Unrepentant

With less than 24 hours before Open Web Camp II hits, I am both excited and a little nervous: excited because I think we’re going to experience a very cool, interesting and stimulating day of emergent web technologies, and nervous because it’s significantly bigger than what I envisioned this past spring when the idea came up at a dinner between myself, Chaals, and Thomas Ford (of Opera). So going into the event, if we experience any hiccups on Saturday, please forgive us – the entire event was planned and executed by just Thomas and myself, and neither of us are professional event planners: just 2 guys with an idea and a will to make it so.

Many of you know that I march under the banner of web accessibility. It’s my job, my passion, my calling. For those of us who work in this field, we know that web accessibility is as much about education and evangelism as anything else: most reasonable web developers want to do the right thing, but often don’t know what that actually means when it comes time to actually doing the work. Thus, conferences and related speaking events that help in that educational mission are an important part of what we do, and lately we’ve seen a fair number of these types of events spring up. For us accessibility evangelists however, I believe we need to be careful that we don’t become a one-tune fiddle, as often the tune grows old quickly, and/or an all-accessibility conference ends up appealing to only those who are already involved in accessibility: we end up preaching to the choir. From that basis then, Open Web Camp was launched.

The idea was simple: put on a free, cool web-event in the Bay Area, and ensure that there were a number of interesting tracks that covered multiple aspects of open web technologies and web development, including accessibility. But rather than put accessibility on a pedestal or separate it out as something “special” or niche, treat the accessibility tracks as equal ‘partners’ in the stack – as interesting, exciting and crucial as learning the next CSS3 tricks, or exploring the emergent mobile platform (which introduces a whole raft of new issues for accessibility). Get attendees in perhaps wanting to learn more about HTML5, but have them leave with more than just that – and work accessibility into that mix: present accessibility the way it needs to be adopted, just part of the larger over-all mix.

The other part of the equation was to work the old contacts file and ask high-profile speakers to be part of the day, all in an effort to attract main-stream Bay Area web developers. Securing ‘big name’ speakers was a guaranteed way of ensuring a good turnout. (No point preaching to an empty room…)

Because this was a grass-roots effort, and because we wanted this to be a free event, we had virtually no money outside of a generous start-up grant from Opera (a company that takes Open Web Standards very much to heart, and a company that employs a number of people I am now pleased to call friends), and the fact that my employer – Stanford University – would grant me rooms for community events at no charge as long as I didn’t charge admission. But we couldn’t pay the speakers to come, so we appealed to their sense of right-and-good – and they all responded positively. I am so very thankful of that, and proud to work in an industry that thinks this way; that openly and freely sharing information and knowledge is how we grow as an industry, and that not everything needs to be based on the almighty dollar. This might not be unique to our industry, but it remains rare.

To that end, I want to once again single out and thank the following speakers, some who have actually come from far beyond the Bay Area to participate:

• Ben Adida
• John Allsopp
• Charlton Barreto, Ph.D.
• Tantek Çelik
• Dirk Ginader
• Matt Henry
• Molly E. Holzschlag
• Todd Kloots
• Joseph R. Lewis
• Charles McCathieNevile
• Hadi Nahari
• Greg Rewis *
• Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis *
• Nicole Sullivan
• Victor Tsaran
• Estelle Weyl

(* Greg and Stephanie where early supporters who at virtually the last minute found themselves stranded in the Greek Isles due to a strike, and unable to actually join us. While it’s tough to feel badly for anyone stuck in the Greek Isles, we will miss them, and I want to thank Stephanie for stepping up and finding last-minute stand-ins for her and Greg: thanks as well to Estelle and Charlton for agreeing to fill in with 72 hours notice.)

I also hope that in the spirit of the Open Web attendees will also step forward and fill in the open BarCamp slots being made available throughout the day, further sharing the information and excitement of the day – we have 12 X 30 minute slots open for the taking.

While I set about getting speakers and rooms, Thomas took care of the many logistical and financial issues we faced (because even free events cost money). To that end, he oversaw the development of our website and registration process; he also successfully secured sponsorship not only from Opera, but also Google, Yahoo! and PayPal – enough in fact that we can actually distribute Open Web Camp t-shirts to attendees (while quantities last) – because, yes, we are already thinking about next year’s event, and so early advertising never hurts. Thanks Thomas for your friendship and help, this couldn’t have happened without your involvement.

I also want to thank the those volunteers who (at this writing) don’t yet know they will be volunteers – but I know I can rely on the attendees who work at The Farm to pitch in and lend a hand – thanks gang.

And so, all that is left now is to hold the event. Wish us luck, and if you are one of the registered attendees for Open Web Camp, see you tomorrow.