Now obviously that press release wasn’t written for me. While we’ve been using Cloud 1 since it was Cloud 0.98b, I’ve never used Heroku personally nor professionally. The press release was more likely written to arm the multitude of IT Ops middle management at my former workplace, those long-removed-from-the-trenches starch suits who joyfully wade through mountains of Prince2 Project Management documentation like pigs in mud. But those guys don’t use Heroku. Sure, Salesforce.com want them to use Heroku, but those people aren’t  even remotely in the same demographic as the majority of Heroku users singing its praises in Ruby usergroups world wide for the past 3 years.

No, Salesforce, the early adopters largley responsible for Heroku’s excellent public image are mad agile. Not the Agile described in your well layed-out Activity Diagram, agile like a hyperactive mako shark on crystal meth. And you just took something they love(d), and they’re afraid you’ll break it. Obviously Salesforce.com need to drop a traditional Enterprise IT press release such as this one for their audience, but they really should have lead with something to reassure Heroku’s existing users. It screams “We got this shiny thing! Look, it’s SHINY!”. Anywhere there are mentions of this acquisition, there are comments by Heroku users regarding how they’re making plans to leave.

This isn’t like when Facebook change something and an army social media zombies rage for two days then go back to Business As Usual, Heroku’s userbase know why they like Heroku and they know what it will take to build a replacement. And you know what? They probably will.

As I watch Lachlan fetch some Scotch and wonder how much fun BarCamp with a hang over is going to be tomorrow, I must remind all challengers — Team Stoopid takes no prisoners!

Last year’s Web Essentials conference was a fantastic experience; an event that will keep a code monkey happily tap-tap-tapping away at a keyboard for another ~360 days awaiting the chance to do it all again. The presentations were an invigorating mix of education and inspiration — enough inspiration to be assured the extra effort of developing with standards is worth it and enough education to to go home wanting to rethink just about every project you’re working on (*sigh*).

To help everyone attending to keep track of the people they meet and the social events associated with WD’06, Tim and Cameron have put together just what every web conference needs — a Web2.0 app to call its very own — Web Connections. It’s got folksonomies, it’s got Google Maps integration, it’s got flickr account integration, it’s even got a gradient or two and some rounded corners for good measure. If you’re attending WD’06, hurry up and create your Web Connections account.

Apparently there are still a few tickets left, but be quick!

Wow, threesix months since my last post… ouchEeek
This is a very quick note to say that I’ll be in Sydney at WE’05 for the next two days and hope to ‘live blog’ elements of the conference on my shiny new Wordpress.com blog.

Here’s a link to the RSS 2.0 feed of the Web Essentials category over at my beta blog (which I’m enjoying so far — the wordpress.com team are doing a great job of distilling the essence WP into a tidy little mass-consumable package).

Please note, however, this coverage will be nowhere near the quality or quantity offered by someone like Joe Clark. I will be writing up the gritty details upon returning, but my semi-live coverage is targeted more towards the amusing moments that occur in the halls between presentations and the other glimpses that people on the other side of the planet won’t be able to pick up via speaker notes and mini-sites.

Technorati Tag: WE05

Want some gory details?

Fingers crossed that work will help me cover the bill, but either way I’m definitely going. The other thing I’m definitely doing is buying Derek the beer I promised him on MSN all those months ago.

So who else is going? Drop a note in the comments so I know who to hassle as the date approaches