Wow! At long last, the right guy to speak about AJAX. Although I was not able to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event, I’ll bet it was truly successful. Is there any way that we can have a glimpse of the talk given by Mr. Taylor?

I’ve heard and read a lot of excellent things about Bret. Unfortunately, all I’ve read were comments about his works. I’ve never encountered first hand any of his work or speeches. Please help me find one of these great masterpieces. I’ve been dying to hear or read the myself.

I've commented about Bret Taylor before and I think what he's done with Google, while admirable, is not enough to plug him in with the Distinguished Faculty 100. I'm not trying to be rude or callous or anything of that nature. I'm simply stating that I think it would be best if we had people giving speeches who made truly innovate changes. We're all so caught up in Google that we forget that these changes they're making aren't really all that extraordinary. I'm not putting down on Taylor's work, but could we at least get someone in the speaker lineup who was creating something that changed the way we do business on the net forever? A map feature on Google has not done that...in fact, they have quite a long way to go with this development to make it worthy of contending with mapquest.

I would have been excited about this keynote speech if it weren't for the fact that I am so adamantly against AJAX. I really feel that 90% or more of the time AJAX is a complete waste of time and that it was created by someone who was about to lose their job because they didn't spend long enough on a project to merit their existence so they created AJAX so they could waste thousands of billable hours doing something that could have been written in the notes section of a design. What is the point of going through and deciding in writing how things need to work? Especially if you're going to change that storyboard 59 times? Why note write down what you want done and give it to the designer and then talk it out with them? They take notes on what you want done to what they've started building and they make those additions and changes so you can make sure it will work before wasting time. Is that such a bad method?

Google maps is great, but has anyone heard Bret Taylor speak? Is he a good communicator?

Bret Taylor, the original author of the Google Maps JavaScript front end and the Google Maps API, will be giving the March 20 Morning Keynote at AJAXWorld Conference & Expo 2007 in New York City. Taylor, who also created 'Ajax Cookbook,' at www.ajaxcookbook.org is currently Senior Product Manager for Developer Programs at Google.