Second day of WDN, ok let’s go. The day started with the opening keynote by Molly Holzschlag, who talked about crimes against web standards. Not only about her crimes (like using br-tags for spacing), but she also made some guys in the audience confess their own crimes against web standards. In her speech, she also showed some funny video-sidenotes by Eric Meyer. Very funny and enthusiastic indeed.
After the break, I joined a couple of other folks at “Web Apps - Ajax Kung Fu Meets Accessibility Feng Shui”, done by Jeremy Keith and Derek Featherstone. Jeremy basically talked about what things needs to be considered when adding behaviour (i.e. Ajax) to your site. Derek then continued pointing out how important it is to ensure that your site still remains accessible, even with some fancy scripts in place.
I already knew a couple of things from reading Jeremy’s book. Concerning Derek’s speech, I totally agree with him and think that all the issues he mentioned are very valid. But on the other hand: who, in a real world client situation really has time to think about all the accessibility issues he mentioned? Most of the time, money and time is limited and in the end you are glad if all the markup and the css is in place, the client is more or less happy and you are done with the project. I am not saying that accessibility is not important, I only want to point out that in most projects, the client does not give you the time (and the money) to think about these things in great detail. Nevertheless, very eye-opening in many cases.
Then I had a tough decision to make concerning which session to attend after lunch. I chose “Microformats” with Tantek Çelik, John Allsopp and Dan Cederholm. Very interesting. I had a look into Microformats before, but not into detail. I really loved the presentation and what you are able to do with Microformats, I am looking forward to implement them on this site as soon as I have time. A very funny closing keynote from Joe Clark marked the end of day 2 - at least the official part.
At night, it was time for hockey. I got my tickets for Canucks vs. Blackhawks some time before the conference and was very excited to go there. I was really amazing, my first NHL game, but unfortunately, Vancouver lost 0-3. Do I have to tell you more?
*lurk*
You would have been far better off going to the Atlanta game had you been able to score some tickets. The Canucks apparently didn’t think a team on the downspin, who played the night before and only arrived in town 300a game day, would put up much of a fight. Hence the poor experience you had (not to say you didn’t enjoy the experience, but the building is much better when the Canucks win or at least put in an emotional effort).
chris, that is definitely true. maybe i expected too much from my first nhl game ever. i really thought that the canucks would not have that much of a problem playing the blackhawks. it was a bit disappointing, as they played very well on saturday against atlanta. but this one was sold out. damn it, i’ll try again next time