TheWebConf 2018 in Lyon
Despite the fact I am no longer officially an academic, I hauled myself off-route from my EU wanderings to France to attend my fifth World Wide Web Conference. This conference series holds a little nostalgia for me, because it's the very first place I published a paper (in Seoul in 2014) and somewhere I met for the first time many academic idols and people who have gone on to become great friends, collaborators, and shape my future in ways that are even now still unfolding.
Not being institutionally supported though, there was no way I could justify the registration fees out of my own pocket. Fortunately I got two free days for chairing the Developer's track, and one free day courtesy of csarven for helping out with his workshop.
On the Monday I stayed home and worked until it was time to join the LDOW dinner. On Tuesday I sat in on the Researcher Centric Scholarly Communication workshop, and by 'sat in' I mean took detailed transcription of everything everyone said. It went well. In the evening I somehow managed to convene a dinner attended by (hashtag namedropping) TimBL, Henry Thompson, Jeni Tennison, Sarven, Sandro, Jenny and An from CredCo. Wendy Hall and Ruben Verborgh had planned to attend too but missed out due to VIP activities and going to the wrong restaurant respectively.
On Wednesday I tried to pay attention to the Journalism and Misinformation track. I also joined the Minute Madness to present a one minute plug for data.occrp.org.
Thursday was the Developer's track, the official reason I was there. I took turns chairing with Thomas Steiner, and all of the presentations went really well - including all live demos and a remote speaker!
Thursday evening's alternative to the Gala dinner was fancy delicious vegan food at Like An Elephant. I got lost, fell off my bike, and had to climb a hill to get there, but it was totally worth it.
I spent Friday morning in the Web History track and the afternoon in W3C. Web History was fascinating of course, with Tim, Wendy and others reminiscing (and disagreeing) about early events that shaped the Web. In the W3C track, Sandro presented on the Social Web WG (that old thing) and how that leads into the next big thing - Credibility on the Web.