Afterthoughts

The last two weeks were really really interesting. So interesting that my initial plans on blogging while at the conference went straight to the garbage bin, especially coped with the average 5 hours sleep I was able to get there.

The first four days at Banff were simply beautiful. Surrounded by the rocky mountains at the Douglas Fir, I managed to wake up every morning and go skiing with a bunch of good friends from all around the world on the Sunshine Village ski resort. In one word: beautiful. I even managed to do some black diamond runs, no way I could've imagined myself doing it... But as a matter of fact, I did :) Awesome!

Returning to reality, being a volunteer for WWW and presenter for W4A, some things had to be done. Moving to the jawdropping Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, with an insane window view towards mountains, river, golf course, snow, forest... simply beautiful. It was a good omen, I thought. And I was right. It was.

W4A started. There were several interesting presentations over Web 2.0 technologies and how to leverage them regarding accessibility. Some more technical, others geared towards research, but nevertheless interesting. My presentation went fine, despite some anxiety (oh, so typical of me...), got a bunch of interesting questions.

On the second day, as an assigned volunteer for W4A's room (thanks John!), I got to see the rest of the conference, and think about my own research goals. That's what conferences are for.

Heading to WWW itself, I was pleased to have the chance of hearing and seeing lots of great presentations on Browsers and User Interfaces, advances on standards from W3C's Technical Track, some cute demos on the Developers' Track, and loads and loads of Information Retrieval and Semantics. Concerning the plenary keynotes, they were simply great. Hearing Tim talking about WSRI - Web Science Research Initiative - and viewing those simple state charts summarizing the whole research process for the emergence of the Web Science field (and other Internet gimmicks such as e-mail) was definitely insightful. And viewing the Web as a set of linked data (as Brian reported), coupled with some chat I've managed to make with Brian Kelly, Peter Brusilovsky, people from the DAISY Consortium, and others, I managed to flourish several thoughts and research directions for my PhD work.

Summing it all up: it's a must-go-to conference every year, it's a must-go-to place to be on vacations when possible!