Monday me and Mark Fennell (with whom im staying) arrived at the Star City Hotel/Conference centre and after finding myself through the maze of floors and corridors i bumped into Matt Voerman, a very nice bloke and so i joined him and two other peeps for a beer. We then joined the pre-conference Macromedia User Group where i met up with a Mr. Jesse Stratford from actionscripts.org, yet another nice bloke whom i was glad to put a face to a name finally and the notorious Peter Hall - another good man. The presentation was about web standards and i found it rather interesting as the other attendees did, however nothing that cant Mr. Zeldman hasnt already said on his website.Following that we drunk beer and then a crew of 12, trotted down to Darling Harbour for an Italian meal by the water. What a beautiful place the harbour is, all lit up in the evenings. Lots of Macromedia MX Geeks talking around a table about geeky stuff. By 12pm i was the walking dead, so grabbed a cab and shot back to my mates house where i got some shuteye (sleep).
Today, Tuesday, the first day of the conference. I woke bright and early, quite an achievement, those people who know me well enough will know that i need more than alarm clock to wake me up in a morning, however i woke naturally which was kind of strange, anyways….
Mark and i, jumped into a cab and shot to the conference. It was a miserable morning weather wise, cloudy grey skies (the type you see in the UK all the time). Upon arrival at the Star City Venue, we joined the Macromedia Keynote which was just under way. Mike Chambers talked about Central and some other Macromedia dude, whos name i cant remember(Sorry!) shared Macromedia’s vision for the future of web experiences. He showed some neat stuff on devices(Docomo etc..) which got the crowd whispering.
Tea, Coffee and Snacks followed and then me, Peter, Mark and Jesse were off to see Branden Hall talk about when and when not to use Object Oriented Programming in your projects, and why. Great session that made alot of sense.
Buffet style lunch was served with live Jazz played in the background, a gorgious curry on my plate and sat outside with the boys munching away with a lovely view of the harbour to drool over. After lunch it started to rain and has been ever since (seems me and Peter Hall forgot to leave the English Weather out of our suitcases) i just swanned around a little while the other guys attended sessions and then joined Jesse to give Peter Hall some moral support in his session on Strict Typing with Actionscript 2, another great session with lots of tips and pitfalls discussed.
After that a beer and a chat to to little groups that always form and then off home to get an early night and work on my presentation for tommorow. I was assuming that tonight was gonna be a big piss up but it turned out the the Macromedia guy’s had invited all Macromedia User Group Managers and Team Macromedia members out to dinner, of which i am neither, so that when out of the window! Till tommorow. Over and out!