I just got back from XTech 2007 in Paris. It was an excellent conference this year and I'm really proud of having contributed in a small way by being on the programme committee. Every year the speaker lineup gets better and better.
The theme this year was 'The Ubiquitous Web'. HTTP isn't just for computers any more, and I'm particularly interested in how developers like me can learn to make their own network-connected objects in the real world. To spread the word, I gave a lightning talk on my experiences with the Arduino hardware hacking boards and other toys from tinker.it.
I put the slides on SlideShare.
Last Friday I had the great privilege of giving a keynote talk at the ApacheCon Europe conference in Amsterdam. My topic was the new possibilities for software hackers coming from cheap, scriptable hardware prototyping. I illustrated the path from the desktop via my work in Second Life, and showed how it translates into physical computing.
I made a recording of the audio from the talk on my laptop's microphone, and I've synchronised it with video of the slides in this Flash movie:
If you prefer, there's also the audio-only MP3.