I am very, very tired. I had to get up at 8, which is like 6 to me because of the time difference. I registered without any real problems, and went to my first session.
Tag Clouds for Grandma, or something like that
This was so-so. The panel was alright, maybe a little too soft spoken. The subject didn’t seem to be very well thought out though. I really thought we were going to cover things like new navigation and stuff like that. Really, it was kind of boring, and nothing like I had hoped.
Dan Gilbert – How to Do Everything Right
I missed Malcolm Gladwell last year, which I’m still trying to get over. So I thought that this guy might be the next big thing. Somehow I doubt it. He made some good points, but I could argue with a lot of what he was saying. I really need to read his book to get a fair assessment. For all I know, I could have walked out of Gladwell’s session thinking the same thing, but I doubt it. I’ll give it a read, especially because he gave me an advanced copy for free!. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit in the public (2 – 3 people who read this) forum. On the up side, I did sit behind a girl with the most amazingly pleasant laugh. Not a thing I ever noticed in someone before.
Opening Remarks with Fried and Coudal
I’m going to give this it’s own posting. Let me just say here though that these guys are my heroes.
Bluff Your Way Through DOM Scripting
I have to give this a marginal thumbs up. The only reason it’s not a big, happy thumbs up is that last year this session was so much fun. Jeremy Keith and Andy Budd were a great pair with a very funny session on CSS. This wasn’t funny. I don’t mean that they failed at being funny; they didn’t want to make it funny. But†¦it was good and informative. I have a much better grip on DOM than I did before, and I have a couple items we are going to make a standard best practice requirement for our own Web development.
Create Passionate Users
I’m pretty much alone of this one, but I was bored out of my mind. I just don’t feel that she made any point during this presentation.  I was already tired, and this just made it much worse. And auto points off to anyone that makes me site through an entire Sarah McLachlan video. I felt like Joel on MST3K. I was being punished or something. For the record, I did hear that her blog is really amazing, so I’ll check it out.
Overall the day was a bit of a disappointment. The conference is much bigger now, with a lot more people. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
