I’m back in SF after TPAC, W3C’s week-long annual meeting. How to summarize an experience like it? I honestly don’t know. Here’s my attempt from Mastodon:
#w3cTPAC is so many different things at the same time to me. First, it’s an intense week of work—it puts me temporarily in charge of an order of magnitude more people than usual.
But it’s also the one time each year I get to see so many colleages, some of whom have become dear friends.
We all come to W3C because we believe the web is special and precious, but the web got that way precisely because of the dedicated people that make it that way, one day and one step at a time.
Location, location, location
TPAC was in Anaheim this year, at one of the many hotels near Disneyland. This had some upsides and downsides:
- Being so close to both Disneyland and the Anaheim Convention Center meant that there were many hotels nearby. If you had trouble getting a room at the venue hotel, you could probably find something within walking distance.
- On the other hand, this part of Anaheim isn’t exactly paradise for pedestrians.
- The conference hotel was in the middle of extensive, invasive renovation work. It was hard to hear the conversation in some meetings because of the construction noise just outside the room.
- The power went out, in the venue hotel and in some nearby buildings, for several hours on Tuesday. While some took advantage of this to have an extra long lunch break, it was particularly disruptive to remote attendees.
- The hotel had us set up with a great, big outdoor space for lunch, which was great, except that there weren’t enough umbrellas to cover all the lunch tables. Once the morning cloud cover burned off it could be quite unpleasantly sunny out there.
Meetingsmeetingsmeetingsmeetings
TAG meetings bookended my week. On Monday morning we got together to plan out the week, and on Friday afternoon we regrouped to figure out what will need following up on.
The highlight this year were the many breakouts on Wednesday. There were so, so many great sessions. It’s a shame you can only be in one place at a time.
After the last round of breakouts, during the W3C Plenary, David was recognized for his storied career in media and web standards. I said a few words about the absolute privilege it’s been to work with him over the last 14 years; I somehow managed to not cry while doing so. ミスターＭＰ４、本当にお世話なりました。
Also at plenary, they announced the results of the Board of Directors election, in which I ran and, unfortunately, lost.
I really enjoyed the Privacy CG meeting on Thursday. It’s always nice to spend time with my co-chairs, Erik and Martin, though a mic shortage meant I had to spend the meeting running one back and forth across the room to the various speakers.
Some other sessions that stand out in my memory are the WICG’s Digital Credentials API session, the PATCG session on Friday, and the joint CSSWG / WHATWG / Open UI session on styling form controls.
Friends and food
It was a week absolutely chock full of work, but it was also loads of fun. Some highlights:
The lengua tacos at Taqueria de Anda are so, so good. It’d been ages since I last went and it totally holds up. I literally went there straight from the airport on Saturday. Dan and I had dinner at Haven in Downtown Orange that night. (And then we barely saw each other all week—one of the downsides of how busy everyone gets during the conference itself.)
On the Sunday before the conference I drove down to San Diego to visit friends & family. I saw my cousin Billy and his family in PQ, then brunched at The Rose in South Park with Patrick, Lisa, Rose, Mel, and Reed.
The TAG had cocktails that Mark would have FOed, and many laughs, over dinner at Nova on Monday night.
Wendy sent me a link to this incredible t-shirt early in the week. I ordered it to a nearby Amazon locker and wore it to the CSS meeting. How could I not?
Once Tuesday’s sessions were over I collected Alice, Mia, and Zoë in my rental. We braved rush hour in LA to check out The Ruby Fruit in Silver Lake. I’m so, so glad we did. It’s a gem. This was basically the only time I got to hang out with Alice all week, though, which is a damn shame.
Wednesday night after plenary was W3C@30, a gala celebration of W3C’s first thirty years. Much fun was had. Maybe a bit too much. Here’s to thirty more!
At some point during the week, I don’t remember which day, I ran into Hadley sitting on a hallway floor. She invited me to sit down, and we proceeded to have one of those deep, wonderful conversations you you never plan to have but cherish when you do. I’m so glad I sat down.
I take Apple’s attendees out for a big dinner each TPAC, to thank them for all their hard work and to celebrate the successes of the week. This year, our dinner was at Puesto Thursday night. The food was great; the company was better.
On Friday, after everything had wrapped, I went on a walk around the enormous Anaheim block with Brian, Coralie, Mike, and Yves. Later that night Alan, Mia, Mike, Rossen, and I braved the crowd at Downtown Disney to have dinner at Céntrico.
After checking out of my hotel I worked from Play Coffee for a while before getting lunch at Rutabegorz (yum). Then it was back to SNA for my flight home.