This last week has been a huge social/talky/knowledge festival for me. It comprised of dConstruct 2009 and my first attendance at any barcamp: Barcamp Brighton 4.
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dConstruct Workshop: jQuery for Designers
I ran the jQuery for Designers workshop at dConstruct this year and I was honoured to be able to contribute to one of the great conference in Brighton (of course there's more).
It ran from 10am until 5pm, overrunning by about 30 minutes. The night before I was worried I had too little content and was trying to work out what I would do if I ran 1-2 hours short. As it turned out, I had about 2 hours too much content, and 2/3rd of the way through, ditched the slides, the talky content, in favour for the remaining exercises. That way delegates could get more hands on experience and help directly from me as I'd walk through the solutions with them (either by their side or on the main screen).
There was lots of really positive feedback, and my handdrawn slides seemed to go down quite well. Although the talk was entitled jQuery for Designers, the vast majority of delegates knew some JavaScript (or jQuery) which meant the workshop was aimed a little higher than pure beginner. Equally I had a couple of friends who attended the workshop, with no experience tell me they struggled at the codey parts - so future workshops will be split between total beginner and intermediate - total beginner getting things like where to include the jQuery library, etc.
You can download the PDF slidedeck from the workshop and all the examples and solutions.
Barcamp Brighton
This was my first every Barcamp, and I had a really, really good time. The first day comprised of preparing my talk in the park with friends (because I'd been busy preparing for the jQuery workshop!), and then running to the venue and presenting.
I made the fatal marketing mistake of writing my talk in biro rather than marker pen, and choosing a title that had about 4 lines (only because I didn't know or have time to workout how to get a "great" title). Something along the lines of: "iPhone Apps, without the store, or Objective-C, using web technology and works offline!"!!!
My talk showed off the Rubik's cube I'd been playing with for the iPhone (and Webkit). It's not a full working game, but a proof of concept, check out the demo video to see what I mean.
The demo includes HTML5 offline applications, CSS 3D transforms (inspired directly by Paul Hayes' demo), iPhone web apps meta tags and a few other bits and bobs.
You can download the PDF slidedeck from the talks and all play with the live demo.
The organisers did an awesome job with the venue, food and drink, and I'm really looking forward to next Barcamp Brighton (I've almost convinced my wife to attend too!). I'm knackered from the last few days activities, but I've had some of the best laughs in a good while and have had my head stuffed with ideas over an incredibly short amount of time!