Actually, I didn’t overdose on conferences. The issue is digesting the conferences.
In a space of 6 days last week, I attended
- Charity Hack 2010 where participants created applications that made it easier for people to donate money to charities
- Web Accessibility London Unconference where we discussed accessibility issues in the un-conference type of conference
- Technical Communication UK conference where the tech comms tribe gathered for the usual rituals
I also dashed around London in-between some of this. Now I need to digest it all. The world isn’t a quiet, slow-moving place anymore. At least, not in my part of the world. It helps to have photographs to maintain the impressions. I dutifully recorded my experiences on Flickr:
- My Charity Hack photo set
- My a11yldn photo set (where a11yldn was the nickname and hashtag for the Web Accessibility London Unconference)
- My tcuk10 photo set (where tcuk10 was the nickname and hashtag for the Technical Communication UK conference)
- (I also have a set of dashing around London photos.)
The next task is uploading my presentations to slideshare. I gave two presentations at a11yldn, and I repeated one of them at tcuk10. I cannot permit myself to upload them without adding my notes to each slide. (Moving between different applications to make the slides mangled the notes I did have. Grrr.)
Perhaps the real task is remembering where I keep all my memories. Like the squirrel I photographed digging frantically in St. James Park to hide a gem for later enjoyment, I need to be able to retrieve those gems when I want them.
The fact is, I’m gobsmacked by all the excellent conversations I had in the past week and all the delightful people I met. I have to hold on to my hat like John Betjeman does in St. Pancras Station (his statue, that is).
I’ll just relax and let the experiences bubble around in my head. After all, they are wabi-sabi – unfinished, as Simon Bostock told us at tcuk10. My beautiful (in my opinion) photos will help to retain my memories because Simon also says, fortunately for me, that beauty is mnemonic.