Another Satisfied Customer

I’m a little late to the game with this, but if you haven’t heard already, Tuesday’s Cleveland Web Standards Meetup was a rootin’ tootin’ good time.

Plenty of new faces as well as most of the now familiar ones, and once again I was struck with the diversity of talent and experience.

And friendliness! From students to interveterans, everyone is so open and seems to enjoy getting the chance to geek out and talk about their projects and all the new web hotness.

By Professionals, For Professionals

It’s been brought up before, but what makes this group so fun and so refreshing is that (unlike some other Cleveland web associations and organizations) this is purely a gathering for the benefit of people working in the Cleveland web industry — No marketers or agency suits patting each other on the back and spewing out the latest buzzwords.

Everyone seems to have the same general interest in discussing and promoting standards and best practices and most importantly, helping each other out. Hopefully we can keep that enthusiasm as we grow.

And of Course, the Microformats

The big brouhaha of the evening was Eric Myer’s presentation on Microformats, which David Mead has so kindly posted on viddler for your viewing pleasure.

There were some groans when he announced that he’d be using no slides (I still don’t get the reason for groans?), but he definately didn’t need them.

With nothing but an unordered list of links and the harnessed power of the true semantic web, Eric Meyer heroically fought off and killed a roaming pack of vicous pumas hellbent on our destruction!

OK not really, but he definately showed us what can (and will) be done with those little bits of formatted code. I’ve played around with microformats before (styled up hcards and a few others), but aside from the obvious “add to iCal“ or “add to Address Book“, I really didn’t get the big picture.

Watching Eric jump around from site to site and application to application through microformats, I can now see the huge potential of microformats. But don’t listen to me, go watch the presentation yourself if you’re curious, it’s worth your time.

So many thanks Eric, for taking the time to put a presentation together for us. I learned quite a bit and I know a lot of the others did as well.

That’s a big act to follow, but I’m looking forward to seeing what others have to share next month and down the road. Of course, if I could just man up and get over my near-pants-wetting fear of public speaking it’d be fun to contribute.

Seriously. Near-Pants-Wetting.

OK Not really, but it’s definately something I avoid like vicious pumas that can only be killed by microformats.

Last but Not Least…

Huge thanks and propers to James Golden for taking the point on working with Al Wasco for the room (and refreshments!) at Tri-C.

And of course to Joseph James Frantz, Brad Colbow and Brad Dielman for organizing the group.

Already looking forward to next month! If you haven’t already, why not sign up and come say hello?