@Media Ajax London

So Today kicked off @Media's first Ajax conference here in London. I came down yesterday with a few guys from New Mind Derek and I took the train from Liverpool and after a speedy 5.5 hr journey we got into London Euston around 9pm. Today kicked off with Dion and Ben giving us an overview on the "state of ajax". This for me at least really covered the current state of play with Ajax, touched on all the main JS libraries and gave us an insight on what is around the corner. Before lunch Derek Featherstone gave us a great session on "Real World Accessibility for Ajax-enhanced Web Apps". I must say I really enjoyed this session and found Derek to be very witty. Its also good to hear that your not the only one who thinks in terms of semantic HTML. After lunch I also thought that Christian Heilmann's "Planning JavaScript and Ajax for larger teams". This for me opened my eyes to alot of things that at present we don't do in my place of work. I'm not commenting on whether or not this is a bad thing but I am hoping that some of the things Christian highlighted is at least given a go in our work place. In particular I like the idea of having Code Reviews where your code is moderated. This isn't to keep tabs but to help you as a developer to improve your coding ability but also to ensure that good parts of your code are shared and that knowledge shared! I also took note of the YUI team's Build Process, this process consists of validating code, minifying, consolidating and then tagging as Live. If we can streamline our build process code that is put into production should be cleaner and in theory more reliable. I also personally took to heart Christian's comments on our "inner hacker". I know that I often have a habbit of letting my "inner hacker" take over during certain projects and can let this happen during development time. What Christian suggesed is to contain this for more appropiate times. I.e coding in my own time and when I have some downtime in work, which may be rare ;) By doing this I will be able to deliver projects in theory within time better but also have better code. This did strike me hard and I know it's because truth hurts, hopefully I can devote more of my inner hacker to my main site and various side projects, who knows i may even get to blog about them :D That's it for tonight, just to say after Day 1 we all ended up for a few drinks on @Media at the abbey which was cool and after that Derek, Sunny and I headed over to the Hard Rock Cafe London. Well busy but well worth the trek :D --- I will be posting all my pictures from today on my Flickr