Journal tags: bologna

I’m recovering from an illness that laid me low a few weeks back. I had a nasty bout of man-flu which then led to a chest infection for added coughing action. I’m much better now, but alas, this illness meant I had to cancel my trip to Chicago for An Event Apart. I felt very bad about that. Not only was I reneging on a commitment, but I also missed out on an opportunity to revisit a beautiful city. But it was for the best. If I had gone, I would have spent nine hours in an airborne metal tube breathing recycled air, and then stayed in a hotel room with that special kind of air conditioning that hotels have that always seem to give me the sniffles.

Anyway, no point regretting a trip that didn’t happen—time to look forward to my next trip. I’m about to embark on a little mini tour of some lovely European cities:

• Tomorrow I travel to Stockholm for Nordic.js. I’ve never been to Stockholm. In fact I’ve only stepped foot in Sweden on a day trip to Malmö to hang out with Emil. I’m looking forward to exploring all that Stockholm has to offer.
• On Saturday I’ll go straight from Stockholm to Berlin for the View Source event organised by Mozilla. Looks like I’ll be staying in the east, which isn’t a part of the city I’m familiar with. Should be fun.
• Alas, I’ll have to miss out on the final day of View Source, but with good reason. I’ll be heading from Berlin to Bologna for the excellent From The Front conference. Ah, I remember being at the very first one five years ago! I’ve made it back every second year since—I don’t need much of an excuse to go to Bologna, one of my favourite places …mostly because of the food.

The only downside to leaving town for this whirlwind tour is that there won’t be a Brighton Homebrew Website Club tomorrow. I feel bad about that—I had to cancel the one two weeks ago because I was too sick for it.

But on the plus side, when I get back, it won’t be long until Indie Web Camp Brighton on Saturday, September 24th and Sunday, September 25th. If you haven’t been to an Indie Web Camp before, you should really come along—it’s for anyone who has their own website, or wants to have their own website. If you have been to an Indie Web Camp before, you don’t need me to convince you to come along; you already know how good it is.

Sign up for Indie Web Camp Brighton here. It’s free and it’s a lot of fun.

The importance of owning your data is getting more awareness. To grow it and help people get started, we’re meeting for a bar-camp like collaboration in Brighton for two days of brainstorming, working, teaching, and helping.

I’ve just returned from a little European tour of Germany, Italy, and Romania, together with Jessica.

More specifically, I was at Smashing Conference in Freiburg, From The Front in Bologna, and SmartWeb in Bucharest. They were all great events, and it was particularly nice to attend events that focussed on their local web community. Oh, and they were all single-track events, which I really appreciate.

Now my brain is full of all the varied things that all the excellent speakers covered. I’ll need some time to digest it all.

I wasn’t just at those events to soak up knowledge; I also gave a talk at From The Front and SmartWeb—banging on about progressive enhancement again. In both cases, I was able to do that first thing and then I could relax and enjoy the rest of the talks.

I didn’t speak at Smashing Conf. Well, I did speak, but I wasn’t speaking …I mean, I was speaking, but I wasn’t speaking …I didn’t give a talk, is what I’m trying to say here.

Instead, I was MCing (and I’ve just realised that “Master of Ceremonies” sounds like a badass job title, so excuse me for a moment while I go and update the Clearleft website again). It sounds like a cushy number but it was actually a fair bit of work.

I’ve never MC’d an event that wasn’t my own before. It wasn’t just a matter of introducing each speaker—there was also a little chat with each speaker after their talk, so I had to make sure I was paying close attention to each and every talk, thinking of potential questions and conversation points. After two days of that, I was a bit knackered. But it was good fun. And I had the pleasure of introducing Dave as the mystery speaker—and it really was a surprise for most people.

It’s always funny to return to Freiburg, the town that Jessica and I called home for about six years back in the nineties. The town where I first started dabbling in this whole “world wide web” thing.

It was also fitting that our Italian sojourn was to Bologna, the city that Jessica and I have visited on many occassions …well, we are both foodies, after all.

But neither of us had ever been to Bucharest, so it was an absolute pleasure to go somewhere new, meet new people, and of course, try new foods and wines.

I’m incredibly lucky that my job allows me to travel like this. I get to go to interesting locations and get paid to geek out about web stuff that I’d be spouting on about anyway. I hope I never come to take that for granted.

My next speaking gig is much closer to home; the Generate conference in London tomorrow. After that, it’s straight off to the States for Artifact in Providence.

I’m going to extend that trip so I can get to Science Hack Day in San Francisco before bouncing back to the east coast for the final Brooklyn Beta. I’m looking forward to all those events, but alas, Jessica won’t be coming with me on this trip, so my enjoyment will be bittersweet—I’ll be missing her the whole time.

Thank goodness for Facetime.