Miles’ Blog » 2005 » September

Yes, that’s right - that’s me. I was extremely honoured to be asked to introduce two amazing speakers; Molly Holzschlag and Eric Meyer. Yes, that Molly and that Eric! Nevermind the fact my voice was quavering like I was being tortured, and I was nervous as hell, it was an extreme honour to have gotten up there and done my thing.

I wouldn’t expect anyone to ever invite me back though, but anyhow.

The second day was also amazing. I’m thinking Jeff Veen would have to steal the show, however I reckon all of the speakers I saw were amazing…it’s hard to find web geeks who can string sentences together in front of 20 people. let alone charismatic speakers who can talk in front of 400! And they also do ‘real work’ to boot!

If I could be half as clever, half as passionate, or quarter the public speaking ability of anyone from today, I would be one happy individual.

I haven’t even mentioned the evenings festivities, hanging with Tantek & Amber whilst talking US politics, going to some dodgy loud club in Kings Cross with Eric, Douglas, Derek and others. Wow.

Photo: Miles Burke speaking at Web Essentials 05.

Wow, what a day. We were at UTS by about 8.00am, and spent the day listening to some great presentations. Kay chaired two sessions, we had a fire evacuation, I had Molly and Kelly Goto sign my books, we drank and drank and then the Perth contingent, Adrian, Kay, Nick and I (Kara was AWOL) hit the city, in search of Woodfired Pizza.

You’d think we’d have had enough, but then we hit a pub in Chinatown and watched some very bad Karaoke…

Favourite presentation of the day? Douglas Bowman’s ‘Zooming out of the Trenches’ (pictured), a look into what the future lies in store.

Favourite moment? An entire fire evacuation, which was mentioned the previous days briefing as ‘in a highly unlikely event…’. Onya John for jinxing us!

Photo: Douglas Bowman, Web Essentials 05.

So, Kay and I caught a midnight horror flight last night, and arrived at 6.05am in Sydney. We spent the day playing tourists, before making our way to a ‘Speakers Briefing’ at we05.

Yes, that’s right, we hung out with the web’s leading folks, all in one room! Not only that, we then hit the East Ocean restaurant in Chinatown, and had dinner with them.

Nothing like surviving on 1 hr, 40 mins sleep, and then meeting some incredible international and local speakers…

It was around midnight when we got back to the hotel.

Photo: Sydney Central Train Station.

This is my first post on the all-new Miles’ Blog. I reckon I have installed about 10 blogs over the last two years, but never actually get them up and running, public like. I hope that this will be different…

Photo: Starfish washed ashore, Busselton, Western Australia.