I’ve just had the craziest couple of weeks, taking in 2 brilliant conferences that have left me more energised and enthusiastic about my career than I have been for ages. So much so that it’s got me blogging again. High praise indeed!
I’ll post later this week with my thoughts on the Future of Web Design, but I’ll start by talking about this year’s Highland Fling.
A quick recap
As someone closely involved with the Fling, it’s difficult to take an objective view, but I really believe this was a great conference. For anyone that doesn’t know, the Highland Fling is a small one-day web standards conference held in Edinburgh. Having been to a few conferences recently it struck me as to how differently the Fling feels compared with the rest. It’s just so much “cosier” than other conferences.
This is partly due to it’s smaller size and intimate venue, but it’s more than that. The Fling has a more laid back vibe than other conferences I’ve been to, and I think a lot of that is down to Alan and his choice of speakers/topic.
The theme for the Highland Fling this year was The Browser and Beyond, a topic as good as last year’s and another fantastic line up of speakers.
Paul Boag took the mantle of conference compère, which had an interesting twist as he interviewed each speaker after their talk. I hadn’t seen it done before and it worked really well, avoiding those awkward “anyone got a question” moments after a talk.
The other speakers covered a wide range of subject all connected in some way with the concept that web data is increasingly being used on a variety of devices and platforms, and in new and exciting ways.
We had:
- Mark Norman Francis – The Browser and Before
- Christian Heilmann – Sharing the joy – building badges for distribution
- Aral Balkan – Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges
- Chris Mills – The Mobile Perspective
- Simon Willison – Comet: Moving towards a real time web
- Gareth Rushgrove – A First Class Web Citizen
It was hard to pick any stand outs as all the talks were great but I really enjoyed Gareth’s talk as it was particularly relevant to recent discussions we’ve been having over at Net Resources.
What next?
On hindsight we maybe could have been better organised with certain things surrounding the build up to the day, but it doesn’t really matter. I think everyone had a good time and took lots away from the sessions and it provokes some much needed discussion and networking amongst the Scottish web development community.
It’s hard to imagine what Alan is going to come up with for next year’s Fling but knowing him it’ll be something suitably forward thinking.
And I can’t wait to do it all over again!
.