2009 May » Mostly Harmless

Conference Was Crazy!

May 252009

Some YATS... and Bruce

Well, it wasn’t super-crazy or anything, but it was certainly fun. If you remember back to last year, I didn’t think it went super-well. So how did this year stack up?

Tech Team Stuff:
- Presentation Software: This year, we have Office on the tech team laptops. This made a big difference, as we had figured out presentation mode, and had a good system where one of the laptops was pretty much just for Powerpoint, and the other laptop was used for modifying resolutions & petitions, as well as showing DVDs and other things that worked better in single-monitor mode.
- Presentations in General: People have started to figure this out. There were no powerpoints where letters swirled into place one at a time. There was only one set of Powerpoints where bullets faded in one at a time. Only one set of slides didn’t display correctly, and they were done in Office 2007, and we had 2003. Big improvements.
- This was the first year of an experiment of doing the sound and video in-house. Pat bought all the equipment he needs to run video and sound for conference and the youth events he helps organize. His setup was excellent, other than the lighting rig which flaked out. We could have used some preview monitors, and we think we have a solution in place for next year for both problems.
- I was surprised that nobody on Conference staff thought to have the proposals in a digital format. I typed up the ‘Therefore Be It Resolved…’s and had them up on the screen for people to follow along with the modifications, and I think if I had been able to modify them a little faster, people would have really appreciated it. I was dead tired when we were discussing these resolutions, however. I’m definitely requesting they be available to the tech team next year.
The theme was ‘The Fabric of Prayer’, and everything was a metaphor wrapped into quilting, sewing, stitching, or other such arts. I myself have made quilts, and I’m not objecting to such phrases, but it would have been nice for a little bit of non-fabric related commentary. Despite the overkill, I though the theme was well delivered.
The facility was great. The local arrangement ladies made sure we had enough cookies, and the food, though a little monotonous, was good.
The music was fantastic. The musical leader was energetic, and she managed to get people up and moving. Music breaks were respected by the delegates and worship was excellent. Both of the worship leaders were at Kairos, and they did a wonderful job.
People are still freaked out about the future and haven’t really done anything about that in the last year.
There was some very intentional work done this year to revamp the YATS program.
- There was a huge crop of new people. Most of these were people who have attended Youth Forum and are now too old, but there were a few new to Conference people as well, which was fun.
- We had one leader who was the same as last year, and one who was new. They seemed to work well together and fit the group well.
- I didn’t get to participate in everything because of the tech stuff I was also responsible for, but everything I went to was fun. We played games and had fun, and that was a nice change from the last few years where everything got just a little bit too serious.
- I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen since Kairos, or last year’s conference, and it was great to re-connect with people.
I am very tired. Because Conference was in Windsor, I took some time to visit a few people I haven’t seen in a while. I went to the Shopper’s I used to work at and caught up with my old manager there. She was always wonderful to me, and it was great to be able to catch up with her and find out how she it. I had to pick up some stuff at Alan’s parents’ house, and had a good chat with Alan’s Dad. Also, on my way home last night, I stopped at Matt and Fran’s and got to meet their new daughter.

So that’s my conference recap / commentary. If you were there, what did you think of the event?

So on Thursday afternoon my Check Engine light came on. Seeing as I’m at conference, this was a bit of a problem, as I don’t really have time to find a dealership, get the car there, find a way back, and deal with my car which I assume has a real problem. However, driving back to Hamilton from Windsor, a 3-4 hour drive, seems irresponsible and dangerous. I like my car, and I don’t want it to blow up, or die quietly on a busy roadside in the middle freaking nowhere.

So yesterday morning, I get up early, go across the city to the Toyota dealership, and drop off the car. The dealership has a Courtesy van that drives me over to the conference centre, and I’m only about half an hour late. Right around lunch, the dealership calls me and leaves me a message to get in touch with them, they know what’s wrong with the car.

Here’s the stupid part, the part where I curse:

My gas cap wasn’t tight enough, and that cause an emissions flag to be set on the car. The motherfucking gas cap. What. The. Fuck.

Here’s the part where I rationalize my spending $26 to have someone tighten my gas cap for me:

I’m super glad that the Check Engine light wasn’t a big problem, that I didn’t have to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to fix, and that would leave me stranded in this boring city for weeks on end. But! I am a little bit embarrased that my big car drama is because I only turned the gas cap two clicks instead of three. Also, I don’t like that fact that if this flag gets tripped again, and I go tighten the gas cap, that won’t un-trigger the flag, and I will have to go pay another $26 to the dealership. What a scam.

I would love it if my car’s computer was smart enough to talk to me, like KITT. In a British accent. And when I did something moronic like this, it said, “Hey moron, you aren’t smart enough to drive a car. Please try again.” That would be a more useful message.

CSS and IE6

Life, Projects 1 Response »

May 212009

Noah Stokes has written a really lovely piece about CSS and IE6.

My company’s clients are corporate, and many of them still have displays at 800×600. We’ve tried in vain to get them to increase their screen size in order to take advantage of the extra real estate, and the fact is that you just can’t change end users. What that means is we need to deliver the product that our end users need, to work on the tools that they use. If we loftily from on high dictate that our users should only use Firefox, we will lose our user base.

No matter how much I hate to say this, we just can’t pretend IE doesn’t exist.

Crazy For Conference!

Life 2 Responses »

May 212009

I’m in Windsor this grand morning, as this weekend is the annual general meeting of London Conference. As with last year, I will be assisting with the technological infrastructure and presentation at this year’s meeting. Gord, Chris and I will be taking care of the projectors and video equipment, and Pat will be running the sound. The members of the United Church who will be attending are mostly older, and not so in touch with technology, so the presentations they put together will often suffer from some of the common Powerpoint sins:

Too much text per slide.
Slides are in sentences instead of point form.
Transition effects that distract instead of engage
People will read the slides to us rather than expand on the text
Offensive colour schemes
Mid-80s era clipart

The weekend will be fun. I will get to see a number of people I haven’t seen since last year’s conference, and I like running the tech equipment. If everything goes well, nobody will notice us at all, and that’s always the goal when it comes to the infrastructure of the event.