Journal tags: highlandfling

I had the honour of opening up the Highland Fling with a short sharp keynote on the history of progressive enhancement. As always, I enjoyed presenting though I’m not sure if the silence emanating from the audience was due to rapt attention or boredom. Once the audio is available, you can decide for yourself.

I’ll get the audio transcribed as usual. In the meantime, there isn’t much point offering up the slides as they don’t contain much information. Instead I’ll list out some of the things that I mentioned in the talk.

Music and books

• Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky
• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
• Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
• Why I Write by George Orwell
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney
• Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
• The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore

Links

• Fray
• Verso (archived)
• Webdesign-L
• Webmonkey
• Inclusive Web Design for the Future with Progressive Enhancement

I’m back in Brighton after a long weekend in auld reekie. I paid a visit to Greyfriars cemetery, the Royal Museum, toured the vaults and took in the many sights along the Royal Mile.

In amongst all of these tourist activities I enjoyed the geeky goodness of The Highland Fling followed by Refresh Edinburgh. Both were nice intimate gatherings. Both were also recorded for future podcasting. In the meantime, here are some of the presentation slides:

• The Future of CSS by Andy B.
• Graded Browser Support and Progressive Enhancement by Norm!
• Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript by Chris Heilmann
• Revish by Dan Champion

…And I’ll take the low road but I just might be in Scotland afore ye. Next week, actually. April 5th, to be precise. That’s the date of the Highland Fling conference in Edinburgh.

This will be a focused grassroots one-day event and I think it’s going to be fun. The focus will be on progressive enhancement and the grassrootsiness comes courtesy of the reasonable price of £125. There are still tickets available so if you fancy a day of inspiration and learning in an historic city, grab one for yourself.

I have the great honour of being asked to deliver the opening keynote. I hope I can deliver the goods. I’ll have my work cut out for me just meeting the high standards of the rest of the day’s schedule. The line-up looks really good. If I have one criticism, it’s that the line-up is distinctly male and non-Scottish. It would have been nice to see more local representation (says me, the Southener).

This imbalance may well be addressed a day later. Refresh Edinburgh doesn’t have a confirmed venue yet but it will definitely be taking place on April 6th, Good Friday. Sign yourself up if you can make it.

I’ll definitely be there. I’m going to stick around Edinburgh for the weekend too. My last visit was all too brief. I’m looking forward to spending more time in such a beautiful—and downright cool—place. See you there.