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Before the presentations at the @media 2005 conference (London, June 9-10) started, Jeffrey Zeldman, man and legend to all who deal with Web Standards, had the honor of giving the keynote speech. A reflection on Jeffrey's speech, and also the first in my series of @media-covering articles.

I think everybody who reads this site should already know all about Jeffrey Zeldman, but for those who don't, here's a brief synopsis: Jeffrey Zeldman is one of the biggest driving forces behind the web standards movement. We're all discussing the separation of structure and presentation, using pure CSS for layout, and so forth and so forth, and it's all thanks to Jeffrey Zeldman and his cohorts.

Jeffrey was one of the founders of the WaSP: the Web Standards Project. The WaSP has been fighting for the spread of web standards since 1998, and if it weren't for their initial efforts none of us would've been going to this conference. There would've been a much greater mess on the web and it would've been a nasty place.

One of the things I mostly liked about Jeffrey is how he can stand in front of a new crowd and just act like he's everyone's friend, and it working. The keynote speech felt very much like a large group of friends with one of them telling the others a few fun stories. You could almost hear and see the campfire and marshmallows. It set a great atmosphere for the conference as a whole.

Accessibility

Jeffrey had a great story to tell us that displayed the simple but important need for standards in today's world, including accessibility. He was visiting Hungerford Bridge with his family, and its entrance has 250 steps upward. They had to carry their perambulator all the way up, and then at the other side all the way down again. When they got down, though, they ran into someone who said there's a lift.

On their way back, they eventually found the elevator and Jeffrey pushed the button. After twenty minutes waiting, he realises that the elevator doesn't work. You just want to shoot yourself in the head. So they carry the pram up 250 steps again, now on the other side, at the top, Jeffrey tries the elevator button again, just for giggles. It worked.

Imagine you are in a wheelchair and you're coming across the bridge from this end. You go up, happy that there is an elevator, but on the other side you can't go down.

And thus we got to the topic of standards and accessibility.

Standards - wait, standards?

When Jeffrey founded the WaSP (although that name actually didn't come until much later) in 1998 with his friends, it didn't take long until they were told that web standards had no chance in hell. The two big browser vendors of the time, Microsoft and Netscape, had no interest whatsoever to listen to their pleas, so WaSP had to take the more strategic approach.

Things had to be done properly if they wanted to accomplish their goals, so they went from the `Mad as Hell` strategy to the `Recommendations are for pussies!` strategy. The W3C's message of Recommendations wasn't strong enough, so WaSP decided to promote them as web standards. After all, standards were employed everywhere throughout the world, providing for much greater accessibility, usability and flexibility for people of all kinds, end-users and developers, producers and consumers.

So the WaSP went on to promote the W3C Recommendations as standards, but it took more than that to grab people's attention.

Here's Tim Bray, co-author of XML, kay?

Another thing they did was the very simple technique of forming a powerhouse. Get big names on your panel and people'll pay attention, or so they reasoned. So they invited leaders of (parts of) the web, such as Tim Bray. They couldn't play much of an active role, being far too busy themselves, but their presence was significant enough to get people's attention.

But as much as that may have gotten people to listen, there still wasn't a whole lot being done. On the WaSP end, even.

Because committees suck, they came up with the idea of having an Executive committee consisting of only three people. They would propose things and, if there would be no well-argumented objections within the following 24 hours, they would do it. This approach raised some hostility, of course, but it was very effective.

League of Concerned Geeks

While I've been referring to them as WaSP for a while now, the name Web Standards Project didn't come until later. They went through a lot of names until they finally settled on the Web Standards Project. Its abbreviated form almost looked like 'wasp' and they felt that the wasp was an animal that closely reflected their organization. Lingering from the Mad as Hell-strategy of before, Jeffrey and co. definitely had that feeling of wanting to sting when angered.

By now it was time to truly get the browser vendors to listen to them, and they came up with a two-tier plan that Jeffrey took from his days in advertisement. First a concept that came from when there were only a few TV channels, back in the old days. Basically, you could truly dominate TV by showing one single commercial at the exact same time on all channels. People could switch away but then they'd still see the commercial. This was called a road block, and the WaSP implemented it by publishing the exact same article on a whole variety of websites at the same time.

But one of the important aspects of the WaSP is the wasp-concept: "sting when angered." This also means that on the other hand, when you're not angered, you try to assist, which was the second part of their plan.

They put together a group called the CSS Samurai, which pinpointed the most commonly encountered (or most frustrating) bugs in browsers and informed the vendors about them. All in a very friendly, supportive manner, so that the vendors would see that the WaSP didn't mean any harm. They were here to help!

Over time, the WaSP grew out to encompass more and more. Taskforces started emerging, each with their own focus, and gradually the WaSP moved out of the main picture. Their goal was achieved to a certain extent, in that many people have started to use web standards, both browser makers as well as site developers and designers.

Today, people are focusing on new additions, new approaches and new techniques. Today, the focus lies on innovation, with a continued - but low-profile - pressure on everyone to work with the web standards we have.

Personal notes

It was great to learn more about the origin of the WaSP, the start of the whole web standards movement and the way WaSP deals (strategically) with companies like Microsoft.

Like any organization, it didn't surprise me at all to hear that there had been several conflicts within WaSP. Disagreement will be found anywhere you put two or more people together, but as much as it may lead to despair at times, disagreement is also a great driving force. It pushes you to come up with an even more compelling argument, but if you can't find one you'll likely look again at your own point in the first place. It's something that promotes and pushes refining of content, constant improvement.

There was obviously conflict every so often between WaSP and their biggest nemesis, Microsoft. Being the WaSP, they used every opportunity to seriously sting Microsoft, but who could blame them? If they hadn't done that, we might all still be making (nested) table-based sites.

On the whole, Jeffrey's speech was excellent. A good blend of valuable (background) information, humor and enthousiasm. If you want to read more details about his keynote speech, you should read this very detailed, transcript-like post on isolani.co.uk. It covers his speech with more details than I cared to include.

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