Another quick post in an attempt to talk about day two. Realistically, I can't do it justice while full of pizza and alcohol (I highly recommend Zia Pina pizzeria at The Rocks); but I don't want to wait another day before posting :)

day two quotable quotes

  • Eric Meyer
    • Tip: [When trying to get design signoff,] schedule the meeting right before lunch, you'll get a decision!
    • Anyone support IE6.0? (Hands go up) Anyone not want to support IE6.0? (Hands stay up) Ahh, my people!
    • [Gives crap to Dave Winer] Oh, this is podcast! ... He's in America and I'm in Australia - can get asylum?
    • [Typos "right" into "roight") Border roight... I'm localising!
  • Steve Faulkner
    • Day to day, what I do is criticise other peoples' work...
  • John Allsopp
    • Introducting Tantek Celik: Tantek is so busy he makes me feel like a sloth!
    • After showing the sad state of corporate websites: Keep fighting the good fight!
  • Tantek Çelik
    • On the box model hack: I didn't think it was a big deal...
    • On meta-data like 'keywords': Invisible meta-data doesn't work! (I nearly cheered. Now I can go back to my organisation with some hope they'll listen to me on this point ;)
  • Cameron Adams
    • Coolness is overrated. ... Now the first real reason to do this...

Not a big deal, Tantek? :) Let's visit that in a little more detail. (Note that this is more paraphrased than quoted - I'll get into the podcast and quote it properly once I am back home with broadband. Still, I hope this is a reasonable re-telling of the tale...)

I happened to have the ear, or email, of Jeffrey Zeldman. Jeffrey was saying he couldn't stop using tables for layout because of this bug... he mused that it would be great if he could send a different rule to two different browsers.

I said "Is that all? That'll be easy!"

"He looked at me... well he didn't really since it was email... and said 'easy'?"

So, using a test suite, I set out to find an error that screwed up in exactly where he needed it. After a short time hacking around I got back to him with this hack.

Suddenly Jeffrey decided he could move to using CSS instead of tables.

So what would be a big deal? :)

day two notable moments

  • Molly referred to Instant Messaging, blogs etc as the traditional ways of communicating.
  • A show of hands during Eric's session revealed that very few people are working to a formal browser support profile!
  • Derek Featherstone casually asking the crowd whether anyone could find him a ticket to the NRL Grand Final. Certainly a novel approach to the "sold out game" issue...
  • The Mac freaking out at the end of Derek's presentation, allowing me to goob the old "get a Mac!" advert. "Get a PC!" ...I was probably lucky to get out alive.
  • Cameron Adams managed to explain the DOM in a way that makes it seem almost trivially simple to understand. Why didn't anyone just tell me it just makes a tree out of your document? :)
  • Andrew's observation is definitely correct: Cam Adams wins Most Smartarse Jokes Slipped Into A Presentation. Just wait until Russ hears about the "snoozefest" comment. It'll might look like the Eric vs. Doug animation....
  • What is it with crazed mac heads? Cam Adams has reproduced the OSX desktop within a browser. If viewed on a mac, would it create a singularity? Your machine might reach some kind of Apple event horizon and turn into an iPod.
  • Tantek managed to use the word "folksonomies" without making me want to scream.
  • Jeff Veen reminded us that Your web site is a tiny piece of a much larger experience.
  • Jeff also introduced us to the term and formalised concept of the Culture of Generosity; which explains many of the web's current success stories. Give plenty, maybe take just a little, everyone benefits.

I also think it's kind of a notable moment - or at least very cool - that my non-geek fiance came to the after-party and didn't get driven insane by geek talk :) Maybe we're not quite as bad as we think we are ;)

See also: we05 day one - quick post, eric meyer on mobile computing (that photo :)), we05 - random informal observations and all over, bar the shouting.