This post is from one of several previous incarnations of this site and probably doesn’t quite fit the current format. In a former life this was a group blog and a tumblelog before it became a static jekyll site. If anything looks broken or is worded oddly that could be why. Pardon the dust.
Why is it so ridiculously hard for technology conference organisers and participants to have some structured publishing of the content after the fact? There are always half-baked promises of recordings and podcasts made, and whenever speakers are asked mid-talk if slides will be made available they act as if it’s a given.
And yet, almost a month after @media Ajax 2007 took place, I still have to search all around the internet to cobble together a list that’s only partially complete:
(NB: A couple of these aren’t the talks that were give on the day, but are as close as I can get, ie. Crockford’s and the Ajaxian’s)
People. Get it together!
Build this into the contracts. Get copies of the slides when the speakers are there on the day. Stop relying on their word that yeah, they’ll be up on their blogs just as soon as they get back from the 3rd stop on their speaking tour.
Also, promises of recordings and podcasts are all well and good (if they’d ever arrive), but audio isn’t very valuable without accompanying slides. Wouldn’t video be a far more preferable goal to shoot for? (You’d think that conference centres could readily supply the necessary equipment for that kind of thing, but it seems like a lowly VHS camcorder is all this year’s venue could muster.)
Complaints around these conferences seem to revolve around poor wifi and catering, but to me, those are just niceties. Being able to review the things you’ve seen and heard days or weeks later is so much more important. There’s no way we can remember every salient point, or note down every line of code. And given the price of a entry, we shouldn’t be expected to.
Many of us are attending as chosen delegates from companies whose employees would all have benefited from being there. Access to content would give us the chance to present back to them more efficiently, bringing new ideas, and firing interests enough for them to want to take the trip themselves next year.