So, last night was it — the first ever meet­ing of the Web Stan­dards Group in Perth.

There was a good turnout — almost 40 peo­ple. A few famil­iar faces, a few new ones, plus I got to say hello to a few peo­ple I knew online but not in “meat-space”.

Russ’s “live cod­ing” pre­sen­ta­tion ran through the assem­bly of a quite sim­ple two col­umn floated lay­out in a fixed width con­tainer with header and footer and two list-based nav­i­ga­tion bars. At each step of the way, he explained what he was doing and why, as well as dis­cussing how to workaround some com­mon browser issues. It’s easy to see why Russ’s pre­sen­ta­tions are raved about — he does a great job of clearly explain­ing not only the how but also the why.

There was some con­sump­tion of beer and chips (although sur­pris­ingly, there’s an unopened car­ton in my kitchen right now), then a few of the hard-core stan­dards geeks moved on to the Queens hotel, main­stay of the Port80 crowd, for some din­ner and more drinks (all well-formed, seman­tic and acces­si­ble of course).

Huge thanks are due to both Russ and Peter, who are far too gen­er­ous with their time and resources, not only for mak­ing the trek across to our side of the con­ti­nent (it’s a long flight from Syd­ney) but also for pro­vid­ing all of the drinks and food. These guys rock!

Thanks are also due to Joe Luca and ECU for pro­vid­ing the venue — it’s great to see a uni­ver­sity sup­port­ing web standards.

We’re in the process of sched­ul­ing a fol­low up meet­ing — at this point we’ll prob­a­bly go for one every sec­ond month and keep it to the fourth Wednes­day. If any­one has any ideas for future pre­sen­ta­tions or just for top­ics you’d like to see cov­ered, please let myself, Vicki or Nick know by email­ing perth@webstandardsgroup.org. (Bryan, I have my cross hairs focused on you!)

I’m so chuffed that it turned out so well, and now I’m really look­ing for­ward to the next meeting!