Category Archives: nclud

2009 Has Come to an End

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2009 was a very interesting year of change and learning new things. Looking forward to 2010 to even be more fun and productive.

Some of the 2009  highlights for me were:

January

Started new job as “Web Content Accessibility Manager” (big fancy title) for the United States Army, which means that I’m responsible for making sure the Army’s main website www.ARMY.MIL and the 45+ micro websites we are responsible for are accessible to as many people and devices as possible.

March

Attended SXSWi (spring break for geeks) for the third year in a row now. Had  great time as usual speaking with old friends and new ones I made this year. Still continue to learn each year that I attend. A lot of the new things I learn is from having conversations in the hallways, at dinner, in the bars late in the evening, or just relaxing in the Hampton Inn’s lounge on the second floor.

Upon returning from SXSWi needed to start planning for the next BarCamp DC, along with another event I heard about on twitter a few weeks before SXSWi. A small group in San Antonio, TX, did an accessibility camp. I spent a great deal of time and some conversations while in Austin, TX, about doing one here in Washington, DC.

Upon my return I spent more time I’m looking into when we might have the next BarCampDC, along with contemplating, doing an Accessibility Camp here in Washington, DC, in more detail. These events took over a lot of my spare time trying to find venues for both events that were both free and cost to metro.

April

Took a trip out to Denver to visit my brother and his family, along with attend BarCamp boulder which got canceled do to 18+ inches of snow the day before. That is a lot of snow for even the Denver area for mid April. Ended up still having a nice time visiting with my brother’s family.

May

Attended “Access U” put on by Knowbility in Austin, TX, in mid May. Again it was a great place to meet new friends and learn more about accessibility. Spent an extra two days down there after the conference was over so I could see Austin, when it was not filled up with over 10,000 web geeks from around the world.

July

In late July got a direct message from @v (William Lawrence) another local accessibility person and a good friend about going to an accessibility event at Ben’s Next Door. Decided to go and hoped to meet some new local accessibility people. Got to meet and talk with a lot of new people throughout the evening. Later in the evening I got to talk to my good friend Patrick Timony who is a great resource of information about Adaptive Technology equipment and software. He works at the Martin Luther King library here in DC.

During that conversation a big old light bulb went off in my head. Why not I ask Patrick about having Accessibility Camp DC at the MLK library.

August

After a bunch of talking with him later in the month to explain more what BarCamp style events are, we started looking into what it would take for us to have the event at the library. Normally the library only lets you have one room for a few hours, we were looking to use at least two spaces besides Patrick’s for an entire Saturday. Luckily Patrick and his boss were behind the event so we were able to secure the space.

While working on final preparations for Accessibility Camp DC, also started looking into having BarCamp DC at the MLK library. Planning and attempting to get rooms for this was even more involved, since we were looking at getting six spaces for a Saturday. In the end we managed again to get what we needed with the help of Patrick and his boss.

October

On October 10, 2009, which was the Saturday of Columbus Day weekend we had the first Accessibility Camp DC event. We had 110 people sign-up and over 80 people attend, which was just great. Most other BarCamp events we have run 40% – 50% of the people sign-up but never show up.

People came from all over the country (Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and a few other states I can’t remember) and even Jennison (@jennison) from Toronto, Canada. Even Shawn Lawton Henry, who leads worldwide education and outreach activities promoting Web accessibility for people with disabilities at the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) attend.

She even did a talk that was attended by about half the attendees and widely talked about as one of the best talks of the day. Was sorry, I missed it because I was running around doing work to make sure the rest of the day ran smoothly. I gave my “Is Your Website Accessible?” talk, along with a peared down version of Jared W Smith of WebAIM’s WAI ARIA talk.

We had 13 planned talks and one or two impromptu screen reader demonstrations during the day. There were like 30+ people at the first one that a few people mentioned opened their eyes to what people with visual issues go through to do things on the internet. Jennison did the first one and Leslie Bobbitt (@DreamWeaver78) did a wonderful one the second time as well.

End of October attended Peter Corbett’s (iStrategyLabs) Tech Art’s – Spooky Union, Halloween event. Had a great time and met a lot of new people, along with seeing a bunch of old friends.

November

On November 14, 2009, we (Justin Thorp (@thorpus), Shaun Farrell, Patrick Timony, Peter Corbett, and a few others) had our third BarCamp DC. It was a rousing success with over 125 people attending. We did not have to many problems.

If memory serves me correctly I think we had 36 talks on great many different subjects. We instituted a Twitter swear jar, that meant if you mentioned twitter in your talks it cost you a dollar, which was then donated to charity. I think we ended up collecting over $125.

We also attempted to have people not use PowerPoint and the like slides so there were discussions at the event than people just talk at or present information to others. This made the event more active than years before.

Only three days after we got done with BarCamp DC, Patrick and I put on the first monthly Accessibility DC event at the MLK library on November 17, 2009. We will be meeting every third Tuesday of the month for those wanting to attend.

December

nclud started the holiday season off right with their annual end of year holiday party. There were a ton of people as usual. I don’t think I got a chance to talk to half of the people I wanted to. Still had a great time none the less. Got into a little trouble, since I had another wine event at a friends and brought extra wine after they had to go get more from local store down the street.

Spent Christmas weekend with different friends and just relaxing.

New Years Eve was a quiet affair with some friends at a Japanese Steakhouse, with a few of them coming back to my place for wine, cheese, cure Italian meats, shrimp, and some Creamant de Bourgogne to usher in the New Year. All while watching the Food Network most of the evening. Creamant is a champagne style wine from another region of France that is not from Champagne.

2010

This years looks to be an even more exciting one than last year, with more monthly accessibility meetings, SXSWi, working on my different web applications (more on my change of plans later), hoping to attend Access U again, and attending An Event Apart DC when Jeffrey Zledman, Eric Meyer, and their great speakers here Washington, DC, on Sept. 16–17, 2010.

More details of me plans for this coming year to follow over the next few weeks. I am participating in Project 52, that my good friend Anton Peck started, which is to do a blog post or some equivalent each week for a year. When I signed up I figure he would get a hundred or so people to sign-up. Last time I checked he had 488 people signed up.

So how did your 2009 go and what are you’re plans for 2010?

Semi Productive Columbus Day Weekend

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This weekend was both fun and semi productive.

Friday night I did a little cheese shopping with my local cheese monger over at Rick’s Wine and Gourmet. I had stopped to pick up few cheeses for friends stopping over at my place before going to the Mount Vernon wine festival Saturday evening. I asked for some more mild cheese, since this crowd does not like the stinky and flavorful ones. I got a Gouda, truffle cheese, and another mild cheese I can not think of the name of. I also asked for some of the more stinky cheeses for a tasting I am doing for eight other friends in about ten days. My cheese monger gave me two different cheeses that had expired about a week or more ago since they could not sell it in the store. I then picked up an Epoisse for the next tasting.

I went to bed around midnight and woke up at like 5 AM for some reason and could not get back to sleep. I went to A. Litteri’s to get some fine Italian meets and then to the farmers market at Arlington Courthouse. I picked up some apples, bread, chocolate chip cookies, and a few other items.

Once I got home I showered and changed to go to the Del Ray “Arts on the Avenue”. I did not pay attention to the weather enough since when I got dressed I put on a black t-shirt with black shorts. It was really sunny and warm without a cloud in the sky. I managed to get through the whole art festival including a small snack in about two hours. Not bad considering it’s a three plus mile walk around trip and I stop a few times to visit with friends.

Once home, I got ready for my friends to come over around 5 PM, so we could leave for Mount Vernon around 5:30 PM. Some friends never made it until 5:45 PM. The rest of us ate cheese, Italian meats, and bread while we waited. After about 30 – 45 minutes myself and one of the other persons in the group had had enough of the Virginia wines. The others in the group wanted to stay until the end to get their moneys worth. I was ready to give them their $20 back to be able to go home and drink some wine at the house. We left once the wine festival had closed. I had a good time during the evening talking about wine with one of the people and we all had another bottle of wine once we got back to my place.

Sunday was mostly coffee shop to meet friends and then back for football, a short nap, dinner, and TV.

Monday morning on my day off I woke up like 30 minutes before I normally do for work and could not get back to sleep. Went to the coffee shop to see who would be there and not many people I know showed up, at least before I left. Once I got back I checked e-mail, Twitter, and then it was off to the National Gallery of Art to see the “Edward Hopper” exhibit. After spending over an hour in the Edward Hopper exhibit I spent about 45 minutes at the J.M.W. Turner exhibit. After looking at most of the pieces in that show I noticed that two-thirds to three quarters of the works came out of the Tate museum in London. I hope they left few back home for others to see.

I next got back on the metro to head up to the convention center stop so I could go by the nclud office to make sure I knew where it was for Saturday nights party. From there I walked to Chinatown for a late lunch at like 3:30 PM. After getting home I started watching a little TV and ended up with about a 45 minutes nap instead.

Once I was awake enough I went to Best Buy and Office Depot to look for a monitor for my laptop. I liked the 24″ Westinghouse that was on sale at Best Buy. I tried to see how the 32″ View-sonic looked at Office Depot but no one at the store seem to know how to get the DVD player to show a movie on the screen. All I got was a blue screen with the message that there was “No Signal!”. I guess I will have to wait until at least Wednesday night to get one, since I have wine class Tuesday night.

I then stopped at Borders bookstore and looked at few magazines. On the way home I stopped to get dinner to go. Once home ate dinner and watched the Travel Channel and then the end of the Bills vs. Cowboys game. I thought Buffalo was actually going to win the game, which would have been even better since TO missed the two point conversion. In the end it was ok.

I have to get in more practice of writing general blog posts before I start doing more technical ones. I also need to work on writing short posts.

Time for bed.