Archive: September 8th, 2013

dConstruct 2013 …wow! I could try to describe it but you kind of had to be there.

At the after-party—which was held right there in the Brighton Dome; a new twist which worked out great—I kept hearing people enthuse that it was the best dConstruct yet (although dConstruct 2012 was pretty bloody amazing). People congratulated and thanked me, which made me feel like a bit of a fraud because, frankly, I was very selfish in my curation: I got the speakers I wanted to see, talking about the topics that I wanted to hear.

I’ll admit that it was very gratifying to find out that trusting my gut worked. Let’s face it, it wasn’t exactly a safe or typical line-up for a tech conference. I’m feeling vindicated (and very relieved) that the risks paid off. And how!

Every single speaker was amazing. Seriously, I’m trying to think of how I can thank each of them, but I keep coming up short. Words alone can’t express how grateful I am to all of them. Each of them put in so, so much effort …I was truly gobsmacked.

The cumulative effect was astounding. There were emergent themes and strands that were woven throughout the day, resulting in the perfect balance. The two over-riding feelings were fear and fun. The audience were, by turns, terrified and entertained.

The topic of “Communicating With Machines” resonated wonderfully with other Brighton Digital Festival events too: dConstruct, Improving Reality, and Immaterials felt like they were all tackling the tricky task of making the invisible visible—networks, power structures, technologies—but the dConstruct speakers did it with bucketloads of entertainment value thrown in. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much at an all-day event.

Mind you, it didn’t feel like a long day. The time just flew by! I thought it was just me but then lots of other people said the same thing at the after-party. That’s quite something when nine talks just whizz by without a single dip in quality.

Seriously, I am blown away by the generosity and talent of the speakers.

Amber, Luke, Nicole, Simone, Sarah, Keren, Maciej, Dan, and Adam: thank you so, so much!

Video and audio from dConstruct 2013 will be available soon …but you kind of had to be there. And if you were there …thank you!

Once again, @dconstruct was amazing.

— gregone (@gregone) September 6, 2013

Leaving Brighton with that familiar post-@dconstruct “I remember how to be excited about things now” feeling.

— Alex Muller (@alexmuller) September 6, 2013

.@dconstruct exceeded my expectations as a first-timer; fantastic speakers and topics!

— Adam Brewer (@adamcbrewer) September 7, 2013

Great day @dconstruct yesterday. I’d pick a highlight but the whole thing was brilliant.

— Laura McCartney (@laufofbread) September 7, 2013

Yesterday’s dConstruct was the best yet, and the most entertaining conference I’ve ever attended. Thanks @adactio and co

— Mark Kirby (@markirby) September 7, 2013

#dconstruct was once again very inspiring, best conference of the year. @adambuxton must be an alien or sutin

— Ciaran Park (@ciaranpark) September 6, 2013

So, dConstruct was superb. That is all.

— Paul Wilson (@paulanthonywils) September 6, 2013

I’m at Indie Web Camp and we’re onto the second day, which involves hacking on stuff (the first day involved discussing stuff).

I’ve had my head down attempting to implement webmentions on my site—basically a simpler form of pingback.

This probably won’t work, and this is the first basic step, but if you write a reply to this post on your own site, you should be able to ping me by entering your post’s URL into the form under this post.

Now, this is just a first run so all I’m doing is gathering the pings—I’m not actually going to fetch and parse your post; that step can come later. But if you want to help me kick the tires on this, write something on your site that links to this post and then enter your post’s URL below.