Google, SQL Resiliency and Scripting Enabled

After months of inactivity and half completed, unpublished blog posts, I have quite a busy week coming up. In the morning I'm off to Google Developer Day 2008, London:

Google Developer Day 2008 will focus on pushing the boundaries of web applications using Google developer technologies. Google engineers and web development leaders will lead you through one full day of in-depth breakout sessions on the latest Google technologies and hands-on codelabs. There will be multiple opportunities for you to choose topics and lead discussions around them.

I really enjoyed last year's event and have been looking forward to this one all summer.

Next up, provisionally, on Thursday evening is the Professional Association for SQL Server User Group meeting on Maximizing SQL Server Performance and Availability:

Keeping mission-critical applications available and running has never been more important. Join Kevin Kline as he provides a quick overview of the various high-availability options available to users of SQL Server 2008 and explore the pros and cons of each. This fast paced session covers log shipping, database mirroring, clustering, database snapshots, and replication as techniques for high-availability on SQL Server 2008.

Finally, I arranged Friday off work a few months ago because I thought (hoped, really) I'd be going away this weekend. That fell through, but serendipitously I discovered the Scripting Enabled event going on that same day:

Scripting Enabled is a two day conference and workshop aimed at making the web a more accessible place. We are planning to achieve this by making those in the know about accessibility barriers meet hackers that know how to retrieve information from APIs and display them as alternative interfaces. Together these groups can make any system out there more inviting, accessible and available to people that are currently blocked out.

Should be an interesting week, and I hope to eventually get round to telling you all about it on my web development blog.

Open Tech 2008

This weekend I'm heading to Open Tech 2008:

Open Tech 2008 is an informal, low cost one-day conference on technology, society and low-carbon living, featuring Open Source ways of working and technologies that anyone can have a go at.

The schedule is certainly wide ranging, and I'm quite interested in a number of the sessions. I do plan to write it up on my web development blog, but given it takes me up to two weeks to write up events with just one or two speakers, don't hold you're breath ;)

SearchMonkey Developer Event

Tonight I'll be attending the SearchMonkey Developer Event at Wallacespace in London:

SearchMonkey allows developers and site owners to use semantic web standards and structured data to enhance Yahoo! Search results and make them more useful, relevant, and visually appealing. Come meet the guys who created the product, and feel free to monkey around with them as you wish.

My usual plan to write a review on my web developer blog applies (I'll even use the hReview microformat!) providing I can find the time - I know I didn't manage to finish writing up the last event I attended yet, I'll try and get it finished today.

London Geek Night: AJAX

This week my (hopefully) mind expanding web developer evening out is London Geek Night: AJAX at the ThoughtWorks UK offices. From the upcoming.org description:

Web 2.0 may be something of cliche but users are expecting to interact with web pages in an increasingly dynamic way. Javascript toolkits can make it easier to sprinkle a little AJAX magic over your web application and JQuery has garnered a lot of praise for being concise, intuitive and powerful in a Javascript idiom.

This week I'm very confident there will be enough web development content to be worth writing the event up on my web development blog.

GIS: The Business Benefits

This week I plan to attend GIS: The Business Benefits at the BCS on Thursday:

In recent years there has been increasing pressure to improve business efficiencies, competitive advantage and resource utilisation. Whilst GIS technology is now mature the business aspects are paradoxically much less well developed. There are very few examples of the true business value of GIS projects, and no standardised methodology for estimating the value or return on investment of using GIS within organisations.

As ever, I plan to write up the talk in my web development blog, since I managed to write up all three things I went to last week already the chances of it appearing on time seem to be good :)

London Web Week

This week is London Web Week, I plan to attend three events:

• Microformats vEvent (Tuesday)


• WSG: Findability (Wednesday)


• The Evolution of Flash (Friday)

Watch out for write ups on my main web development blog later this week.