It’s Blue Beanie Day, the day on which we all show our support for web standards by wearing a blue beanie.
Jeffrey Zeldman started this event several years ago. It’s been successful in getting all sorts of people to add blue beanies to their various avatars and standing up for web standards on a particular day each year.
It needs to be an every day event to support web standards. For many people it is. Those people are keeping up with the standards, writing web pages that show that they understand what it’s all about, and – for educators – showing others the way to create web sites using web standards. Really committed web standards people are working with browsers, following browser updates, and contributing to the writing of new specs and new browser engines.
Check out the Web Standards Project and Web Standards Sherpas for information about how you can make a contribution to web standards all year long. There’s a new project in the works (I’ll supply the URL when it’s available) that is meant to answer the question “I’ve got my blue beanie on. Now what? What can I do besides wear a toque?” That will help you find ways to learn, participate, and contribute.