Pat’s Point of View

A few people asked why I only blogged about day one of the conference, and the simple answer is I didn’t get around to it. I’m desperately trying to make my weekends computer-free and spend quality time with family. I failed in that I did spend quite a bit of time in front of a monitor but I wasn’t online :)

Anyway back to the conference. The second day was as good as the first, with some great content being presented. Jeff Veen, as always, was entertaining and insightful. Daniel Burka was honest and enthusiastic in his depiction of design mistakes at Digg. Ruth Ellison offered a great discussion on real-world accessibility, showing her depth of experience in the subject, and showing that there are some things we don’t have answers to—you just need to do your best. Laurel Papworth made me think really new things about the commercialisation of social networking. Diana Mounter also offered an honest and practical discussion regarding whether to use a CMS or do a custom build (although I strongly suggest that the core problem in her case was a poorly chosen CMS).

Then there was the closing discussion from Mark Pesce, as thought provoking as ever. But you know what, I’m glad he’s stepping aside to let someone else take the reigns of chief thought provoker for WDS. Not only because he makes my brain hurt sometimes, but also because I think the local techies can’t take much more anti-establishment provocation (my how they love to get anarchisticly excited and dump all over Telstra, Microsoft and any other “evil empire”). And even more so because I suspect Mark is getting over it too. As he said, it’s time for people to take some responsibility for the things they demand; everyone wants free broadband, but very few want to actually make it happen.

Looking forward to next year.

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