So, this past week has been kuh-ray-zee.

Last Friday was dConstruct, the Web conference put on by Jeremy’s company Clearleft. The build-up to the event was rather intense, not least because Jeremy was giving what was, in effect, the closing keynote, and he was stressed out beyond belief about it. He was researching, writing and practicing the talk every opportunity he got, and those opportunities got fewer and farther between as the week progressed and more and more out-of-towners started to show up in Brighton.

The real flood of social activity began Wednesday night when the first big wave of geeks arrived. The conference preparations hit a peak on Thursday, and Thursday evening culminated in a wonderful dinner for the conference speakers at Pintxo People (where I had my birthday dinner), which I was lucky enough to be able to tag along to, followed by a pre-party for the conference attendees. The party was ridiculously loud, and we knew we’d have an early start the next day, so we did the smart thing and headed home early to rest up for D(construct)-Day.

On Friday morning, I was over at the Brighton Dome at 8 AM to man the registration desk for the conference. I did get to catch the first two talks of the day—the fascinating keynote by Steven Johnson and the enlightening and animated presentation Brighton’s own by Aleks Krotoski—and then I hovered around the venue, helping out wherever I was needed and getting progressively more nervous as the time for Jeremy’s talk approached.

By the time he took the stage at the end of the day, I was a nervous wreck; you’d have thought I were about to get on stage in front of 700 people and present an insanely intellectual overview of network theory. I don’t think I even breathed through the first half of his talk. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he could pull it off; I just desperately hoped people would get it and not just dismiss it as a load of pretentious waffle. In the end, he pulled it off with panache, and I was—and am—incredibly proud of him. He put his heart and soul into a subject he’s passionate about and delivered a mind-warping talk to wrap up the conference in style.

After that, there was just time to clean up and grab a quick dinner before heading to the after-party and the after-after-party, where everyone could finally unwind and congratulate each other on a job well done. I think dConstruct was really great this year, and I don’t just say that because I have an emotional investment in the event. Everywhere I looked throughout the day, I saw people talking and smiling. There are always a few nay-sayers (it’s so easy to sit back and be snarky on Twitter), but the vast majority of people seemed to enjoy themselves and appreciate the effort that went into making the conference a success.

But the activities didn’t end there—oh no, for the very next day was BarCamp Brighton 3, which, to be honest, I was looking forward to about as much as I’d look forward to a trip to the dentist. I had spent a fair amount of time assembling my thoughts, writing up notes, and even putting together some slides (for the first time ever!), so I felt pretty prepared. But I also felt quite nervous, not to mention absolutely exhausted. BarCamp started at 10 AM on Saturday, and though we slept in a bit and showed up later, I was still completely worn out and really not in the best of moods.

I perked up once we got out to the venue, though, and I saw some of the fun talks that were going on, like Marrije’s talk about wearable electronics, which was a great way to kick off the day, and Relly’s talk on Japanese pop culture, which was a great way to wrap up the day. I had intended to get my own talk out of the way on Saturday, but there was no room left in the schedule, so I was given a bit of a reprieve and could dedicate myself to other people’s presentations. Actually, I wound up missing a few talks I had planned to catch because I was engrossed in various conversations—about languages, about crafting, about geekiness. Jeremy was right all along: BarCamp is a very relaxed, welcoming environment where everyone is made to feel like they “belong”.

By the end of the day, however, I really felt like I belonged at home on my own for a bit, so I cut out early and headed back to the homestead to regroup for the next day. It was a smart move because even though I was still tired on Sunday and didn’t make it back out to BarCamp until lunchtime again, I was a lot more refreshed than I had been the day before. This was a very good thing because at 2:30, after catching Rebecca’s great talk on typography, I found myself standing in front of a screen giving my own presentation: “Making the Web Multilingual - What Translators Do and Why It Matters”. Gulp.

And what do you know? It went perfectly fine. I was pretty much precisely as nervous as I figured I’d be—that is, enough so that my hands were a tiny bit shaky when I started out, but not so much that I couldn’t remember what it was I wanted to say. I think I got my points across, and I managed to spark an interesting and quite technical discussion amongst my small group of listeners about the localization of user-generated content and tracking language stats online. I put my slides up online yesterday—and much to my surprise, I got an email a few hours later telling me my slideshow was being featured on Slideshare. Yay! Not bad for my first foray into public speaking, I suppose. And I’m already mulling over ideas for my next potential talk…

Since BarCamp ended Sunday evening, we’ve been hanging out with the last of our friends from abroad and slowly winding down after an entirely jam-packed week. Even though I’m tired and in some ways it will be good to get back into a normal routine, it’s been very poignant having to say goodbye to people as they drift back into their everyday lives and we drift back into ours. But there’s still plenty to look forward to over the next two weeks, not least a visit from our German friends and a wedding in London. And just a year from now: dConstruct 2009!