# XTech 2008: The Report
I hoped to have a mini reports done day-by-day, but a restricted Internet service at my hotel and the venue meant that I wasn’t as able to as I wanted. So here it is, a bigger report. I’ll do it in an interview style.
What was XTech 2008 generally about?
XTech 2008 was about “The Web on the move”. It brought together innovators, researchers, developers and entrepreneurs to talk about the current state of the web, how its evolving and where its going in the future.
General Topics included:
- People being social on the Web… aka the “Social Web“
- Client Side development, particularly JavaScript/AJAX
- Semantic Web: Linked Data, FOAF, Microformats, RDFa, Ontologies, New Platforms from various businesses
- DataPortability: APML, FOAF, SIOC, XMPP
Oh! That sounds awesome, I wish I was there. When and where was it?
It was between 6th and 9th of May 2008, at the Radisson SAS Royal hotel in Dublin, Ireland. It was a nice looking hotel, although the food was quite poor. I didn’t stay in that hotel, I was in a hotel next to Christ Church Cathedral which was only a few blocks away from the event.
OK, so what were the highlights of the event for you?
Discovering jQuery in one of the first tutorials, a JavaScript library which is perfect for Unobtrusive JavaScript (which means that the JavaScript is only an enhancement to interaction on the page, and the page is still usable if you have JavaScript turned off). I really wish I had more time to play with it. It is, however, just a page manipulation library (although there are plugins available for it)…. I suggest that you check out OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT) if you want eye-candy as well as page manipulation, it would be interesting to compare OAT and jQuery one day in terms of feature set and compatibility with browsers…. although theres nothing stopping you from using them with each other.
Simon Wardley talked about “why open matters“, he had hundreds of slides which he managed to get through in time. It was the best presentation that I have ever seen.
Hearing from Rattle Research about their work with the BBC to provide contextually relevant content, and doing so by using information provided by <a href="https://db