During the Meanwhile

Herko Coomans' personal weblog. Est. 1996.

Blog

  • RAW rhythm festival FTW

    This weekend is the first edition of the RAW Rhythm festival, held at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam. RAW Rhythm is the sequel of the Drum Rhythm festival, a popular festival a few years ago, that had to cease its acivities due to a new law that probibits tobacco-advertising in The Netherlands. Now it’s ‘back’, as the organisers found a new sponsor in G-star RAW jeans.

    I attended two or three editions of Drum Rhythm, and saw some of the most memorable performances I have ever experienced there. I saw Lamb perform a truly magical and energetic set, I saw Leftfield give one of their last performances, I saw Austrian lounge-duo Kruder & Dorfmeister getting a crowd jumping, and many many more.

    So I was very happy to discover that there will be a new edition of this festival, and even happier when I found out that my favorite band Lamb had actually reformed itself (after splitting up for solo projects a few years ago) and were going to perform there again! I created a Last.fm event for the festival, as there wasn’t one yet, added all the acts to the bandlist, and saw it grow and grow.

    My brother, who is a professional concert and event photographer (he’s 3voor12 Amsterdam‘s phtography coördinator), has now arranged for two photographers wristbands for the whole festival! This means that we’ll be able to go backstage and go everywhere! So this is going to be a very memorable festival for me.

    I’ll post a review and photo’s after the weekend!

  • Barcamp Webguidelines and web 2.0, june 30th, Amsterdam

    On june 30th, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Cinnamon Interactive host a barcamp on the Webguidelines and web 2.0. The Webguidelines are a set of accessibility guidelines that are mandatory for Dutch government to implement in their websites before the end of 2010. The barcamp aims to bring government organizations and webdevelopers together to discuss issues, ideas and solutions on creating accessible web 2.0 applications. The barcamp will be held at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, from 9am to 4pm, and you can sign up at the barcamp website on overheid20.nl.

    I haven’t been involved in organizing this barcamp at all, but as a member of thh Webguidelines project I take a special interest in it. The idea for this barcamp probably was born when Cinamon Interactive, a (mostly) Dutch Website builder with a reputation for building accessible sites got the assignment to build a web 2.0 platform for the Ministry of the Interior. Since the application of the Webguidelines is mandatory for state government websites since 2006, Cinnamon wanted to know how to secure accessibility on the platform with all that user generated content, widgets, data sharing and other web 2.0 technologies.

    This is one of the known criticisms on the Webguidelines, accessible user generated content. The main question is ‘how to ensure that user’s contributions are accessible conforming to the webstandards and webguidelines, without making it too hard for users to interact with the platform’. This quickly turns into a discussion about what is more important: contributions from people, or accessible government content. While there is a lot to be said about that discussion, there is no clear answer for it, and thus it doesn’t bring us any closer to a solution.

    What will? One thing to look at definitely is W3C‘s WAI–ARIA standard. If you’re interested, read this excellent article by martin Kliehm on A List Apart titled “Accessible Web 2.0 applications with WAI-ARIA“.

    Anyways, I’ll be attending the barcamp, and I hope more people will to. The more people, the better we’ll be able to find creative solutions to a pretty serious problem.

    **UPDATE** As of today, june 22nd, there aren’t any more places available for this Barcamp. Thanks everyone for signing up! I’ll keep you posted on the results. You can probable follow the barcamp with twitter. Now to find a decent hashtag for this event.

  • Misverstand Webrichtlijnen in De Volkskrant

    Gister ochtend zat ik rond een uur of zeven in de trein naar Den Haag, rustig De Volkskrant te lezen. Heerlijk vind ik dat, zo rustig het nieuws van gister (en in dit geval ook van zondag) door te nemen.

    Kom ik aan op pagina 6, staat er een vetgedrukt artikel met de kop “Gemeentesite moet drempelvrij“. Nu werk ik bij het project Webrichtlijnen bij ICTU, dus ik dacht gelijk ‘Wat goed! Eindelijk goede gratis publiciteit!‘. Alhoewel, nog niet zo lang geleden is er veel onjuiste persaandacht rondom het onderwerp geweest, waarbij verwarring was ontstaan na een brief van Staatssecretaris Bijleveld (BZK) waarin ze aangaf geen wettelijke plicht op toepassing van de webrichtlijnen te leggen. Geheel in lijn met het beleid (en ons eigen standpunt): de lagere overheden hebben eigen verantwoordeelijkheid, en ze hebben zich op 1 december 2008 gecommiteerd aan realisatie van het Nationaal Uitvoeringsprogramma Dienstverlening en e-overheid, dus een verplichting is er wel -alleen geen wettelijk mandaat. Misschien dat dat misverstand in dit artikel wordt rechtgezet. (more…)

  • Why I use Twitter

    Recently, there has been some buzz about the microblogging service Twitter, such as the free newspaper De Pers calling Twitter ‘mind masturbation‘, and therefore something tossers would use. This inspired an article on the subject by Floor Drees on the IKKI website, which in turn sparked a discussion among its visitors and staff. I am omong those who replied to that discussion. The ideas expressed there, as well as some others I recently came across, have lead me to reflect on the reason I use Twitter. (more…)

  • That Other Steve on Steroids

    I’m a Mac fanboy, and it’s actually a Mac Fanboy Club membership requirement to do a little Microsoft bashing every now and again. So here’s a small video of That Other Steve (Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft), making a grand entrance at a past conference. I know this is old footage, so don’t flame me for it.

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc[/youtube]

    (more…)

  • Ophef webrichtlijnen-brief staatssecretaris onnodig – webrichtlijnen wel verplicht!

    Verschillende websites concluderen ten onrechte dat staatssecretaris Bijleveld in haar antwoord op vragen uit het Algemeen Overleg e-overheid zegt dat de webrichtlijnen niet verplicht worden voor andere dan rijksoverheden.

    Eerder deze week publiceerden verschillende websites (o.a. Webwereld en Digitaal Bestuur ) het bericht dat Bijleveld de webrichtlijnen alleen verplicht wil stellen voor de rijksoverheid. Dit baseerden zij op de zinsnede: “Een wettelijke verplichting voor medeoverheden acht ik op gespannen voet staan met de eigen verantwoordelijkheid van de medeoverheden.” Deze is te vinden in de brief die Bijleveld aan de Tweede Kamer stuurde in antwoord op vragen uit Algemeen Overleg e-overheid van 5 november 2008. (more…)

  • W3C news

    This week, the W3C announced two interesting bits of news, news I’d like to share with you. (more…)

  • Open Overheid: Yes We Can!

    Vrijwel direct nadat Barack Obama de presidentsverkiezingen had gewonnen, is zijn team aan de slag gegaan met de transitieagenda. Dit is de wijze waarop de zittende president de macht overdraagt aan de nieuwe. Obama wordt pas op 20 januari ingezworen, maar hij is al volop bezig. En daarbij maakt hij gretig gebruik van Internet. (more…)

  • MobileMe design flaw

    I’m an Apple Fanboy, a switcher and a believer, but now I’ve had a nasty encounter with a flaw in the MobileMe service that is there by design. I’ve just been told that the engineers are aware of the issue and are working to solve it. (more…)

  • Accessibility mandatory for all Dutch government websites

    On December 1 2008, representatives of Dutch state, provincial, waterboard and local government signed a treaty called the National Execution Programme electronic public service. By doing so, they formally committed the entire Dutch government to implementing the Dutch Webguidelines (among other goals). (more…)