I posted The MCU: Jim's Web Accessibility Weblog : Access all areas almost two years ago in which I said:

"One of these days I must go and visit Jim. He works less than 10 minutes walk away from my office in Glasgow."...

I'm ashamed to say that it took until today for 'one of these days' to come around ;-). A couple of weeks ago Jim posted his Old-Timer's Comments which prompted my reply and several off-site e-mails later we finally managed to arrange a meeting over coffee at my work for today.

Given Jim's involvement with accessible web-site design and his past Frontier experience I was sure that he and I would have a great deal in common and, indeed, it turned out that way! So, the coffee break turned into a lunch break. When chatting about Frontier Jim and I joked that we were probably represented the sum total of the Frontier User Group (Scotland) even though we both don't do much with Frontier and UserTalk at the present time. We're both looking foward to the promised open source release - more out of curiousity than anything else.

Jim is a fascinating character and a really nice guy. He's developed his own content management system using LAMP technologies. He showed me several examples of his past and recent projects which included The Making Connections Unit, GAWDS: The Guild of Accessible Web Designers, Glasgow West End: Pat's guide to what's best in the West, and his own ScotConnect - the web accessibility company. Where he finds the time for all of these I do not know but I came away from our meeting charged with a new enthusiasm for accessible web design.

No doubt Jim and I will get together again some time later this year.