During the January Multipack meeting, we discussed the idea of putting on a formal event, ideally presenting a hot topic to raise interest outside of the ‘pack.

Matt had planned to give a brief overview of his work with web accessibility in the emerging standard ARIA but, due to lack of appropriate facilities, this was made quite difficult.

Throughout the afternoon, there were also quite a few discussions going on about what Multipacker Bruce Lawson had been doing with HTML5 so it seemed like a good idea to invite Bruce to a future meeting for a more intimate discussion about his work.

Thankfully, Trev had already initiated a dialogue with Bruce and Stuart Langridge - another West Midlands based pioneer in the world of the Web - about attending a future Multipack meeting to do just this.

With sponsorship already secured for the next event from the awesome guys at Campaign Monitor (who do a marvellous job of hosting our monthly newsletter as well if you’re not already subscribed), it made sense to introduce a new format Multipack event for the February gathering.

After a few days of organising, Paul dabbling away to create a neat promotional graphic and Trev tapping into the Upcoming API to manage the content on our website, Multipack Presents was launched.

Multipack Presents: Emerging Standards will be hosted at the brand-spanking new offices of our good friends at One Black Bear in Birmingham City Centre (very easy to get to) on Saturday 21st February 2009.

The event will be starting from 2pm at nearby watering hole The Old Crown Pub to give you a chance to have a few drinks and mingle with the Multipack before moving on to the OBB offices at 4pm to commence the talks.

It should be a fantastic afternoon and evening with pizza and beer supplied by event sponsors Campaign Monitor and plenty to discuss during the event. After all the talks are out the way, there will be an open discussion panel with the presenters and, no doubt, further alcohol consumption in the usual Multipack haunts around Birmingham.

If you’re keen to learn more about emerging standards in the Web such as HTML5 and ARIA, I highly recommend you make your way to the event. It is an open invite so don’t think its just for the regulars. We’d love to see some new faces from far and wide. Just do us a favour and add your name to the Upcoming attendance list so we know how much beer to get.