Rhonda Bracey: At Random

The first day of the AODC Conference began with Tony Self’s typically humorous intro and welcome.

Dave Gash (USA) then presented a session on “Self-Aware Navigation Techniques” which actually made sense to me… please don’t tell me I’m going over to the dark side of JavaScript programming! While I didn’t understand the specifics of the code, I completely understood what it was trying to achieve.

Next, Tony coordinated a fun networking activity where we all got to meet quite a few other people. Morning tea followed, with some delicious muffins and Danish pastries.

Tony’s presentation on “Structured Authoring” was next. I had already attended this session at the WritersUA conference just a couple of weeks ago, so if I’d been on the ball and familiar with the AODC agenda then, I would’ve attended another session at WritersUA. Oh well. It didn’t do me any harm to sit through it again. Tony’s a good speaker and he was a little more on the ball for this one… the one at WritersUA was after the Aussie pub crawl night!

After lunch Gerry Gaffney spoke on “Interactive Design” – a good session that highlighted the need for writers to be involved in the design process much earlier than is typical.

Scones with jam and real cream were available for afternoon tea, then Dr Tom James (from the UK) spoke on how the Salisbury District Council is using XML and common taxonomies to provide service information to people via the web.

The final event of the day was drinks by the pool, sponsored by Pursue-IT (Sydney).

Four of us went off to an Indian restaurant afterwards – Mother India in Sheridan St. The food was OK, but nothing special. But the company (Elizabeth [NSW] and Rowdy [WA]) was good.

Tomorrow the sessions start at 8:30, the exhibitors are exhibiting, and there are some 8 sessions during the day, then it’s the Trivia Night! A big day ahead…