Fundamentos Web 2006 – A Recap: Day 1

The aforementioned conference came and went. But certainly not without noise.

Most of this events can fall into several categories: great, overpriced, well-balanced, horrible, perfectly organized, time-waster, etc… From this side of the things it was certainly well worth the admission price and the time spent, even with all the rain that fell upon our heads. Oviedo is a lovely city, big enough to get lost, but, at the same time, you can get almost anywhere walking and people are as friendly as you get in Spain. And don’t forget the great food and drinks.. The organization chose a great spot, the Teatro Filármonica, a bigger venue than last year, but with a homely feeling to it. There were more people in it, but it didn’t feel crammed at any point.

Now, about the speakers:

  • Richard Ishida – He had the tough job to open the conference, and he did it splendidly. It was obvious that this was like bicycle riding to him and that he could have had delivered his conference on Internationalization blindfolded. In the other hand, the topic was a bit uninteresting since Localization is not among the top ranking priorities among Spain’s web developers.
    Grade: B+.
  • Bob Regan – The only specific talk about accesibility ended up being a bit of an Adobe Ad on How-Fucking-Accesible-Flash-Is-And-How-Cool-We-Are. Bob is a very nice guy and we know for a fact that he is better than what we saw on stage at the conference, but it was not his day. Let’s forget it happened.
    Grade: F.
  • Ben Hammersley – if anyone was inspiring at this conference, then he was Ben Hammersley. He didn’t deliver a great performance during his talk, though the content was brilliant and the concept that what is good is beautiful has more value than any other idea we saw through the week. As passionate as it gets though could have crammed what he said in 10 minutes, instead of 45. His contribution to the discussion later that day during the chat with Vinton Cerf was amazing. The perfect poster boy for the Web 2.Love, someone should convince him to come to Madrid for a couple of pints so we can all make out with him. NOW.
    Grade: A.
  • Dave Shea – Perfect presentation technique, but lacked passion. His theme was “CSS Project Management” and showcased the best tricks on how to work with CSS files, browser quirks and useful tricks to make a developer’s life easier.. Some of us expected to hear the pitfalls of managing a project that involved CSS development. The most controversial topics that involved W3C’s CSS workgroup were bypassed silently due to his traumatic experience with them.
    Grade: B-.
  • Daniel Appelquist – W3C representative within Vodafone for the Mobile Web came to the stage to advocate for the mobility of content. From his speech one can think that the Mobile Web is still at its infancy and, at the same time, that niches in that side of the net are still easy to fill up. Extremely positive fella that, unluckily managed to be unmoving.
    Grade: C-.

After Dan’s talk, and to end the day in sort of a high note, we watched how five lucky guys sort of interviewed Vinton Cerf, the grandaddy of Internet, the Architect of the Matrix, and he is an act of pure class. He talked on what he would change on how the Net works had he known better back in the sixties, how governments should behave towards Net Neutrality and where things are heading. For a sixty three year old guy he certainly is well-informed and all his answers were delivered without any hesitation and a fantastic hand-gesturing technique.

He is fucking brilliant and we don’t deserve his existence or, for that matter, any of his precious brain cycles.

BTW, let’s everybody thank Firefox’s restore session function that managed to recover this post from a crash.

6 Comments

  1. You! the font freak! the uhu! that font is not readable, you have to think about your public blah, blah… can you actually comfortably read this font? the letters merge and I am wearing my glasses!

  2. I agree with Marmotilla, with your fancy MacBook Pro, I expected a better layout ; some “user friendly” typo that would draw me in and not let go until I read every word… I didn’t…
    That’s not the point.
    The point is: why do people keep using the expression “web 2.0”? It’s was made up by marketing douchebags only to excite the curiosity of idiots who don’t understand the concept of version numbering. I fracking hate it…

  3. I came here looking to download photos of hairy men. Where are they? I need them. Now.

  4. Six months later and this site hasn’t been updated. Where are my photos of hairy men? Boo-urns.

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