Ben's Blog

I was lucky enough to go to Sydney to attend the we04 conference.

Getting There
Left Melbourne at 3.30pm and had a bumpy flight to Sydney that seemed to take forever even tho it was only 55 minutes. I have the attention span of a box of hammers so I think flights take forever no matter how short they are.

Checked in at the Mercure on Broadway just before six o’clock and headed out for a look around. It was a wet and windy night so the pleasure factor was lower than it should have been. I wanted to go up Centre Point to enjoy the view but it was too foggy. I ended up at Darling Harbour and had a shitty Nasi Goreng and a flavourless Jasmine Tea for dinner. I must be getting old as I am choosing Jasmine Tea over beer nowadays as my beverage of choice. I guess it I should have known better than to eat at Darling Harbour as it is a pretty spot but hardly seems like the place for good cuisine. Walked round for another hour or so before crashing in my hotel room round half ten. Sawks called shortly afterwards to tell he was tired and had a lot to do so we decided we could not be bothered catching up for a pint.

I was bored so I tried to hack into the erotic TV channels for a while before giving up and finally falling asleep around mid-night.

we04 Day One
Beep beep! Sawks’ text message woke me up at 7.28am. I met him and his workmate Anthony downstairs for a meat pie for breakfast. Mmm classy!

An hour later we were listening to Dave Shea talking about Zen Garden. The most interesting point Dave made was his guestimation that Firefox would hold 25% of the browser market 12 months for now. I really hope Dave is right and I do not doubt his assumption. IE’s security holes are now getting epidemic so I can’t see what else people can do besides switch. Or to be extra safe maybe they could really switch.

Most of the technical info of the day I could say I was already across so for me the highlight was John Alsop. John is the author of one of my favourite articles about the Web and Website design and what it really is. Don’t worry that the date of the article is several years old. It is still very, very relevant. John seems like an eccentric genius who sells himself as neither a web designer or developer but a “web philosopher.” I swear that many of John’s points are already somewhere in my head however I could never express them as concisely and eloquently as he does.

Dean Jackson was up next and gave me a new viewpoint on the W3C. How can someone so humours and lively work for the W3C? He even lives in Canberra! Seriously tho, Dean was great and he is heavily involved in the development of SVG. I can’t wait until that gains momentum.

Later in the day we heard one of my favourites Doug Bowman speak. Doug was followed by Dave Shea once again. I don’t need to elaborate on Doug or Dave, they are simply legends in this industry to which we all as either developers or users owe a small thanks to. I requested the mic at question time to ask them a question that I already knew the answer to just so I could hear them talk a little big longer.

Sawks, Anthony and I had drinkies afterwards before heading back to our hotel for some R and R. Wonder Woman showed shortly afterwards and then we went out for more drinks and some dinner.