Portrait of Edd Dumbill, taken by Giles Turnbull

Subscribe to updates

Feed icon Atom or RSS

or get email updates

What I make

expectnation
a conference management web application


XTech Conference
a European web technology conference

WWWon't 2004

Sadly I've had to cancel plans to attend WWW2004. The Web conference is normally a must on my calendar, but I'm not too disappointed to be missing it this year. I've decided not to go largely due to the pressures of other work, but it's also true that the abominable organisation of the conference played a part.

The schedule was published late. The web site was a mess. Pretty embarrassing when you're the Web conference. Developer's Day seems to be being scrambled together at the last moment. I'd been trying for two whole months to find out the arrangements for press registration, and contacted several of the organisers. Now, less than two weeks before the conference I've still heard nothing. This press person certainly won't be reporting!

Considering WWW2004 was being organised in New York, I'm deeply disappointed. Not only because I love visiting NYC, but also because I'd expected better things. Against the previous years' organisers in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Hawaii and Budapest, the New York committee are looking as though they got their logistics training from the same place the Greek Olympics committee did.

I hope I'm not being too unfair. I know what it's like to organise a conference with minimal resources against a tight deadline.

To those who are going, I hope the conference is good. The Web conference has a proud tradition of being at the centre of the World Wide Web and its development, and it's a desperate shame to see it fading.

blog comments powered by Disqus


You are reading the weblog of Edd Dumbill, writer, programmer, entrepreneur and free software advocate.
Copyright © 2000-2012 Edd Dumbill