A designer?

Originally uploaded by writerus drivelus.

Last Saturday I went to the WebDD conference at Microsoft Campus, Reading. Following my standard conference procedure, I checked in, obtained coffee, and fired up my MacBook.

At this point one of the official photographers (only authorised individuals may take photos at MS) rushed over to me and asked, “Is it all right if I take a photograph of you?”

“Yeah, fine,” I replied. As he raised his camera, I asked, “Is it the Mac?” “Yes,” he said.

I’d only been at Microsoft five minutes, but the Reality Distortion Field had already cast me into a Bateman cartoon: “The Man Who Used a Macintosh on Microsoft Campus.”

(And no, I’m not a designer.)

It’s back! BarCamp London 2 will be hosted by BT on February 17th – 18th. Check out the BarCamp site (above) for signup details.

I’ve got my place, and now have to decide what subject to present about. One thing I’m certain of: I’m not going to leave it until the last minute this time. I missed a lot of good stuff at the last BCL because I was tucked away in a spare office, frantically hacking together a demo to illustrate my points about underused aspects of HTTP. This time, I’ll be ready.

Already up and running is the Backnetwork. This is the same system that Madgex developed for d.Construct 2006 (Glenn Jones of Madgex is giving a presentation on Microformats), and proved itself to be an excellent system for keeping track of contacts and following the general Flickr and blogging buzz around the event.

See you there, if my car has been healed by then. (I dread to think what the train would cost.) the car having been healed through the miracle of a few hundred pounds. (Broken trailing arm, whatever one of those is.)