How many times have you thought, "Wow. what a great idea, I must put that on my to-do list?" but have never followed through? I wrote a while back about maintaining focus and I guess this ties in a little bit and definitely follows on, this is the topic of "Pulling the trigger".

After putting on The Highland Fling 2008 - The browser and beyond, I knew that I had to write a post about how wonderful the day was and how much it meant to me but I also knew I wanted to write something other than a carbon copy of what people were expecting.

Back in 2006 when I had the concept for doing the conference it scared the crap out of me, it was something that I had never done before, it was outside fo my comfort zone but I still went ahead and did it. I pulled the trigger!

Many times since I started working for myself I have had ideas rush past me and I have never acted upon them, I didn't pull the trigger, I didn't reap the benefits from pulling the trigger either. Although I don't regret much in my life I do regret not having acted on a lot that has been on my mind, that said there is still a lot there which I do plan on acting on.

I was once told that an idea means nothing unless it has been put on paper, recorded in some shape or form otherwise it will be forgotten. Very wise words indeed. I envy designers and their fascinating mood boards, I miss the frenzy of a brainstorm in an agency environment and I wish I kept a digital scrap book to act as my idea sponge. I think it is really important to find a way of storing these waves of ideas that rush over us, a net for catching all the cool thoughts we have. I'd maintain a wiki but they bore me and to be honest I find them confusing as they grow arms and legs and then before you know it they have turned into a monster.

The Highland Fling was set up to help inspire people, to bring together like minded people and help them forge new ideas, relationships and plans for moving forward in what they do every day. I have encountered a wide variety of hurdles in doing the event but I have always done my best to get over them and move on. To do this I had to decide on what I wanted to do about it and pull the trigger!

Pulling the trigger is a final act, once you've done it you have commited (hopefully not an act of homicide), you've made a final decision, you've said to yourself that you are going to do something and you've crossed the line, there should be no turning back.

Perhaps this article is not really my follow up to the conference, I've been a very busy man over the past three years and I'm wondering if this is an introspective look at where and when I pull the trigger.

To be honest I think I have using a sub machine gun of late, I organised The Highland Fling whilst working on contract and dealing with my own clients at night, having house rennovations done and to top it all off I got married 3 weeks ago on Friday and I'm now down in London contracting.

Pulling the trigger? I think I just fired a cannon!

One thing that I've realised of late is one of the reasons I haven't been blogging much, I fell into a trap where I felt I should be writing about certain things instead of just being myself. I presented myself with a mental hurdle which prevented me from writing about whatever came into my mind, free thoughts for the public.

I'm glad I'm over that hurdle now and look forward to pulling the trigger on a more regular basis.

Take care folks.

As the clock counts down to The Highland Fling 2008 - The browser and beyond, things are heating up at my end. Bags have arrived, some nice books have been delivered curtosy of Friends of Ed and Sitepoint and everything else is in the pipeline.

I'm getting really excited, last year was a blast and the topic this year is going to be an excellent discussion point. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on the day and getting to meet some new folks and catching up with others I haven't seen for a while.

As some of you might notice, this place has had a bit of a rennovation recently, I had a little bit of a hosting accident, I was sorry to hear that the company that had been so kind as to host my site for over a year went bottom up. The end result was that I had an SQL dump and no imagery so had to think on my feet and come up with something new. and quick!

18hrs later and I have new site and design up and running but I know it is still a little rough around the edges so please bare with me as I work out the kinks. I certainly welcome any feedback on the new design.

So what lies next? Buckle up and go for a rollercoaster ride again.

Will post again as soon as I have some time!

I should have posted about this ages ago when it was announced, but better late than never. The second Highland Fling is taking place on 3rd April at Edinburgh's Symposium Hall, and I'm chuffed to have secured a ticket. Kudos to Alan White for taking on the task once again.

Like last year's event it's got a great line-up of speakers and a theme which is refreshing and just a little bit different:

In the world or modern web development we can no longer consider the browser as the end point of our product which is our content. More and more devices and applications are being released that can access our information and more importantly do not even require a browser to do so.

For The Highland Fling 2008 we're bringing into focus how the landscape is changing. API's, desktop apps, ambient devices, mobile and much more are helping us break out of the browser and potentially reaching an entire new audience as a result.

How do we embrace this, how do we take our existing skill set and transpose it into new mediums? How do we expand our skill set? What is our skill set going to be? Where is it all going?

There are still tickets left (at only 125 quid, a veritable bargain) so if you're anywhere near Edinburgh or an airport you owe it to yourself to attend.

Recently two Edinburgh conferences of interest to me have opened for registration.

The Highland Fling

The Highland Fling is an annual one-day conference aimed at web developers and businesses with an interest in web standards and accessibility.

Now in its second year, this years event takes place on Thursday 3rd April at the Symposium Hall, part of the Royal College of Surgeons, and focuses on the topic of "The Browser & Beyond". Here's a summary from the Highland Fling website outlining what will be discussed:

In the world or modern web development we can no longer consider the browser as the end point of our product which is our content. More and more devices and applications are being released that can access our information and more importantly do not even require a browser to do so.

For The Highland Fling 2008 we're bringing into focus how the landscape is changing. API's, desktop apps, ambient devices, mobile and much more are helping us break out of the browser and potentially reaching an entire new audience as a result.

How do we embrace this, how do we take our existing skill set and transpose it into new mediums? How do we expand our skill set? What is our skill set going to be? Where is it all going?

The sessions look quite interesting and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing what Aral Balkan has to say as I saw him at d.Construct in 2006 and was exposed to Flex for the first time.

Scotland on Rails

Coming hot on the heels of The Highland Fling is the inaugural Scottish conference on Ruby on Rails — Scotland On Rails.

This is the first UK-centric Ruby on Rails conference and is a two day event on Friday 4rd and Saturday 5th April. When you consider that this is a regional conference the organisers have pulled off quite a coup with the quality of talent that they have assembled to present.

This will be my first conference I have attended that concentrates more on the back end of developing web applications and I'm looking forward to learning some exciting new things and meeting some interesting people.

If you're attending either of these events don't feel shy about saying hello.

The time has come again for another day of some learning and entertainment at The Highland Fling 2008 - Web Standards in Scotland. After such a fantastic day last year it was always going to be hard to not follow through with another event, the hard part for me was coming up with a suitable topic but my trip to dConstruct last year was all that it took for some inspiration from Tom Coates's session.

Tom blew me away talking about things like recombination of information in his talk "Designing for a Web of Data". I think a good way of highlighting his track of conversation is to paraphrase his session blurb from dConstruct.

But what happens when you're pushing into web apps or social media? What happens when an absence of heirarchy makes left-hand navigation redundant? What do you do when design practice blurs into URLs and data structures, and where your service breaks the frame of the browser and starts appearing in hardware, in desktop applications or on other people's sites?

Very potent words and an even more potent presentation, he left my mind in a spin and I knew right away on what and why I wanted to do The Highland Fling 2008. I could have walked away saying to myself what an awesome show but I really wanted to explore the topic and find out more about it, to spread the word about stuff that really inspired me and made me think, to pay homage to our future online (or not in some cases) and to allow others to think outside the box a little.

So, there lies the why of the conference, perhaps I should tell you more about the day. The theme for the conference is "The browser and beyond", I did consider going purely with "Outside the browser" but I figure that we are gonna still be building in our beloved browsers for a while yet. Last year Drew McLellan talked at the conference about preparing the content on your website so that it can act as it's own API, providing meta data that can be used by people for other services, in a lot of respects The Highland Fling 2008 is an extension of that topic.

It worried me initially about stepping away from talking about XHTML and CSS but I know for a fact this is going to be a very interesting day, I have also mixed up the format a little to encourage more open discussion about what the future may hold.

The details

In the world or modern web development we can no longer consider the browser as the end point of our product which is our content. More and more devices and applications are being released that can access our information and more importantly do not even require a browser to do so.

For The Highland Fling 2008 we're bringing into focus how the landscape is changing. API's, desktop apps, ambient devices, mobile and much more are helping us break out of the browser and potentially reaching an entire new audience as a result.

How do we embrace this, how do we take our existing skill set and transpose it into new mediums? How do we expand our skill set? What is our skill set going to be? Where is it all going?

The Highland Fling 2007 focused on the topic of progressive enhancement which is not only at the very essence of best practice web development but also at the heart of bleeding edge web development. This year I want to focus on where we are going and what the future holds for us all and the information we care so much about.

The Speakers and Sessions

• Paul Boag - Compere
• Christian Heilmann - Sharing the joy - building badges for distribution
• Aral Balkan - Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges
• Chris Mills - The Mobile Perspective
• Simon Willison - Session Title TBC
• Gareth Rushgrove - A First Class Web Citizen

Tickets

• Early Bird - £99.00
• Standard - £125.00

A limited number of tickets have been allocated for early bird prices, be sure and register quickly if you want to get one.

Visit The Highland Fling - Web Standards in Scotland for more information or you can register for the event here.

The time has come again for another day of some learning and entertainment at The Highland Fling 2008 - Web Standards in Scotland. After such a fantastic day last year it was always going to be hard to not follow through with another event, the hard part for me was coming up with a suitable topic but my trip to dConstruct last year was all that it took for some inspiration from Tom Coates's session.

Tom blew me away talking about things like recombination of information in his talk "Designing for a Web of Data". I think a good way of highlighting his track of conversation is to paraphrase his session blurb from dConstruct.

But what happens when you're pushing into web apps or social media? What happens when an absence of heirarchy makes left-hand navigation redundant? What do you do when design practice blurs into URLs and data structures, and where your service breaks the frame of the browser and starts appearing in hardware, in desktop applications or on other people's sites?

Very potent words and an even more potent presentation, he left my mind in a spin and I knew right away on what and why I wanted to do The Highland Fling 2008. I could have walked away saying to myself what an awesome show but I really wanted to explore the topic and find out more about it, to spread the word about stuff that really inspired me and made me think, to pay homage to our future online (or not in some cases) and to allow others to think outside the box a little.

So, there lies the why of the conference, perhaps I should tell you more about the day. The theme for the conference is "The browser and beyond", I did consider going purely with "Outside the browser" but I figure that we are gonna still be building in our beloved browsers for a while yet. Last year Drew McLellan talked at the conference about preparing the content on your website so that it can act as it's own API, providing meta data that can be used by people for other services, in a lot of respects The Highland Fling 2008 is an extension of that topic.

It worried me initially about stepping away from talking about XHTML and CSS but I know for a fact this is going to be a very interesting day, I have also mixed up the format a little to encourage more open discussion about what the future may hold.

The details

In the world or modern web development we can no longer consider the browser as the end point of our product which is our content. More and more devices and applications are being released that can access our information and more importantly do not even require a browser to do so.

For The Highland Fling 2008 we're bringing into focus how the landscape is changing. API's, desktop apps, ambient devices, mobile and much more are helping us break out of the browser and potentially reaching an entire new audience as a result.

How do we embrace this, how do we take our existing skill set and transpose it into new mediums? How do we expand our skill set? What is our skill set going to be? Where is it all going?

The Highland Fling 2007 focused on the topic of progressive enhancement which is not only at the very essence of best practice web development but also at the heart of bleeding edge web development. This year I want to focus on where we are going and what the future holds for us all and the information we care so much about.

The Speakers and Sessions

• Paul Boag - Compere
• Christian Heilmann - Sharing the joy - building badges for distribution
• Aral Balkan - Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges
• Chris Mills - The Mobile Perspective
• Simon Willison - Session Title TBC
• Gareth Rushgrove - A First Class Web Citizen

Tickets

• Early Bird - £99.00
• Standard - £125.00

A limited number of tickets have been allocated for early bird prices, be sure and register quickly if you want to get one.

Visit The Highland Fling - Web Standards in Scotland for more information or you can register for the event here.

The Highland Fling has been announced! It is to be held on 3rd April 2008 and the theme is The Browser And Beyond.

Speakers this year include:

• Christian Heilmann
• Aral Balkan
• Paul Boag
• Chris Mills
• Simon Willison
• Gareth Rushgrove

Get your early bird Highland Fling tickets now!

This week has got to rank as one of my busiest for a long time, with two major launches; one of which I'll leave till later in the week to divulge.

Today though, it's all about the Highland Fling 2008 - Web Standards in Scotland conference organised by Alan White. If you were at last year's conference you'll know what a brilliant day it was, with some of the industry's best speakers talking on the subject of progressive enhancement. I had a fantastic day and met some great people in some of the satellite events that took place over the weekend.

just a quick one folks; the highland fling 2008 site is up and running. have a look at thehighlandfling.com.

Alan, Roan and I all did our own bits on the site, and the end result is quite lovely indeed. Last years was ace fun, so if you missed it, try and get along to this years. [...]

Happy New Year!

At the beginning of 2007 I listed some resolutions:

• to get back to some "real" work,
• to keep travelling and speaking (I do love it so!),
• to not write a book,
• to play more bouzouki.

Three out of four ain't bad. While I didn't play nearly enough bouzouki, I enjoyed rolling up my sleeves and diving back into HTML/CSS/JavaScript, I really enjoyed not writing a book and yes, I certainly did plenty of public speaking:

• Web Directions North in February
• BarCamp London 2 in February
• South by Southwest in March
• The Highland Fling in April
• Web 2.0 Expo in April
• XTech in May
• @media America in May
• Reboot 9.0 in May
• @media Europe in June
• Hackday in June
• An Event Apart in August
• dConstruct in September
• BarCamp Brighton in September
• Fundamentos Web in October
• Voices That Matter in October
• Web 2.0 Expo Berlin in November
• @media Ajax in November
• BarCamp London 3 in November

As a result, I did plenty of travelling. I paid inaugural visits to some wonderful destinations:

• Whistler
• San Francisco
• New York
• Chicago
• Asturias

I've already got some more travelling lined up for 2008. I'll be making at least one return trip to San Francisco and needless to say, I'll be in Austin again for South by Southwest. But not all of my sojourns will be web-related-Jessica and I will be making a trip to Thailand in February that I'm very excited about.

I'm going to start cranking up this year's odometer in a few hours when I make my return trip across the Atlantic from Arizona back to Brighton. I think one of my new year's resolutions should be to plant a forest in an attempt to assuage the guilt I'm feeling about my carbon footprint.

For my future self throughout this coming year, here are those resolutions you were looking for:

• Reduce and/or offset your non-renewable energy output.
• Give blood.
• Lose some weight, you fat bastard.
• Play more bouzouki.

Tagged with travel 2007 2008