I last visited Amsterdam two years ago with my girlfriend. Having restricted myself to the usual tourist haunts on previous visits as a younger man, I was pleasantly surprised to discover what a diverse and beautiful city Amsterdam is. I found myself thinking I could live there, and at least part of my motivation in wanting to go to the Web and Beyond, or TWAB as they like to call it, was to check out what the local web development community was like (prognosis: very healthy looking).
Unfortunately, both conference and hotel were situated extremely centrally, and time was limited, leaving little time to explore. There was also a Champion’s League Cup Final to watch, so in the end we never really left what has to be one of the seediest square miles in Europe, which was a shame.
Good conference though - three great keynotes and one which had by the speaker’s own admission been knocked up over lunch. A bunch of parallel sessions which ranged from the extremely interesting to the deathly dull, but on the whole it was an extremely worthwhile trip. I spoke to Adam Greenfield, the first keynote, whose talk was essentially a potted preview of his new book, The City Is Here For You To Use. I’ve read Greenfield’s first book Everyware, about ubiquitous computing, and the new one as far as I can tell looks at how ubicomp can and is shaping the urban environment and our relationship to it.
Another season in League One. On the plus side I have it on good authority the Man U fans were singing anti-Leeds songs in Moscow last Wednesday. Almost made me a little teary-eyed.
