As I mentioned before, my recent trip to Washington involved a premier event by Intel AppUp Elements in Bellevue. I had a presentation about web technologies (see the slide deck) straight after the opening keynote. It could not have been better, as the initial hours were filled with the excitement about Tizen, a new initiative to give a rebirth to MeeGo but with HTML5 and WAC as the foundations, along with the new partner, Samsung. More information about Tizen will be revealed in its official site tizen.org in the coming weeks.
As a nice touch, every participant also gets a bag of HTML5 Learning Kit, a collection of learning materials for web technologies. While the selection itself is quite good, I wish Intel would have included a good printed reference on the most important piece of the puzzle: JavaScript. A nice book like JavaScript: The Good Parts or Eloquent JavaScript or an equally decent one would have been an extremely nice complement to the kit.
The event itself was an excellent show. It was fun to meet again people I already know, make new friends, and get exposed to cool things I wasn’t aware of. Elements 2012? I’ll definitely keep an eye on it!
And since Bellevue is next to Seattle, of course we did not miss it. While Bellevue feels like a typical beautiful modern place, Seattle is indeed a miniature of a metropolis. We managed to do almost all the common tourist things: Space Needle, Seattle’s Best Coffee, the first Starbucks store, Tully’s, Fisherman’s Restaurant, Pike Place Market, and even the disgusting Gum Wall. Getting some snacks at the library-looking Top Pot Doughnuts was memorable, also consider about a year ago President Obama dropped a visit and sampled the donuts there.
Of course, riding the monorail and getting some rain completed the joyful experience!
Now, how do I find an excuse to go back there?