BarCampWaterloo is today, UW Expo and Homecoming tomorrow
Waterloo’s first BarCampWaterloo is today in the Tathum Centre at 2pm. With 23 people signed up I don’t think that is a bad number for a Friday with so much else going on this weekend. The plan for the afternoon is simple, come enjoy some coffee and tim bits, and talk about web technology.
The big things on campus this weekend, UW Expo and Homecoming is tomorrow. The speaker total this weekend includes:
UW Expo:
- Denise Donlon, Founder of Much More Music and former President of Sony Music Canada.
- George Roter and Parker Mitchell, Co-Founders and Co-CEOs of Engineers Without Borders
- Larry Smith, UW Economics Professor and Recipient of the Distinguished Teacher Award
Homecoming has the best speaker (I think):
- Steven Lewis – The politician, broadcaster and diplomat is a Companion of the Order of Canada and in 2005 was named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world (along with The Dalai Lama, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Nelson Mandela). Stephen will speak about global issues and engage in a question and answer session with the audience.
Plus today starts Entrepreneur week. With a ton of other events going on… Think there is lots to do in the Waterloo Region?
Adobe is looking for a student Ambassador
Looks like Adobe is looking for a UW student to fill the role of Adobe Ambassador. It sounds like a similar role as the old Macromedia User Group organizers. I don’t think there was ever a MMUG (now Adobe User Group) in Waterloo, actually there are very few in Canada. If you are interested go check out the blog link and the contact information is at the bottom of the page. If you end up with the position, drop me an email 
I know other companies offer something similar to students… Pretty sure this is the first time Adobe has done it here.
Winter co-op job in CPA!
It’s the last day to apply for jobs for the first round of the co-op process here at University of Waterloo and the web developer job in my office for next term is posted under #00046532. For those off campus readers, the Co-op Education system at Waterloo is one of the biggest and best in the world. Check out the Co-op site for more information.
For you co-op students: if you didn’t find the job posted, apply before the deadline for this round (tonight)! Next term should be fun too. Waterloo will be celebrating its 50th year and CPA has a redo of the UW home page to launch, a 50th site to maintain and launch, a bunch of apps to tweak, some stuff related to mobile technology, podcasting, and more.
Webstandards war reports: who doesn’t yet ‘get’ webstandards and accessibility?
It’s funny, I have been loosing that standards preaching feeling lately. It just seems like more people nod your heads when you mention standards. Should I feel like the Web Standards War (is it a war? I suppose you could call it that) is over since IE 7 is just catching up to Firefox and CSS seems to be everywhere? Do Web Standards still matter? Of course web standards still matter according to Roger Johansson in an article over on Vitamin. Roger Johansson makes a mention on his blog as well, you can follow the thread Robert Nyman makes the point that the war is far from over – developers get it, well they might know the W3 exists, but do they really get why?
I must admit that I don’t get all the ins and outs of the XHTML vs HTML debate (and I really don’t care that much) but I do know that having valid code makes life so much easier. It is when you start using non-standard hacks is when you get into trouble. Same goes for coding and best practices (maybe not a W3 standard but certainly important). I am not a PHP guy by any stretch but if you follow best practices the code is nice for the next Co-op/Web Developer that comes along. This term Sasha has pretty much picked up where Mitch left off… That hasn’t happened that smoothly before.
When I think best practices and then look at something like Spry just coming out (or other AJAX frameworks for that matter) that appear to pretty much ignore best practices in order to make it easy for people to use, I realize web standards and best practices have a long way to go. Take the fact you can’t use Spry if you have to meet accessibility requirements – who thinks they shouldn’t make an effort to make their site accessble? Sure Microsoft, Adobe, and others have moved towards web standards with some stuff but the push of AJAX highlights the issue that people forget standards when it suits them…
I suppose its best to keep teaching myself more about web standards and best practices… and share
Short note on Penn State’s iTunes U pilot
Penn state’s iTunes site is the best resource on podcasting in higher education that I have seen yet. Of course I haven’t looked at of them but still it is pretty cool. They have a nice blog set up for podcasts which offers a nice public space to catch podcasts (similar to our quitely released blogs and podcasts) and find information on how to podcast. They even offer an Introduction to the World of Podcasting for those still not sure what it is all about. Only downside is that iTunes U version is off limits to non-PSU folks, but ah well.
I know University of Calgary is working on a pilot, UW is considering one, UBC as well? Must go dig around some more.
