The last conference I went to this year was a conference held by the Cal State University at Northridge known as the Center on Disabilities Conference, aka the CSUN Conference. As the title of it tells you it is a conference focusing on the accessible tehcnology issues that I've already mentioned a couple of times in my previous posts. Accessibility... accessibility... accessibility. How much of it can we take in? This conference I had actually attended basically as a mandatory conference that I was sent to. Me along with a few other people from Cal Poly Pomona attended in hopes to gain more knowledge in creating accessible content. It was probably the WORST conference I have ever attended. I'm not being negative here and I am not bashing on the subject either. I am referering to the the actual presentations and the organization of this event. The WORST! For starters, it's not the funnest subject to talk about in the first place... and then you back it up with the worlds worst presentations. My goodness, I don't like pointing fingers or mentioning names but this company who was suppose to be one of the major presenters of the event (I won't say any names here but the company's name starts with a "P" and ends with "aciello Group") needs to be more prepared next time. What is it with a presentation where none of your examples work?
Next is the conference website. Talk about really bad user experience. Take a 30 page word document, export it as HTML, and call it a web site. That's whatthis website seem to be. Okay but enough of this conference, I am actually hoping that I can actually attend something different this year. Something were I don't have to keep hearing the same thing extended out into a week conference. "Make sure you put descriptions for every image on your website." :( "Make sure to use ALT tags for images on a web page." The funniest part of all this is how most people who speak about image equivalent descriptions in HTML refer to these as "ALT tags." Please at least get the wording right, they are ALT attributes not tags. This isn't the only bad conference I have attended, I also went to the Knowbility Conference which was also of the same quality, presenters with no presentation skills or knowledge of the subject they present (yawn).
Enough of this subject though, I can only hear the same thing told to me so many times. So I am hoping to be able to attend something a bit different this year, of course on approval of the university. A real conference with industry experts. These are some of the conferences I am looking forward to and I hope to learn more on these than just putting "ALT tags" on images. Here are a few I would like to consider:
The Flashforward Conference and Film Festival: Sept 19 - 21 in Boston
Adobe CS3: the Creative License Conference: June 19 - 20 in LA or June 25 - 26 in NYC
CRE8 Conference: May 9 - 10 in Orlando
FlashBelt '07: June 18 - 20 in Minneapolis
NECC: June 24 - 27 in Atlanta
Adobe MAX 2007: Sept 30 - October 3 in Chicago
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