Arranged by @vero, the event was very well attended with standing room only by the end.

I enjoyed @garethr’s talk on Asynchronous Messaging for Web Apps, it was a great intro taster to the subject. You can view his slides here.

Then we had a lightning talk from @martinkl about his new browser testing software Go Test It, and a lady called Helen from @HoldsworthPR on a startups conference being held soon.

There was also plenty of opportunity to socialise and have a few beers (shame I was driving). Good to see so many locals in attendance as well as a few of us from further afield.

I shall keep my eye out for the next one. Stay informed by reading the Cambridge Geek Nights blog, and come along next time if you are in the area! You can also follow the tweets here.

It was great to return to Sheffield (where I did my electronic engineering degree) after an absence of more than 13 years. Far too long!

[Showroom Cafe/Bar/Cinema, the venue]

The venue was in a rather nice Art Deco cinema/cafe/conference centre called the Showroom, in the heart of the city. It worked well as a place to host the BarCamp, with most of the rooms we used very close to each other. And the food was excellent – right from Dinner on the Friday night through to lunch on Sunday.

The warmup party on Friday night was a lot of fun. We were encouraged to make thought bubbles with our tags/interests and contact details, as a bit of an ice breaker. I think we felt a little daft at first, but with the aid of a few beers, we generally got into the swing of things!

[Three loonies wearing thought bubbles: Jay, me, Alistair]

I really enjoyed some of the presentations and discussions which were run during the event. I got mine over with early on, A Newbies’ Guide to Geocaching, which you can download from Slideshare.

Next up was a discussion about Community, and what it meant to us, lead by Alistair MacDonald. Some interesting points were raised, and this also lead nicely into another discussion a couple of sessions later on Social Isolation, lead by Kian Ryan.

After lunch, I noticed the sun was out, so I skived out for half an hour to photograph some nearby sights with a bit of decent light. The sculpture Cutting Edge made it as picture of the day, but I also liked this [right] one of a little lad admiring the cascade fountain near the station:

Alistair & I also managed a geocaching session in the city centre, before it got too cold and dark! Then it was back to the venue to thaw out and watch a session on Self-Defence for Geeks run by Paul Stanton.

Before long it was time for dinner and moar beer and silliness. You can imagine what the evening ended up like. And you can imagine what state some folks were in the next morning. Thankfully, the reving properties of copious quantities of tea and bacon soon did the trick.

Some Sunday sessions which I enjoyed included Jay Cousins‘ talk on Language and how it can influence our perception of technology. He made up some pretty neat words too!

Emma Persky ran a discussion about the imbalance of women in positions of influence within the web, when there is more or less parity now with the ratio of male/females who use the web. Not sure that any concensus was reached, as we seemed to talk in circles for a bit!

Tom Scott ran an excellent quiz during the Sunday lunch slot – the team I was on won, so of course it was excellent! We also had an open discussion with the organisers about the way things had gone over the two days, chaired by Jag Gill. Certainly they did some things differently; some worked well, others not quite so well, but overall I think the team did an excellent job at organising their very first BarCamp! Bravo to Jag, Ibbo, Josie, Jay and all the others.

Jon Linklater-Johnson ran a session on 10 Top Tips To Stop You From Messing Up Your Website. There was also a session about Tea, which was quite appropriate since lots of geeks seem to be obsessed with the stuff. Later on, there was a special showing of Dr Horrible, something I’d heard much-Tweeted about. Quite funny in places, purely bonkers in others!

The after party saw a few hardy souls do more damage to their livers, play Semantopoly, do silly things with Alistair’s BathCamp duck, and then go out for a massive curry. Great way to wind up the event.

[Jay and his Pirate Duck]

But I really think the last word should go to Ruby & Perl, Gemma’s ferrets who made a guest appearance on Saturday. Now I’ve experienced a BarCamp with ferrets, things will never be the same again!

[Ferrets ahoy!]

So that’s it really. A great weekend of geeking out. Thanks to all the folks who organised, contributed and turned up. It was a pleasure to meet you all. You can see the rest of my photos from the weekend on Flickr.

After the first day’s sessions came to a close, the socialising began in earnest. Here we see Mr Boozeniges living up to his name:

[First steps in drinking the mighty Google dry]

Inevitably, where geeks gather, there will be interminable rounds of Werewolf, for it is writ in Lore.

[Short break in a round of Werewolf. Cheer up! Anyone would think someone just died... oh wait!]

I think I must have played at least half a dozen games during the evening. But the most satisfying has to be the one that wrapped up around 5am – final round me [Werewolf] versus Tom Hughes-Croucher and Sebastian “CB” Grünwaldt [villagers] and Tom decides to nominate CB – mwahhaha! I win! Yum yum, tasty villagers.

Talking of tasty, as if the mountains of food served for dinner weren’t enough, Google laid on a midnight feast for the geeks – freshly cooked waffles, pancakes and a chocolate fountain. Man, you could get soooo fat working here…

[The chocolate fountain - just had to be tried, didn't it?]

There were loads of games to play (Wii sports, tabletennis, fussball) and even a Segway to fool around with. However, Jan and CB, two of the crazy German LondonBubble guys decided they could go one better than the Segway with their two-seater “find”:

[Ticket To Ride - CB drives with Jan on the back, looking justifyably worried]

But the weirdest trick of the evning must go to Oliver Uuberholz (another LondonBubble boy) who decided the empty beer fridges were going to waste and his Mac was getting too warm:
[Macs in the fridge]

Enough craziness, and being about dead on my feet by 5:30am, I went to find a quiet bit of floor to collapse on for 3 hours.

• To raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses
• To provide a media clearinghouse, connecting journalists with experts and activists
• To preserve and extend traditional civil liberties in the digital world
• To collaborate with other digital rights and related organisations
• To nurture a community of campaigning volunteers, from grassroots activists to technical and legal experts

[Becky explains the work of the Open Rights Group]

[Attentive audience]

The ORG’s website is well worth a read if you are interested in any issues regarding digital rights of various kinds.

The first event I’d like to make a post about was the excellent -

Web Standards Group Meeting on Javascript

Some of us shy away from JavaScript (until recently, myself included) on the grounds that it’s not accessible. But these days, if it’s done right, it can be positively beneficial to accessibility.

Demystifying Screen Readers – Steve Faulkner
Steve is very knowledgable on screen readers and all their foibles, and is Director of the Web Accessibility Tools Consortium. This talk mainly centred around Jaws (65%) and Window Eyes (35%). The bracketed figures are from a US National Federation of the Blind market share survey – it’s obvious these are the two big players.

The key issues revolve around:

• Dynamic updates – user initiated and independent
  Can the user access the updated content?
  Is the user aware that the content has been updated?
• Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
  Can the user understand the role of the control?
  Can the user successfully interact with the control?
  Is the user able to access information about the current state of the control?

He then explained the differences in screen reader modes:

• Browse Mode (virtual buffer) – the user can navigate page content via paragraphs, headings, links, lists etc. They can also activate links and some form controls. But text characters can’t be input into form fields, or interact with select elements in this mode.
• Forms Mode (browse mode off) – the user may only navigate through a document to focusable elements via the TAB key. Text access is limited to “read all” functionality. Most of advanced content navigation is unavailable.

The crucial question we have to consider is, when and how does content become available to the user after it’s been updated in the browser?

[Steve Faulkner and the Latency Issue]

Latency is a problem because the virtual buffer does not update and the user doesn’t know anything has changed. However, JAWS v7.1 started “listening” for virtual buffer updates in response to things like:

• window.setInverval()
• object.innerText (for IE)
• object.textContent and object.appendChild (in Firefox)
• changes in form control values
• And other stuff like ALT or TITLE attribute value changes.

Jez Lemon has an excellent article on Improving Ajax Applications For JAWS Users on his webiste. Steve summed up with some recommendations:

• Do not code to accommodate the poor support shown by JAWS and Window Eyes.
• Use unobtrusive methods where available and appropriate, to help screen readers along.
• Don’t use the excuse that JavaScript / Ajax is not accessible for screen readers to not bother to design for accessibility.
• Start developing interface elements that use WAI-ARIA specs, which will provide some benefits now and many more in the future.

Steve’s thought-provoking presentation was followed by a turn from Christian Heilmann entitled Seven Reasons For Code Bloat

[Christain's been on the beanz again]

His notes are available for download from his blog, so I won’t repeat them verbatim. Needless to say, it was a fun presentation and contained the obligatory photo of a kitten . Meanwhile, he’s thinking of this as the title of his next book:

[Christian's Next Book?]

PubStandards XVIII
Of course, the next item on the social agenda was the PubStandards gathering. Lots of fun and revelry as usual, here’s one photo, but you can see more on Flickr.

[Patrick & Ashe go head-to-head, while Ross butts in the middle]

Each potential project was given a five minute slot to present their idea or website, and questions were taken at the end. The following sites were presented:

• sellaband.com
  The basic premise is that “believers” invest in shares of new acts, so they can raise $50K to record an album. Each share is for $10 and will guarantee the believer one copy of the resulting CD. So buy $50 of shares and you get 5 CDs. Once the $50K has been raised, the website puts the band in touch with producers and the recording goes ahead. At any time before the full amount is raised, either band or believers may withdraw their offers. Two acts have already raised the neccessary capital and a third is well on the way.
• spikesource.com
  Is a site for the Open Source community to collaborate and set standards for business-ready applications
• flirtnik.com
  Billed as “Smart personals for smart people”, it’s apparently the first Web2.0 dating site, using folksonomy tagging. Users are able to add relevent tags for themselves and others, which can then be searched. Results can be filtered out on the basis of gender etc.
• play.tm
  Site aimed at gamers and has loads of news about the latest gear, games, etc. Also has community section.
• metaweather.com
  The site seems to default to Chinese (!), which was slightly disconcerting. It is an automated weather data aggregator that take the weather predictions from various forecasters and calculates the most likely outcome.
• rouq.com
  An unusual search engine which brings up thumbnails of the results pages.
• trustedplaces.com
  A site where users can rate restaurants, shops, or other places, and tag them with relevent meta data. You can play the tastefinder game, which will then match your tastes with other users on the site, in order that you get the recommendations which are most appropriate to you.
• openrightsgroup.org
  The last presentation was from the Open Rights Group, telling us about the work they are doing spreading the word on copyright, DRM, and other tech stuff happening on the web today.

So, if you’re an investor looking to put up some cash for good ideas, or a developer looking for financial input, MiniBar is the place for you. The next one is scheduled for 20th April.

There’s also an event called the London OpenCoffee Meetup which does more or less the same thing. Only this time it’s over coffee, every Thursday morning between 10:00 and 12:00 in Starbucks, Regent Street. I’ll bear it in mind when I have my big idea and need funding!

• Verification – adhere to internal standards.
• Training – informal education of expectations of new hires
• Collective wisdom – [you will be assimilated!] Experts pass on their knowledge.

They are looking for, in HTML – valid, semantic, accessible.
CSS - valid (hacks separated out), modular (hung off ONE id – means you can reuse code on another part of site without relying on cascade), cross-browser (graded browser support)
Javascript – unobtrusive (pull it out into separate files, still get to the content with JS off), optimised, cross-browser.

Don’t care too much about programmed page weight – ads multiply page weight hugely anyway. Page weight is not very relevent to each user but is to Yahoo!, since so many hits could mean server overload.

Perl/PHP must be documented (in the code, externally), understandable, standardised

[Olé Norm!]

How do they work? Time taken doing them is minimised. Quiet time is set aside beforehand for people doing the reviewing, away from email, IM etc.
During review, items are explained by reviewer, while the coder keeps quiet. A mooderator takes notes for them both, which are tabled for later. Then follow-up – the lead developer confirms that the problems identified have been rectified before code goes live.

Me on Taking Better Pictures
I’ll post the main contents of my presentation in later posts, but it seemed to be fairly well received, with about a dozen folks coming to listen.

Andy Mitchell & James McCarthy on “Free Schmee”
Andy and James were talking about APIs and using them in a modular fashion – why invent the wheel again when you could reuse another API to do certain tasks, such as user verification. They freely admitted they’d been penning their presentation hastily when they’d rather have been attending mine. But never mind, it was still an interesting few minutes!

[James and Andy argue about who's going to work the slides...]

Next was dinner: geeks + pizza + beer = culinary carnage. At least there was no washing up!

[Colin Schlüter surveys the carnage]

I stayed chat with Andy Mitchell and John Wilson for quite a while after dinner, but made it to the main auditorium , back end of Ask Us Anything panel. Someone rashly asked to see the panel dance!

[Norm! shakes his booty, watched by Simon, Steve, James and Aral]

Of course, it wasn’t long before someone asked “when can we play Werewolf!” So, most reconvened to the restaurant area and three groups started. Not sure how many games were played altogether, but I think it was at least nine, with various permutations of people flitting from one circle to anther.

[a wolf in gnome's clothing, perhaps? Tom Coates ponders who he's going to bite next; James Wheare (Wolf??) and Cristiano Betta don't seem worried by his proximity!]

And so to bed, perchance to sleep, at 4am… fat chance – wished the floor wasn’t so hard. Got up again 4 hours later to find most still comatose:

[geek dorm, aka conference room]

BarCamp Worries
I’ve got my ticket for next weekend’s BarCampLondon2 – but I’ve still got little idea what I’m going to present. There will be plenty of folks there who are better able to say something new about CSS, Microformats or whatever. So I think I might go a bit lateral and perhaps do something biased towards the photography. We’ll see.

You can see some alternatives in the Playpen #8 page.

Hopefully, some more folks will have a go at designing some logos too. When they are available, I’ll let you know – the more the merrier

I’m also very pleased to have secured my place for @media 2007 europe europe this morning! I really enjoyed the 2006 conference, and look forward to all the new sessions on offer. You can read some of my past posts for @media 2006.

Much beer was consumed. It was Norm!’s birthday, and he’d very kindly paid for food to be provided, so the gannets soon swooped and demolished that too. The CSS Div had made a very sticky chocolate confection in Birthday Boy’s honour, and that was handed round. Very rich, one tiny piece could send you into hyper-glycemic shock.

Frances was quite tipsy, although she’s sworn me to secrecy on that one. Oops! And before I left, Matt and Patrick had persuaded me to go along to Matt’s birthday showing of Raiders Of The Lost Ark tomorrow. Renting the whole cinema! Extravagance, or what? Most of us just rent the DVD. Ah, well, I could not provide a good alibi for not attending, so I’ll be in the audience at 3pm – Matt might even give me a free “John Wayne” badge…