The Mederos

Hanging Out with The WhatWG Cabal

By Shawn Medero

Published October 23, 2008

I’m at the W3C TPAC, in Mandelieu, France, doing my small part to keep the web moving forward. It is always said that the best part of any conference is the non-standard face-to-face meetings: hallway chats, chance encounters, lunches, and dinners. I’ve been doing my best to take advantage of these moments, like hanging out with a mixture of Opera employees and some of the more active WhatWG members:

In the photo left to right: Me, Arve Bersvendsen, Lachlan Hunt*, Ian Hickson*, Anne van Kesteren*, and Geoffrey Sneddon*. Photo taken by Kai Hendry.
* Evil Cabal Member

Too much of our work happens over the internet (IRC, email, blogs, wikis, etc), for obvious reasons, and meeting in-person at least once a year gives you a chance to attach something more tangible to the experience. We each have our own “quirks mode” that is difficult to understand in a medium like email unless you’ve caught of the mannerisms, facial expressions, vocalizations, etc before hand.