Webstock, day one

Funny story that goes along this post.

So, I'm walking back from Webstock 2009 to the train station when a rip in time and space opened up before me. It swallowed me up and I was sent to a surreal nightmarish world where I had to answer questions in order to get home. The more questions I got right, the more likely the reality I would return to when this was all over would be the reality I was most used to.

The man said I got 99% of it right. That's pretty good, I told myself, stepping through the portal. And there I was, back in the real world.
Only now, nobody I know speaks mandarin. Not even the mandarinese.

The point I'm trying to get across is that, to me, today is the day after the conference, even though it's two months later according to the calender.
Unfortunatly, some of the finer details have escaped me. I still have an abundence of notes though, and I remember most of it.

So. Here we go.


DAY ONE

Day one started out a little slow for me. I wasn't paying attention to the speakers, more taking everything in about webstock - the venue, the people, the free food... everything.
I didn't get much out of the first two speakers, who were Scott Thomas and Brian Fling.
Then we broke for free food. Not brilliant, but not bad either.

Lisa Herrod seemed a tad on the emotional to me. Her part was supposed to be about 'Designing for diversity', or designing for the crippled/blind/deaf/etc. And I don't think she limited it to web design, either.
I wasn't paying that much attention to her either, mainly because she came across as an angry woman with a chip on her shoulder the size of texas.

Oh, but then we got to the one by Ben Curveny - Off the Grid, it was called.
Wasn't that fun.
There was more gardening metaphors than a green thumb conference. It's like he honestly didn't know quite what to say, because he kept talking about soil and plants and greenhouses and plants and... ugh.
I can't say it was all bad, though. He did give me one idea, and that's for a game that's completely ruled by what the player does, even if the player doesn't quite realize it. 'Adaption through user response' was the words he used to inspire this concept.

Then we got to Shelly Bernstien - Fostering Personal Connection to Place, and she was great.
It felt like she was actually talking to the audience rather then telling us something, her topic - the Brooklyn Museum and the way they interacted with their community was really interesting.

Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow) I didn't get much out of.
I took his Work vs work speech to heart, though. Work = something you have to do, because your boss tells you, and you usually get paid for it.
work = something you want to do, and it's usually unpaid.

I completely missed Regine Debatty's speech (Please don't let it be interactive). Not because it was uninteresting, just...
Alright. I personally didn't find it interesting.
I'm pretty sure she was the speaker with the french accent.

Then we get to the end of the day, and Rives appears.
I never really saw him coming. He was like a cake at the end of a day of mains at a restaurant, some great, others not. But somehow, the cake made up for all the ones that wern't so good.
If he was a class in an RPG, I'd give his a fancy name like Wordcrafter. He read us this poem - and I'm pretty sure it was 'Kite' - and it was just awesome. The lyrics, delivery, everything - just awesome.
I should also mention that this peom went on for half an hour. Yeah, you heard me. This guy kept a poem going for a solid half hour.


The day for me was a bit of a bust. To be brutally honest, I had no idea what I was going into, and didn't come properly prepared or equiped. There were only two or three speakers I really got something out of.

I was a bit worried that the next day was going to be the same - only a few people that caught my interest.