An Event Apart: For People Who Make Websites
September 10, 2005

An 802.11 Cloud of Joy

Those of you who’ve already registered for AEA Philadelphia (we love you!), as well as those of you thinking about registering, may be wondering about the networking situation. Will there be any network access? Will it be available all the time? Will laptops even be allowed in the event?

The answer to all those questions is an emphatic yes. In fact, one of our most important criteria in choosing a venue was the availability of a wireless network for all the attendees—we passed on at least two locations because they either couldn’t give us a wifi network, or weren’t sure that they could. The Franklin Institute folks have assured us that there will be no problems opening up our own little 802.11 cloud of joy.

So you will, in fact, be able to check your e-mail, IM your friends, and surf your favorite Flash animation sites during the event. We certainly hope you won’t, of course. In general, we see it as our job to come up with material so interesting that you won’t want to IM or surf randomly around the web.

The point of the wifi isn’t to tempt your attention away from the event. Granted, we know full well how our hands tremble when we’ve been cut off from e-mail for a day; around here, it’s called the “SMTP shake”. But that’s not the primary reason! We’re thinking about ways to leverage the network’s presence to make the event more interesting and interactive for all the attendees. Obvious activities include things like making our working files available for download and view as we present them and putting up the day’s schedule for all to access, but we’re on the lookout for more subtle and sophisticated ideas.

For all those reasons and more, we definitely encourage you to bring your wifi-aware laptop to the event. We’ll gather in the warmth of the WAP and share our tales of markup and merriment.

Philadelphia 2005 news

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