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Happy Clog hadn't been around for so much as a day yet and already it was generating WaSP buzz. One of the things discussed over at the WaSP (and Molly's site) is a conference on web standards and accessibility, to be held in the Netherlands. We're still only in the very first stage of making this happen, but I have some thoughts on it that I'd like to share with you already.

If you haven't read any posts that discuss this conference yet, here's a quick summary: we (Media Design and Happy Clog) want to organise a conference on web standards and accessibility to be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Quoting myself:

"We have three target audiences in mind for the conference - all separate groups but closely related ones: business executives (those who decide), web developers (those who make) and college professors (those who teach)."

The first group, business executives, is possibly our most important target audience; the Netherlands are currently very much unaware of web standards, and we feel this is because there has hardly been any demand for standards compliance or accessibility all these years. Companies and government bodies don't ask for accessibility, in turn, web developers don't care to know about it. Only a handful of developers (and by that, I mean companies who develop websites, not individual people) are aware of and use web standards. These companies (such as my own) try to promote them, but mostly the effect is that they create standards-compliant sites with hardly anyone noticing or caring.

In order to spread web standards in the Netherlands, convincing the business executives that they should ask for standards-compliance and accessibility will be an integral first step. We hope that this will cause a snowball effect, in fact, we're pretty sure of it: laws of supply and demand and all that. With the people that decide on these matters asking for standards, we're sure to see website developers get themselves up to date on this.

However, convincing business executives is much easier said than done. These people are hard to sway with things like technical advantages or big Cool™ factors; they are concerned with the financial aspects primarily. Fortunately for us, standards-based development practices tend to be cheaper, and the outcome has a lot of financial benefits over the old-school approach.

Then there's the web developers, a.k.a. those who make the websites. In the Netherlands, this group is largely unaware of standards-compliant development practices. They will have to be convinced that it's time for them to re-educate themselves and adopt entirely new approaches and techniques. These people are very stubborn, though (I'd know, I'm one of 'm), so convincing them that they're using highly outdated methods will require very delicate handling. And, of course, awesome examples of why it's so much more fun to use CSS and build accessible websites.

Catering to the developers means we'll have to provide workshop-like presentations that explain how to switch around from the old table-based method and learn CSS to create rich, flexible, accessible and modern websites.

And then you have the third crowd: professors and teachers, a.k.a. those who teach. These are often seen as the root of all evil in the Dutch web standards scene, as these people are currently teaching 6-year old practices to large groups of people, and as it is, they're the only ones doing any teaching. Universities and graphics schools are all very much behind on things, refusing to modernize their thinking, clinging on to old study material in ways that can only be seen as a fear of change.

Of course, I'm exaggerating it a little bit. It's not like the Netherlands are completely oblivious to all things web standards. We have our share of standards-aware companies, both developers and larger organisations that have moved to standards-compliant demands for their online presence. However, we are far behind compared to English-speaking countries such as the UK. A very few exceptions aside, not a single government website is accessible - even though our government has had rules and demands set up for this for quite some time, now. This has to change, and that's why we're organising this conference.

Mingle-time

While being interviewed for the WaSP article, I mentioned how one of the things we want to do at this conference is having parallel sessions, two at a time, so that the third group will have an entire session's worth of free time to mingle.

Why is mingling so important, you wonder? Well, other than being frequently cited as the most valuable part of a conference experience, mingle-time is invaluable because it allows the attendees to discuss what they have just learned, with each other. And not just for a quick 15 minutes, no, they can really discuss what they have just heard in their last presentation. Also, it will give them a chance to ask more questions to the speakers. One thing I've noticed from the @media conference is that people have a lot more questions remaining after the Q&A round of a session has ended; some are too shy to stand up in front of 400 others to ask their question, for others there is just no time anymore, and so forth.

Mingling is important because it gives people a chance to turn the theoretical subject matter that they've just been exposed to into a practical solution for them. Giving them this chance right there in the middle of the conference, constantly after every two sessions, means that they can do this with the information still fresh in their minds. Mingling time at the end of the day is less useful for this as that's mostly the time wherein you want to unwind from the day, and after the conference there's no mingling time remaining and the information won't be fresh in people's minds anymore.

We hope that this approach will produce a more satisfying and enjoyable conference experience, leading to better overall results.

Workshops

Now, all this talking about conferences has really gotten me in the mood. What mood? The lets-enjoy-and-promote-web-standards-together mood! And it just so happens that I found out about a very promising workshop last night: CSS for Designers, a one day workshop by none other than Molly E. Holzschlag and Andy Clarke! For anyone who considers themselves not an expert yet, this will be a very interested and helpful workshop. For anyone who is still largely unfamiliar with modern web development practices using XHTML and CSS, this will be an invaluable workshop.

There's only room for 40 people, though, so if you want to attend, you'd better hurry!

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