Just arrived in London. It’s gray outside, and probably a little cooler than I thought June would be. But I’m glad to be here, regardless. A rather uneventful flight (always a good thing) except for the man sitting next to me smacking the Enter key on his laptop keyboard every 2 seconds throughout the night.
Despite feeling a little tired this morning after flying all night, my body feels so much better than it did on my last trip to Hong Kong, where jet lag thoroughly kicked my butt the entire trip. This is the first time I’ve had the luxury of using United’s arrivals lounge to shower, shave, and down a few cups of coffee before even leaving the airport. This is certainly a better way to travel and arrive in a new city.
I decided to arrive in London a few days early, before the flurry of activity later this week. For me, the end of this week will bring an intense set of speaking engagements, tightly packed together. Two overlapping conferences in two cities over three days.
On Thursday, @media kicks off a jam-packed 2-day conference focused on standards, accessibility, and everything in between. I’m sure Patrick Griffiths has been working day and night bringing all the details together for what should be a great event. In the company of fellow speakers, Andy B., Andy C., Ian, Jeffrey, Jeremy, Joe, Molly, how can one go wrong? I’m hoping to get a little more time to hang out with the gang of Brits I met in Austin a few months ago, as well as looking forward to meeting a lot more people from the UK and around Europe.
Friday night, @media will wrap up, I get one short night of sleep, then I’m up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight to Copenhagen early Saturday morning, where I’ll arrive for another 2-day conference, reboot, already in progress for a day. I join quite a long list of speakers, some I know, and many whom I don’t know at all, speaking on all sorts of future/technology-related topics. According to a couple past speakers, (Jeff and Peter) reboot should be fun.
I’m honored to be speaking at both events. This trip marks my first visit to both London and Copenhagen. Not much extra time in either city, but hopefully enough for a little sightseeing and even more hanging out with locals.