Update: Added link to John’s presentation slides
I’m counting today as Day 0 of The Ajax Experience since it’s sort of an extra day. Originally the week was to be Wed-Fri and they added Tue to have early registration and three 90-minute tutorials. Cool.
I got into Boston at about 10:30am. I couldn’t check into my hotel until 3pm, so I went straight to the Seaport Hotel. They were nice enough to check my suitcase there and directed me across the street to the World Trade Center, the location of The Ajax Experience.
I arrived at about 11. Early registration wasn’t until 12:30, so I that gave me a bit of time to catch up on email and situate my backpack. I had this idea to bring along a surge protector and keep it in my backpack with everything plugged into it: cell phone charger, laptop power cord, camera battery charger. It worked marvelously. And when it came time to stand up and walk away, I just had one thing to unplug. The other end stayed in my bag with all my wall warts and cables. Beauty.
I walked over to the registration desk at 12:30. A line of about 20 people had beat me by waiting around for a bit before then. I got my badge, lanyard, and conference proceedings/packet and made my way to the room where the tutorials would be. There was ample seating, which I was glad to see. There was a podium, two large projector screens, and a big camera on the speaker. Each seat had a pad of paper and a pen, a drinking glass, and there was a pitcher of water every three seats or so.
What was missing? Outlets. Nowhere in sight to plug in. So I had my laptop on (unplugged) for about 10 minutes before the first tutorial. It remained off the rest of the day. Don’t know if this is to encourage people to pay more direct attention to the speaker, or if it was just the specifics of this room. Either way, I hope there are plenty of places to “plug-in” at later session rooms during the week. Ok, let’s get to the tutorials:
Tutorial #1: Introduction to Ajax, Ben Galbraith
The schedule had Ben and Dion. Ben mentioned that Dion couldn’t make it until this evening. So it was just Ben. But just Ben is just fine. He started out by having a raise of hands of who was brand new to AJAX. About 50% in attendance raised their hands. Perhaps fitting since this was an introduction tutorial. I looked around to get a rough idea, but didn’t count. I’d guess there were between 80-120 people there. A good group.
This was my first time seeing Ben speak and I really enjoyed it. It was easy to watch him for 90 minutes. He followed a good outline, fit in everything he needed/wanted, and explained things clearly. I was also impressed with his tenacity in doing a live demo from scratch during the presentation (with very few errors 
)
Here’s a few choice quotes:
Ajax is a catch-all marketing term that means we can do cool things in a web browser
let’s web pages do a lot more than they’ve ever done before
the fundamental technique behind Ajax - browsers can contact server using JavaScript
XHR can be done synchronously. I guess that would be SJAX or something
I’m no UI guru, but I think hanging the browser is not a good UI experience
often with Ajax, what looks super complex is somewhat simple
Tutorial #2: JavaScript Library Overview, John Resig
John started out by saying that the Ajaxian Conference organizers must think he can do a decent job at remaining objective in giving an overview of JavaScript libraries, despite being an author and maintainer of a popular one, since this is not the first time he’s done this presentation.
Fortunately I don’t have to be as objective as John. So here I go: John Rocks. jQuery Rocks. Ok there, I said it. Now on to what John said:
Update: Here’s a link to John’s slides/presentation
Here’s a few choice quotes/excerpts:
When choosing a JavaScript Library, the first question you want to ask yourself is, “How you do want to write JavaScript?”
Libraries make JavaScript bearable
Prototype sets out to improve the usability of the JavaScript language, adding “missing” features
jQuery focuses on the interaction between HTML and JavaScript
YUI is an attempt to standardize internal JavaScript at Yahoo
Dojo focuses on providing everything needed for building web applications
A JavaScript library should provide (at a minimum): DOM functions (traversal, manipulation), Events, Ajax, Animations (simple)
For UI Widgets - Prototype has Scriptaculous, jQuery has jQuery UI, Dojo has Dijits, YUI has included
Dojo is taking a solid lead in accessibility for widgets (ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications)
All 4 libraries (Proto, jQuery, YUI, Dojo) have liberal licenses - In short: Don’t remove the copyright line, Don’t sue us
I didn’t make it to the third tutorial this afternoon (Designing for Ajax, David Verba). John and I got to talking as this is the first time we’ve met in person (a pleasure). I also was happy to (quickly) meet tonight:
Jörn Zaefferer
Marc Grabanski
Karl Swedberg
Jonathan Chaffer
Benjamin Sterling and I missed each other by about 10 minutes, so we’ll meet in the morning.
Day 0 overall was quite good. Everything ran smoothly. The location is great, and everything is top-notch. The questions from the audience were quite good, and it was obvious people were getting a lot from attending. I’m looking forward to Day 1.