Somehow, I managed to finagle my way onto the program for Web Essentials 05 in Sydney as one of the presenters again this year. Ok, truth be told, the gracious organizers did offer me an invitation to return for the event’s second coming. Last year was so much fun though, I had honestly thought about going down under for this year’s conference anyway. Even if I had to register for the conference under a fake name so I could surprise everyone when I showed up. continued

On my way home now, I can finally sit down in one place long enough to recap the experience in London around @media 2005. I have a hard time believing it was all contained within 2.5 days. My gratitude to Patrick Griffiths for inviting me to speak at the event, and my admiration as well for pulling off a fun, fluid, very professional-feeling conference. continued

1. Bujumbura
2. Prestidigitation
3. Raconteur
4. Superannuation
5. Perinaeum
6. Beefcake
7. Phalangist
8. Masturbatory
9. Anthropomorphize
10. Didactic

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. continued

When I finally met Hugh Forrest for the first time in Austin this past week, I told him I keep thinking each year that SXSW is the biggest it can possibly get. That there’s no way the following year can top the previous year in terms of the talent he pulls in for speakers, and the amount of interesting people attending who are so open and receptive to new ideas. Each time I’ve been wrong.

continued

Early last week, I spoke to packed crowds at Web Design World in Boston. Clearly the conference scene is heating back up, as budgets for events and off-site training seem to be reappearing. The two sessions I presented (“Beautiful Interfaces with CSS” and “Throwing Tables out the Window“) were lots of fun. I had to bolt to the airport to catch a flight after my last talk. So I didn’t get to stick around to see the rest of the conference or talk to more of the attendees over the next two days. continued

Of course, you realize… the scary thing about this and this and this and this and this and this? continued

Jeffrey Veen and I will be conducting a one-day workshop in San Francisco a week from Monday, the 8th of November: Redesigning Blogger. We’ll be covering the process and thinking we used when Adaptive Path and Stopdesign worked with Google to simplify and redesign Blogger earlier this year. Jeff and I have worked together for a little over eight years now. We’ve learned a lot from each other, and from our successes and failures on various projects. We certainly didn’t always do the right thing at HotWired, making many mistakes while we were constantly experimenting. continued

I’ll be joining up with Peter and Russ to fly into Melbourne this Tuesday afternoon (5th of October) for a spontaneously rescheduled Web Standards Group meeting that night. Dave Shea and his wife April are traveling to Melbourne, so they’ll also be there for the meeting. If you’re in the area, please come out and join us, whether you’re a member of WSG or not. Details on time and location will be posted to this page on the WSG’s site when they become available. continued

Well, Web Essentials wrapped up on Friday night, and I can truly say it was one outstanding conference. Earlier, I think I wrote that it looked to be the largest web standards event in the southern hemisphere this year. That… was an understatement. It was easily the largest event focused exclusively on web standards in the world (outside the W3C), and the wonderful organizing team pulled it off flawlessly. continued