@media 2006 - Part the First

London was surprisingly sunny. My hotel was a half hour walk down the Thames from the venue, but small and stuffy.

The Wednesday night meetup was in a pub just round from Scotland Yard. I met up with the Multipack, Mr Mills and Mr Lawson, and was introduced to Mr Lemon and Mr Lauke. We stayed just late enough to realise that Westminster doesn't seem to have any later licensed pubs. I ended up chatting with some of the accessibility folks at their hotel.

Thursday began bright and early with Eric Meyer's keynote. A brief history of CSS that brought back all those painful memories of IE 3... It also left me confident that we have nearly won the war to convert people to CSS-layout.

We split into two tracks, and I chose the Good Design vs Great Design panel. Not revolutionary, but certainly interesting with a few idea sparks. After a break it was Chris Wilson's talk on the future of Internet Explorer. Chris can certainly present well, especially considering the hostile crowd. I'd already seen IE7, but was happy of the extra insight. I am cautiously optimistic.

2pm saw the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 panel. Less controversial than expected, given the recent discussion on the web. It was a well handled and balanced panel. I think it genuinely helped many people's understanding.

Jeffrey Veen wound up day one with his talk on the next generation of web applications. Entertaining, if content light.

Everybody disappeared off to watch the football. I ended up in a pub that did excellent Thai food with Bruce, Chris, James Smith, Gez Lemon and Laura Zucchetti. Mills took Photos.