Havoc Inspired

So Mr Stanton and myself jumped on a train and headed down to London. This was my first time catching the train to London, I’ve typically driven, and I have to say I prefered it, it was much easier, and I got to work on this site on the way down so that was good.

We travelled down on the Wednesday so we could meet up with some friends (Anna and Emily) and get settled before the conference.

Anna and Emily swapping shoes??

@media was held at the SounthBank Center which is a cracking venue that easily accomidated the 800 or so people that were there. The days are split into a main track and alternative track you can see the schedule here.

My personal favourites were:

• Designing Our Way Through Data by Jeffrrey Veen
• Underpants Over My Trousers by Andy Clarke
• Designing User Interfaces: Details Make the Difference by Dan Rubin
• Professional Front-End Engineering by Nate Koechley
• Building on the Shoulders of Giants by Jonathan Snook

A minor complaint about the event was that they seemed to split the more design focused talks to the first day and the more technical, development talks to the second. It would have been nice for them to have been mixed up a bit more. For example Andy Clarke and Dan Rubins talks where back to back and with them being two of the best, it often felt like a long time before we saw another great speaker.

Dan Rubin, Indi Young, Jeffery Veen, Andy Clarke, Bronwyn Jones

Probably what I enjoyed the most about the conference was the social aspect. I got chatting to some great people, and quite a few of the speakers. Free beer in the evenings always goes down well. And getting chance to spend some time with Dan Rubin and Jonathan Snook was really cool. Both great blokes and Dan I’m looking forward to reading your book! ;-)

I have to admit I was mentally and physically drained after the event. Late nights and long days of concentration don’t mix well and we didn’t roll back into Leeds until after 11pm! Well worth it though, and I’d recommend @media to people in the future.

You can see the rest of my pictures on my flickr stream and everyone else by doing a search for @media2008.