Future Sync 2020
Tags: futuresync2020, conference, talk, presentation
Published: 2020-04-19 15:33:28

---
title: Future Sync 2020
published: true
date: 2020-04-17 09:09:33 UTC
tags: futuresync2020,conference,talk,presentation
canonical_url: https://adactio.com/journal/16771
---

I was supposed to be in Plymouth yesterday, giving the opening talk at this year’s [Future Sync](https://futuresync.co.uk/) conference. Obviously, that train journey never happened, but the conference did.

The organisers gave us speakers the option of pre-recording our talks, which I jumped on. It meant that I wouldn’t be reliant on a good internet connection at the crucial moment. It also meant that I was available to provide additional context—mostly in the form of a deluge of hyperlinks—in the chat window that accompanied the livestream.

The whole thing went very smoothly indeed. [Here’s the video of my talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP1w1WMwjEo&t=459). It was [<cite>The Layers Of The Web</cite>](https://adactio.com/articles/16251), which I’ve only given once before, at Beyond Tellerrand Berlin last November (in the Before Times).

As well as answering questions in the chat room, people were also [asking questions in Sli.do](https://app.sli.do/event/vxcnijew/live/questions). But rather than answering those questions there, I was supposed to respond in a social medium of my choosing. I chose my own website, with copies syndicated to Twitter.

Here are those questions and answers…

The first few questions were about [last years’s CERN project](https://worldwideweb.cern.ch/), which opens the talk:

> [Based on what you now know from the CERN 2019 WorldWideWeb Rebuild project—what would you have done differently if you had been part of the original 1989 Team?](https://adactio.com/notes/16746)

[I responded](https://adactio.com/notes/16747):

> Actually, I think the original WWW project got things mostly right. If anything, I’d correct what came later: cookies and JavaScript—those two technologies (which didn’t exist on the web originally) are the source of tracking & surveillance.
> 
> The one thing I wish had been done differently is I wish that JavaScript were a same-origin technology from day one:
> 
> [https://adactio.com/journal/16099](https://adactio.com/journal/16099)

Next question:

> [How excited were you when you initially got the call for such an amazing project?](https://adactio.com/notes/16749)

[My predictable response](https://adactio.com/notes/16750):

> It was an unbelievable privilege! I was so excited the whole time—I still can hardly believe it really happened!
> 
> [https://adactio.com/journal/14803](https://adactio.com/journal/14803)
> 
> [https://adactio.com/journal/14821](https://adactio.com/journal/14821)

Later in the presentation, I talked about service workers and progressive web apps. I got a technical question about that:

> [Is there a limit to the amount of local storage a PWA can use?](https://adactio.com/notes/16751)

[I answered](https://adactio.com/notes/16752):

> Great question! Yes, there are limits, but we’re generally talking megabytes here. It varies from browser to browser and depends on the available space on the device.
> 
> But files stored using the Cache API are less likely to be deleted than files stored in the browser cache.
> 
> More worrying is the announcement from Apple to only store files for a week of browser use:
> 
> [https://adactio.com/journal/16619](https://adactio.com/journal/16619)

Finally, there was a question about the over-arching theme of the talk…

> [Great talk, Jeremy. Do you encounter push-back when using the term “Progressive Enhancement”?](https://adactio.com/notes/16754)

[My response](https://adactio.com/notes/16755):

> Yes! …And that’s why I never once used the phrase “progressive enhancement” in my talk. 🙂
> 
> There’s a _lot_ of misunderstanding of the term. Rather than correct it, I now avoid it:
> 
> [https://adactio.com/journal/9195](https://adactio.com/journal/9195)
> 
> Instead of using the phrase “progressive enhancement”, I now talk about the benefits and effects of the technique: resilience, universality, etc.

[ ![Future Sync Distributed 2020
](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CP1w1WMwjEo/mqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP1w1WMwjEo&t=459)