100th boagworld.
Take 40 or so web designers, developers and the like. Introduce a reasonable amount of alcohol (in the preferred form of beer) and add some recording equipment and you are set to make a boagworld podcast.
With the plan to “make it like we are chatting in a pub� the boagworld podcast went rather literal for the 100th show. The 100th show party / recording was actually held in a pub so, in a strange sort of way, boagworld had reached its goal!
As my first web design event this seemed like a good one. I could go up to stay with a friend, it fell on a school holiday and it was going to be with a small friendly group of people. This was perfect for my first web event!We arrived at the event at 5pm. We met up with Yaniv who was the first person there all the way from Belgium! We had a quick drink (Pepsi of course) and a chat about web related stuff. About an hour later Paul his wife, and Marcus arrived.
The mingling started I introduced Lion to everyone and we all started discussing everything from web design to meta physics! At 7pm (or so) the recording started.
The first section was the news section. Normally this section is about the current news, but as we are recording the podcast a week ahead of time that meant that this was not possible. So instead we did a run down of the top 4 new stories since the boagworld podcast began in August 2005. I suggested a few and was recorded even submitting my views on one of them.
After this section we move onto Marcus’s bit… He talked about contracts.. well, actually, he talked about clients from hell (though contracts were certainly mentioned!) Marcus and Paul told the boagworlders about their worst client and the audience shared their anecdotes. After about an 25 minutes of talking we had a quick break and the chat continued unrecorded.
The third and final section was the “ask an expert� section. The questions ranged hugely. I am interested to how many actually make it into the final show… To me the most interesting question came at the end. It was also the most useful one to me (which may because I asked it :) ) It was talking about how to get into the web design industry and how the industry feels about qualifications. This was Very interesting as both Yahoo and BBC were represented and gave interesting points of view. I wont give away the podcasts and but the final debate proved to be very very informative and enlightening.
After the recording finished, us boagworlders gathered around for yet more chatting. I was lucky enough to speak with Ryan from www.havocinspried.co.uk and Paul from www.homeofmuppets.com we had a very interesting conversation about development methods and how to take site criticisms. We swapped contact details and I am sure that we are bound to get up to something interesting in the future.
At the very end of the event, I walked towards the tube with Tom Morris. We talked about semantic web stuff, microformats and various ideas about the future of the web. We also discussed more about careers in the web world and how we think we could fit into them. I enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to the next time I can meet such a knowledgeable chap!
Overall from the event I took away something which no reading can give you. I took away an impression of the community of the web design world. Its like no other. So, I would like to thank both Paul and Marcus, Chris and the rest of the organisers for a great mini event. You made my first web event something special and have made me hugely look forward to the next event I go to.. Again in a couple hundred episodes time perhaps? When you know please give me a call, I would love to attend.