had a terrific holiday in Queensland and I am slowly tackling the backlog of email.

I'll get to yours next.

Web Essentials 05

What can I say? WE05 was inspirational, educational and a lot of fun.

I flew to Sydney on Wednesday evening, despite bitter protests and guilt being thrown on me by my poor wife who had developed a cold (and a sudden bout of self-pity). My 8:30pm flight was delayed by 45 minutes (after we had already boarded the plane) because of a raging thunderstorm that was threatening to strike the baggage handlers, apparently. That delay, coupled with an hour's wait in line for a cab in Sydney meant that I didn't arrive at my hotel until after midnight.

The up-side was that I had been upgraded. What I was expecting to be a typical small business traveller's hotel room turned out to be a massive 2 bedroom apartment with full kitchen. Which was a shame, because I barely spent any time there.

Both days were terrific. Keynote speaker Molly Holzschlag set the scene for an action-packed day of presentations from the web industry's leading thinkers and technologists, including Eric Meyer, Tantek Celik, Jeffrey Veen, Douglas Bowman and others. Others have captured the experience in admirable detail, so I shan't elaborate too much. Suffice to say that I have returned to Melbourne feeling energised and inspired. Oh, and weighed down with all the books that I purchased (and had signed by the authors) while I was there.

Highlights for me included:

• Downing beers with the SitePoint crew on Thursday night


• Meeting Andrew Krespanis and discovering that he is even more of an upstart in real life


• Discussing the pros and cons of opening your heart to the world on your blog with the vivacious queen of online 'onesty, Molly, and buying her a Coopers Sparkling


• Derek Featherstone's accessible crossword magic

If you are somewhat geek-inclined but weren't able to attend Web Essentials, I definitely recommend you take advantage of the fact that every session was recorded and is available as a podcast. Slides for most presentations will probably appear soon, which will give some context and make the experience almost as good as being there (well not quite).

On Saturday I managed to catch up with my good pal Sam and his lovely group of friends for a morning of ambling about in the Blue Mountains, including a dip in a freezing pond.

All up, a terrific weekend!