I had the fortune to attend one of the biggest conferences on the Web Development calendar last week, @media 2005 in London. This event highlights and explains everything to do with Web Standards and the WaSP as well as accessibility and usability. It certainly opened my eyes to a few things…

The event was host to some of the most important figures in the Web Standards and Accessibility community. Names included Jeffrey Zeldman, Joe Clark, Douglas Bowman, Molly Holzschlag, Andy B, Andy C and Patrick Griffiths (as well as several others I hadn’t heard of). For me, it was interesting to see such a mixture of nationalities all coming together to explain and promote why we should be working to The Standard. While I expected several American introductions, it was welcoming to know that there was decent support on this side of the pond from The BritPack too. It has certainly given me the drive to push myself to the limit.

Mingling

One of my first tasks was to network so I didn’t feel alone for the two days of speeches. From the moment of registration, I had met some guys from Norwich Union and was sat having a coffee with them, finding out what they do, what they were intending on getting out of the conference and, most of all, were they up for a few beers later. We entered the auditorium as if we were all back at university - sit on the back row, giggling and whispering about potential funnies and looking forward to the buffet lunch. There were a few more introductions throughout the day (one guy who works from home in a two-man band in North London and several others who did the solo trip to London Town) so I was prepared for the @media Party later that evening. It was at the party where I met a fellow Derby FC fan from Bradford so I could have a good chat about that too.

Sense of Humour

One of the most important elements I was hoping for throughout the conference was a funny and relaxed side to web development. The majority of the audience had heard of Web Standards and had already started adopting the techniqes to their projects so it was important that the speakers kept the crowds interested and entertained. Thankfully, Jeffrey introduced the topic with a good speech and got everyone in the mood from the word “go”. Joe followed up with a basic but fun speech about accessibility, making good use of all his experience and research.

After the break, it was the turn of Robin Christopherson of AbilityNet to educate the audience about accessibility. As a blind man, he showed us all the pitfalls of current websites that made using the Internet hard work, but also introduced methods and technologies that have changed that. His speech will be the one that sticks in my mind the most. Doug followed this up with a well-presented speech about CSS design, making good use of his graphical skills and US sense of humour. Then it was time for more networking during the buffet lunch.

When we returned to the conference, Patrick took us through the building blocks of web content by explaining the use of (X)HTML tags and how to code proper webpages rather than using the wrong code. I think the majority of the audience were well aware of this area but it was good information for people who were there as a client or company with no coding experience who needed to know the potential of good, tidy documents. After this, Andy Budd took us through the process of building a CSS based, “table-less” design. Again, most people were aware of this but it was nice to see the methods used by these “pioneers of the Web” (Andy pointed out it took him just one weekend to build this design - 5 hours on Saturday to create the design and 4 hours on Sunday to build the webpage equivalent. There’s a target to aim for!)

Tidying It Up

The conference continued with similar talks about what Web Standards are, what the future is of the Web and (the possible) Standards as well as other accessibility and usability presentations and case studies. The whole event turned out to be an eye-opener and I will definitely walk away with a better knowledge of what I should be doing and what to be aiming for. Web Standards aren’t just a fad - they will be with us to stay and we will be seeing much more practical implementations over the coming years.