The Web Directions North conference 08 has wrapped up, a great success. I went to some provoking sessions, including Douglas Crockford’s on how Javascript is so inherently insecure it should be replaced, and Josh Williams’ on growing a small company by capitalizing on a niche.
That said, the most compelling part of conferences is being able to chat with people in the industry. They recognized this and there were various opportunities to do so (a party at the end of each day). I managed to talk with most of the presenters, which was intimidating at first but was incredibly worthwhile. Some of the most interesting conversations I had were with:
-
Dave Shea about using Rogers’ data plans with his iPhone
-
Alex Capehart about VPS and support from a hosting provider’s perspective
-
Boris Mann on how if you want to charge a low consulting rate while starting out, you should call it a new customer discount.
-
Jeffrey Zeldman about comment spam on A List Apart
-
Jonathan Snook on the differences between the major javascript frameworks
All in all, well worth attending.