I was very pleased to be speaking at Remix Australia this week. Thanks must go to Michael Kordahi, Shane Morris, and Nick Hodge for trusting that a guy who hadn’t done a public presentation in nearly a year could deliver the goods.

Talking ‘bout a revolution

Damian Edwards and I were asked to do the IE8 session together. The point of the session was to give an overview of the new features and capabilities, in particular the brand-spanking new standards-compliant rendering engine. We also decided to make the most of the opportunity to pimp standards-based design methodologies and concepts to the .NET and Silverlight focused crowd.

Damian took responsibility for developing solid demos to illustrate standards-based design techniques and the innovations in IE8 such as WebSlices and Activities. I delivered the historical context, the philosophy and the concepts we wanted to impart.

I think we ended up with a solidly crafted presentation that wove the themes of Internet Explorer 8’s development principles, standards-based design philosophies and best practice web innovation together. We’ve had some great feedback so far and one member of the Melbourne audience even said: That was the most concise succinct explanation of those concepts I’ve ever heard. This was the most productive session of the day for me. Obviously Damian and I are rapt that somebody felt so strongly about our work. That really made the day for me.

Huge thanks to Damian for all the work he put in to make sure we nailed it!

I’ve added the presentation to Slideshare, although it won’t be anywhere near as cool without all the demos and we used the slides for points of reference rather than as detailed content:

| View | Upload your own

Turns out Damo posted the code from the demos on his blog.

Rolling with my homies

As ever, the absolute best part of the conference was all the amazing incredible talented people I got to meet, talk with and hang with.

Mark Pesce delivered a stirring call to action for all developers in the keynote. We hold the key to the future. We’re the ones who can empower both the public and our own organisations by building the right tools. You can read his speech in its entirety on his blog and the video has just been posted. Go get some!

I met the incredibly friendly folks from Soul Solutions at the first speaker rehearsals. Bronwen Zande and John O’Brien are two of the nicest, most genuine people I’ve met in a long time and they build awesome stuff too as I discovered when I watched their demos in the Windows Live Platform sessions. I’ve been expecting to see presence indication in more and more sites and it was cool to see how they’d integrated IM into their applications seamlessly.

My favourite presentation of the conference was easily the one covering the new possibilities in Silverlight 2. Jonas Follesø built an awesome Twitter/Flickr mashup in front of us in about 35 minutes, while explaining in precise detail every step and the reasoning for it. The source and slides are available at that link. If that wasn’t incredible enough (and it was), José Fajardo demonstrated some really astonishing DeepZoom prototypes he’d built.

José decided that people haven’t recognised the true potential in DeepZoom and so he asked himself 3 questions, then tried to answer them each in code within 30 minutes. He showed us the results and convinced me, at least, that we need to be looking much further ahead than we have been with interactions on the web.

His questions went something like this:

1. What if every image on the web were DeepZoomable?
2. What if we had full control over every document on the web?
3. What if people could share DeepZoom images easily?

I don’t have the precise questions and I don’t want to steal his thunder for when he blogs it (you are blogging this, right, José?), but his examples were simply phenomenal. I’m going to be asking myself a lot of questions like this in future – to help myself stretch my knowledge and use of the technologies I know. And to stretch how they’re used by everyone. 30 minute prototyping exercises are the way of the future!

In combination, the presentation by Jonas and José convinced me that I need to learn Silverlight. There is much potential for awesomeness there, if used properly.

I also met the very talented, very cool Hege Rokenes. She’s a Norwegian graphic designer who’s freelancing in Melbourne for the next year or so. She won the Silverlight video clip contest with her Step Back video (Silverlight required – of course). She’s looking for more freelance or a position with a Melbourne company. If you want a talented designer with an interest in web standards and Silverlight, you’d be crazy not to look her up.

I finally got to meet Tatham Oddie, who I really should have met by now as he’s into all the same things I am, but comes at them from a Microsoft technologies angle. He was even at Web Directions South last year! Go read his post on Location Awareness to see why I’m very keen to see what he gets up to next!

And lastly, there were so many other amazing people that I ran into in hallways, stairwells and bars. I have a bunch of business cards, contact details and new Twitter followers, so I’ll be keeping in touch with them too.

Whole lotta love

Many people asked me why I was going to a Microsoft conference. The previous section of this article is why. There are brilliant talented friendly people in every community. Cross-pollination of ideas, philosophies and experiences can only help to push the web forward. Exposure to different ideas and techniques that are new to me can only help me.

I talked to people about my work, both at Atlassian and outside. I shared concepts about integrating with large-scale CMSes, modernising legacy codebases, and promoting the open web. I compared notes on Ruby, Rails, .NET and Java. I learned about new technologies and techniques. I saw cool prototypes and interactions. I think I even convinced a few RIA developers to go learn HTML!

Next time you have the opportunity to go to a conference, do it. Seize the experiences and make them your own. What you get out of a conference comes from what you put in. It’s not just about sitting in sessions and heckling via the backchannel. It’s about participating in every way you can.

I appreciated every second of this week. Remix sums it up nicely.

I hear lots of paranoid mutterings about OpenID from geeky folks. I get that. They’re still hurting from the fiasco formerly known as Passport. It’s understandble, but it’s time to let it go.

People have valid concerns about any scheme purporting to represent their identity (or identities, given we’re talking about the web). It’s hard to get to the bottom of those with OpenID, because, as has been raised on the mailing lists, it’s very obscure niche topic with bugger all in the way of plain language explanations. It takes too long to get into it and understand it, and not everybody has that time. This is for those who are willing to trust that I took the time.

The next five points are for all my geeky friends who can’t be stuffed delving into esoterica:

OpenID is good for you.

You can stop using usernames and passwords for every site that supports it.

OpenID saves you stress

You don’t have remember which of the 3 different passwords you’ve used since high school is the right one for this site. You don’t have remember which of your 47 different usernames you gave it.

OpenID saves you time

You don’t have to trawl your browser password storage to find the right one when you haven’t visited the site since you last cleared your cookies.

OpenID is safe

Hardcore security freaks can go read the specs, get involved in the community and determine this for themselves, but for the rest of us, it’s enough to know that a bunch of very smart hardcore security freaks have already done this.

The defence rests

There you have it, folks, the completely non-scientific (and non-scary) explanation of OpenID. No grand justifications. No confusing diagrams.

What now?

Just 3 simple things to do:

1. Go get one today;

   I recommend ClaimID because those guys are fucking smart, but lots of people like myOpenId too;

2. Make sure you delegate your OpenID to your own site using Tim Lucas’s handy instructions so you have control of your identity; and

3. Tell your all friends - if you want the revolution, you’d better start lighting fires.

Party on, people. The fight isn’t over yet.

Given all the excitement caused by mentions in Mark Pesce’s phenomenal closing keynote for Web Directions, it’s about time I wrote something about my favourite bit of hardware, the Meraki Mini.

Lisa and I have been using three Minis for our home network for the last 6 months. They’re easy to install, fun to play around with and kinda cute.

Our previous access point (a Dynalink RTA1025W, an excellent bit of kit that still serves as our ADSL 2 modem, firewall etc) didn’t have the range to reach the front room of our house from the very back wall where our phone point is located. I’d been reading about some cool new wifi tech from a couple of startups: Fon, Whisher and Meraki. The latter sounded like it had less complications and dependencies, so I signed up for beta testing.

I bought three Minis because it was the default purchase bundle and I wanted to have some flexibility, but it turns out that two cover the length of our house quite nicely. The third typically ensures strong signal throughout our network, but it gets unplugged and moved around as necessary if we want that powerpoint.

Enough history, let’s set these babies up!

Installing a Meraki Network

Preliminaries

Firstly, go buy your beauties. Choose Standard Edition if you just want to do your house or office. Pro is for those whose plans require either more control or billing. Note that Pro Minis cost $100 US more each. There’s no difference in hardware, but they’re charging you for the use to which you could put it (billing…)

Make sure to select the appropriate country type of power adapter when ordering. I spent a whole Sunday afternoon trawling Paddy’s Markets looking for cheap US/AU converters after my Minis arrived. They now offer Australian ones, as well as US, UK and EU, but they didn’t then.

Next, wait impatiently for them to arrive, refreshing the UPS tracking notifications every 1-2 minutes.

Once they arrive, leave work early, rush home, ignore your loved ones and tear the boxes open.

Put the little suckers together, making sure you’ve got all the bits. Record the IP, serial number and MAC address on the bottom/back of each one.

The Hookup

Configuration is easiest if you plug them all into one powerboard next to your computer. You can move them afterwards without a flutter - the joys of mesh networks!

Grab the Mini of your choice. It doesn’t matter which one, they’re all the same. Connect it to the net. This will be your gateway.

Mine’s connected in through the aforementioned Dynalink, but you can plug it straight into any kind of modem, firewall, router, patch-board or whatever.

Jump on your nearest computer, pull up your browser of choice, open a new tab/window and head to the IP address you recorded from your gateway Mini. Should be something like: http://6.1.24.190. This hosts the admin console for that specific Mini. The username is ‘admin’ and the password will be your serial number.

Here’s where you check your signal strength etc. You’ll need it later, when you spread them out. You can also register them to your network here, but it’s probably easiest to do them all in bulk on the main admin console.

Head to http://dashboard.meraki.com/ and log in to your account. Once you get over the fact that you just bought hardware that has a serious well-developed and reasonably designed site interface, go to the Configure tab and choose Add Nodes. From there, it’s just a matter of plugging in your order details and some MAC addresses (from the back of the repeaters).

You now have a mesh network!

(Okay, you already did, from the second you connected the first Mini to the internet. But now you can see it!)

Playing with Meraki Mesh

Spread your repeaters through the house, making sure you get them in good positions by checking signal strength in the console. Place them as close to windows as you can. Try to face them out into the world. Your place will be covered by proximity, anyway, so you want to make sure that your free public tier is available to as many others as possible.

Check out all the options in the console. Depending on which edition you bought, there are quite a few! You can place your repeaters on a Google map, make private networks, set bandwidth throttles, ban hoggish users, set up personalised messages and branding, analyse your usage data or device use and heaps more. There’s even an API that lets your publish your data (here’s mine).

Free The Net

If I know my geeks, and I’m damn sure I do, you’re now champing at the bit to get yourself some hot Meraki-on-Meraki action. That’s awesome. Do it!

But consider this, the true benefits of a mesh network don’t lie in making a sexy little hardware system for your personal use. The benefits come when you convince your neighbours to do it too. And then you and they convince their neighbours. And before you know it, you have free wifi network access at that cafe on the corner or that park around the block with the cool bench. That’s just the start of the vision Mark Pesce was talking about at Web Directions. That’s just the start of everything that’s coming.

Convince your friends. Convince your families. Buy them for friends’ birthdays. Talk to the folks in the local cafes, restaurants and community stores. Give one to your grandma. Tell the user groups you belong to.

Imagine if every web standards geek you know buys these. If every programmer you know does, or all the flash nerds, designers, producers, information architects, producers and usability consultants.

Wifi will be ubiquitous. The network will be everywhere, but who’ll own it? The corporates? The telcos? The government? What about the rest of us?

I’m calling on the people who give a fuck. Let’s make our own network!

Buy your Merakis. Keep the free public tier and leave it called “freethenet”. Make it available to as many people as you can. Place your Minis where they’ll do most benefit and tell everybody you know.

Make this happen. The people are the network. The network is our future. Free the net!