No, not actually keeping your resolutions (though that might help), but the Sydney Morning Herald begins the year with a look forward to Ten things that will change your future. Well worth a glance, and featuring some quotes from and coverage of Web Directions speakers Adrian Holovaty, Mark Pesce, ... 
Yes, it's true, those crazy lads Tim Lucas and Cameron Adams have way too much time on their hands, but let's indulge them in a bit of silliness shall we?
Don't let that acidic Chirstmas vitriol fester in your stomach until it explodes in a shower of turkey giblets on December ...
To give folks a little more time to organize at this holiday time of the year, we've extended the early bird pricing (only $CDN795) for Web Direction North until this Friday only, December 7th at midnight (just before the 8th starts to be absolutely clear).
The Email Standards Project is a great advocacy and support initiative from the Campaign Monitor crew. Launched today, it aims to work with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.
It really is hard to believe that it's been 10 ...
Just launched is a new blog at Australia's own Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day, showcasing some of the incredible photography created on a day by day basis by the museum's photographers. Here you will see photography that goes far beyond that which simply documents museum's collection, or ...
During Web Directions South, Managing Editor of SitePoint, and long time Web Directions supporter Matt Magain interviews me about the conference, its goals, and so on, for Desktop Magazine. If you don't have access to the magazine (issue 234!) then you can read it online now, thanks to ...
Yeah look, I can be irked by an HTML email as much as the next person, but step outside the rarefied atmosphere we all live and breathe for a moment and talk to some friends who work in just about any other sector and you'll understand why they just aren't ...
I'm kind of guessing that all of you who have looked up anything on Wikipedia in the last 24hrs will have seen the link to Why Wikipedia Does Not Run Ads. Check it out if not.
It has some really strong arguments about how destructive the injection of cash could ...
Web Directions attendee Kate Raynes-Goldie has started a pervasive gaming company over in Perth - Giant Dice. Their first Perth venture, a mobile locative game called Ghost Town, will be held from December 2-9, as part of the ByteMe! Festival of digital content.
Mobile locative games are an ...
OK, let me preface this by saying that my care factor for cricket per se is barely measurable on on the non quantum level. What does interest me though is people's obsessive fascination with the game.
An obsessive fascination that leads to this fine bit of work by Myles Eftos, an ...
Isn't it funny how you will have never been to a particular city in your life, and then you find yourself going there twice in just a few months?
I had a great time checking out Perth and Margaret River back in August when the good people from Western Australian ...
Mark Pesce's closing keynote, Mob Rules, was definitely one of the high points of Web Directions South this year. Most of you have probably had a look at the transcript, and maybe even listened to the MP3. But what's really great is that Mark has gone to the ...
I'd say you've been following the podcasts of the presentations from Web Directions South as they come onstream, and we've also gathered together a lot of the slides into the resources site.
But something new and supercool has just come online: Scott Gledhill has gone the extra mile and ...
Got wind of a really cool Aussie project today: The Footprints Network.
This is a great little system to easily funnel micropayments from any online store's customers to genuinely needy organisations the world over.
There's an approval process to join the network, but then you get an API that you can ...
Co-founder of Atlassian, Mike Cannon-Brookes, who spoke at WDS07, [slides online now, presentation podcast to come] this week announced that Atlassian is partnering with Microsoft to enable Atlassian's enterprise wiki confluence to be integrated with Microsoft's SharePoint. More details including an interview with fellow antipodean Richard McManus at ...
Hard on the heals of Perths planned "Freelance Friday", Sydney boys Tim Lucas, Cam Adams and Michael Koukoullis announce Sydney's first 'Jelly' cow-working day, both on Friday 26th October. So head over to one of these places for some shared inspiration.
The fine folks at Builder AU, CNET's great local developer site, have a great wrap up of Web Directions, including several video interviews with speakers Rashmi Sinha, Adrian Holovaty, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Chris Wilson, as well as in depth interviews with Andy Clarke, Scott Gledhill, Rob Manson and ...
With 28 presentations by over 30 presenters, getting the podcasts organized this year has been quite a task. There's permissions to get from every author, CDs to rip and downsample (unless you want to download 60MB per presentation), the podcast RSS to create, site changes to make, and more.
This year, ...
This year some lucky person will get to go to Web Directions North for free, from anywhere in the world. Join our affiliates program and it could be you.
Here's how it works. Get in touch with us and we'll set you up as an affiliate. Use your affiliate link, ...
Via Builder AU, we learn that the Australian Bureau of Statistics is planning to open up it's data for mashups.
As part of an ongoing plan to make more of its data available in a variety of formats, the ABS is working to enable users to generate their own tables ...
Last year was a blast, so this year we are doing it all again, in Vancouver from January 28 to February 2nd. Along with web legends Dave Shea and Derek Featherstone, we've put together a programme of workshops and speakers featuring as always some of the leading web experts ...
Over at Technorati you'll find about 1000 in bound links to Web Directions - so we aren't quite Engadget, but I think that's pretty cool. Here's some of the posts I found with wrapups, comments, suggestions and thoughts that you might be interested in. There are plenty more ...
Folksonomies, mashups, data visualisation, UCD, usability, experimentation?
One of the speakers from Web Directions South this year, Sebastian Chan from the Powerhouse Museum, just got in touch this morning to say his team is looking to fill a couple of developer roles.
Sebastian's presentation - Social Media and Government 2.0 - ...
Work from home, and sometimes like to mix it with folks like you? Want to bounce ideas and techniques off similar minded people? In Sydney or Perth? Then mark down October 26th as the first "freelance friday" (or in Sydney Work@Jelly) day.
Check out Myles Eftos's blog if you are ...
Wig meets Web (2.0): harnessing the law to commercialise and protect your IP
MP3 of presentation - to come
Presentation slides - to come
Session description
About Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire
Session description
Innovation and development in web 2.0 moves ever faster, the law as slow as always. So how can you ...
Our good friends in Perth, BAM Creative, are looking for a standards based designer. So, if you are looking for a job over that way, check out their offering.
SitePoint continues their coverage of Web Directions South with a just posted interview with Adrian Holovaty. I happen to think Adrian is one of the most influential people on the web, with major involvement in Django, Mashups, GreaseMonkey, online journalism, and more.
We'll have the podcast of his presentation ...
Making Links 2007 is one of Australiaís leading forums for workers and activists in the not-for-profit sector to share skills and information relating to website development, online campaigning, online social networking and community building, and other ICT issues. The conference is in Sydney, October 30th - 31st
This year the ...
As developers, designers, architects, anyone really who designs and builds things that people rely on to get on with their lives, often think about accessibility is very theoretical terms. In the case of the built environment, it's about complying with building codes. On the web it's about meeting WCAG level ...
Builder AU, the local edition of CNET Networks Australia site for developers was our online partner for the conference, and were there in force covering Web Directions. The fruit of their efforts is now coming online, including video interviews with speakers (currently there are interviews with Adrian Holovaty and ...
At Web Directions Kevin Yank from SitePoint spoke with some of our speakers, and there are now a couple of these audio interviews online.
First up, there's an interview with Andy Clarke, and Cameron Adams, two of our most popular speakers (people were standing in the hallway outside the room ...
Matt Magain from SitePoint got in touch to let me know the winner of the iPod Touch in their recent "Why do you love the Web" competition .
Congratulations to Teresa Ko, and I know you'll love you iPod too - I sure do!
Just a quick note for all those who have been emailing us asking after these.
As many of them as we can gather together will be posted at the site real soon now. It does take a little time to contact all the speakers and get their slides and notes from ...
Great supporters of Web Directions, and strong proponents of standards based design, Glass Onion, are looking for a Web Designer/Developer.
Web Designer
Excellent written and communications skills
Able to work Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash
Knowledge of standards-based HTML and CSS coding
Glass Onion is a Sydney based web design, development, intranet, extranet, search and ...
SitePoint, excellent Australian based web design and development publishing company and community have an iPod touch to give away. Just head over to their site and tell them why you love the web by Friday, and you could win one of these fantastic devices (I got one last week. ...
Fans sabotaging scalpers' auctions
Pace Mark Pesce WDS07 Closing Keynote.
Apologies for the slightly belated announcement of the winners of this years prize.
As announced last week, the shortlist for this year's prize were
EQASRM by Angela Bonfato Creative and Spoon Media
Occupational Psychiatry by August
Andrews Must Resign by Michael Koukoullis
SitePoint Design Contests by SitePoint... A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
So you work at enterprise level. Lots of stake holders, lots of competition for time, need to deliver to multiple demands that…POP up. All projects incur change over time, that’s the way of the world. Using a benefits driven approach to delivery rather than a process driven or methodology governed approach frees the team to think laterally, and be responsive to client demands.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
In this session, Angela Beesley will explain how Wikia is not only hosting but actively developing wikis and creating hundreds of thriving communities. The methods and processes that have led Wikipedia to be the world’s largest encyclopedia can be adopted for any type of wiki use, including educational and business communities. Using examples from successful online wiki communities, Angela will explain how to enable a wiki community to manage itself, and how to minimise the common problems that wikis have, including ways to deal with unhelpful or unreliable information, lack of adoption of a wiki, and the problems of malicious edits on open wikis.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned to it in Version 1.0 back in 1999. Back then, Javascript was to “degrade gracefully”. Currently AJAX offers increased usability for visual users, but may detract from accessibility. In future, use of JavaScript will be encouraged but, of course, must enhance rather than detract from accessibility. During this presentation, Andrew and Grant will demonstrate how Javascript, when implemented well, offers enhanced accessibility. By way of balance, they will also present examples of scripting that causes problems. Importantly, they will provide corrections to the errant coding.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
In 1998 the American Dialect Society voted “e-” (as in electronic) as the “word of the year”. This signified how important the internet had become in our world. Almost 10 years later we’re undergoing an even larger change. Only this time the “e-” prefix stands for “everywhere”. Mobile content, services and commerce are changing the way we communicate, work and do business. And these changes are building upon the already massive revolutions brought about by the internet - only faster and made more pervasive. This presentation will look at the strategic issues facing managers and developers as they strive to adapt to this literally “moving” target.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
The Web is full of information that is presented inefficiently - both for machines and for humans. Adrian Holovaty shares philosophies and strategies for efficient data collection and information design, drawing from his experiences at data-heavy news sites lawrence.com, washingtonpost.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime.org.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t understand them. In this session, we will explore forms from top to bottom, examining how they work and how their components can be incorporated with other elements to maximize accessibility, improve semantics, and allow for more flexible styling. You’ll get to see the complete picture with forms, including error, warning and formatting messages, styling and its implications, as well as best practices for manipulation with Javascript and Ajax.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Working in usability and user experience can give you some great insights into the product design process. Yet few organisations know how to take advantage of this information silo. As a user experience expert do you sometimes wish you could have more input into product ideas handed down from above? Ever wanted to have the ear of business strategists? Even be best friends with marketers and sales people? Stephen Cox explores some of the exciting things that can happen when the disciplines of usability and user experience are allowed to seep out into the realms of strategic and tactical design innovation. He approaches the field of ethnographic design research in practical terms illustrating how News Digital Media has come to embrace the idea of extensive customer research, and the benefits that this has brought to different levels of the organisation.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
More than ever before there is an enormous amount of publicly held data about our community, our culture, and citizens. How can government respond to the opportunities of Web 2.0? How can government websites and databases become more citizen-centric, and more responsive by leveraging social media? In 2006 the Powerhouse Musuem, a NSW State Government institiution, opened its core information asset - its collection and research database - to public tagging, and dynamic user-driven recommendations. In the same year the Museum launched a range of public-facing blogs, inviting comment from visitors and audiences. Sebastian Chan will discuss why the museum has made these very successful forays into social media, and how a small in-house web development unit was able to push through and launch a project which is counted among Australia’s top web 2.0 applications. If you work in a large organisation and have dreams of social media, do not miss this session.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Hear all about the exciting possibilities created by these technologies from Google Australia.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Can web-based social systems with their wide reach, user-generated and user-filtered content harness the wisdom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent experiments reveal how popularity based web social systems can throw up fickle, random trends that are essentially unreplicable, and only tangentially related to quality. However, popularity as a way to filter information continues to rise in popularity - replacing hierarchical menus, overtaking tags, and even used in lieu of relevance. Rashmi will link decades of psychology research on group decision making and social influence to what is happening on the web today. She will discuss different models of popularity based filtering such as Digg and YouTube. What are ways to avoid the Watts dilemma - including Google’s model of sociality, tag-based social systems, and object-based social networks. She will present some principles for the design of web social systems and how there were used in the design of SlideShare and discuss how SlideShare as an evolving social system handles popularity.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Many of the today’s leading and most innovative websites are now running or developed using open source software and tools. This talk aims to provide an insiders look at the growing array of open source software driving today’s leading websites.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
There can be a feeling in the web development community that “SEO is evil” - Scott Gledhill cuts through the hype to focus on how developing accessible, standards compliant websites is the first step in creating search engine friendly websites – and also talks about what is being done in the industry to make websites more findable, sometimes at the cost of making them less usable.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Ajax brought about a host of new possibilities in online interfaces, but where are we going next? Cameron Adams will look at the evolution of dynamic interfaces; interfaces that truly meet the needs of all their users. Through the careful use of Web Standards, client-side scripting, and server-side intelligence, it’s possible to create interfaces that shape, adapt to, and predict a user’s needs.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Once seen as unsophisticated, childish and of low artistic value, comic-book art and culture has inspired artists and designers for generations and are now are often untapped resource for web design inspiration. In this session, designer and author of Transcending CSS, Andy Clarke will examine comic book layout, conventions and colour in the context of making inspirational designs for today’s web.
This is not the end, by any means, but just for the moment, a huge thank you to all who came to the conference, to make it the amazing experience it was. 600 web folk from around the world, saw 30 wonderful speakers, and without doubt the best Web Directions ... A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Much of what we know about innovation is wrong. That’s the bet this entertaining keynote takes as it romps through the history of innovation, dispelling the mythologies we’ve constructed about how we got here. This talk, loosely based on Scott Berkun’s recent O’Reilly book (May 2007), will help you to recognize the myths, understand their popularity (even if you don’t believe in them), and how to use the truth of innovations past to help you in your work today.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Wikis are the buzzword-du-jour but practical on the ground experience can be hard to come by for those working within organisations. How are enterprises using them? What’s the best way to get one adopted? What should a wiki not be used for? Pragmatic enterprise wiki adoption lessons and experiences.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Sometime shortly after Web Directions South concludes, somebody (probably a somebody in the “developing” world) will become the three billionth mobile phone subscriber. Good for the providers, of course - but the effects of the network on human social organization are far more profound. From the dhows of Kerala to the cities of China to the beaches of Cronulla, we’re all coming into contact with - and learning how to master - the subtle skills of spontaneous self-organization which are the essential fact of life on the network. We can get in front of this spree of self-organization - or get run over by it. Either way, mob rules are the new laws of business, politics, and culture.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
RedBubble is a social networking platform and marketplace, not to mention a successful homegrown web app. In this session RedBubble’s software architect Mark Mansour will present the challenges the team has faced, and talk through some of the solutions they’ve discovered, during the building and scaling one of Australia’s largest Rails applications. Along the way you’ll learn RedBubble’s tenets for software design, the what’s and how’s of their database and web servers, plus processes that made their team more effective. If you’re a developer dreaming of going out on your own and building a successful online business around a web app, don’t miss this session.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
Web Usability is far more complex than User Testing and Interaction Design alone. And while interface design is an important consideration, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the surface. We all know the importance of accessibility and web standards, so let’s take that knowledge one step further and into the realm of usability. In this session Lisa Herrod will redefine the common definition of usability by introducing a greater focus on accessibility and web standards. By taking a more holistic approach you will soon see why usability is more than skin deep.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
It’s not just about email and Twitter: industry analysts agree, virtually every online social network application will develop a mobile feature in the next year or two. From Flickr pre-installed on Nokia phones to an up-to-date map of your buddies locations, mobile devices are ready to come pre-loaded with new friends for you to play with. Before you tune out to listen to music tagged and delivered to your mobile by your social network, or press SEND on a stinging critique of the Web Directions dining hall food to restaurant review mobile sites, why not attend an informative yet fun session about the latest and greatest in GPS and location based services connecting online communities on your mobile? For those who want to focus on the business model not the technology.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
You’re a great web designer. You craft beautiful interfaces, you’ve nailed standards based design, and you’re at the top of your game. So now what? Based on real world experiences, this presentation encourages you, the modern web designer, to ignore the title on your business card and to start thinking about your real role in the development process - what you have to offer, what your team really needs, and what you could do to dramatically increase your value on a daily basis.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
The web is finally moving beyond simple html. How can you make rich web-based user experiences that don’t surprise or aggravate your users? When should you use AJAX, when should you use Flash, and when should you mix the two? What are the opportunities and pitfalls when creating richer web interfaces? In this talk, Jonathan will argue that Flash and AJAX are complementary tools in the web developers’ toolbox, and that building effective web experiences often requires a blending of the two technologies.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Web designers and developers are a very practical bunch, often too busy with today’s challenges and workloads to find time to keep up with developments over the horizon. In this session John Allsopp looks at what trends that are important for web designers and developers and innovators generally - what future versions of browsers have in store, what devices people will be using to access the web, and more. A perfect complement to Bert Bos’s focus on coming web standard technologies.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.
If there’s one thing about Web 2.0, it’s that we’re realising that there are actually people using the internet. It’s no longer about Human to Computer interaction, but rather Human to Human. Discover some of the user experience ideas and strategies behind the design of flickr.com, one of the richest Human to Human places on the web today.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
In this keynote, Chris Wilson examines the state of the web, some of the problems facing browsers (as platform Architect of the Internet Explorer browser) and standards (as co-chair of the HTML Working Group) and explores what we need to do together to move the web forward.
A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.
Web 2.0 redefined how we look at websites. Mobile 2.0 is redefining how we look at mobile. What happens when you add these two seemingly separate worlds together? Is it the mash-up of all time, or something different altogether? Will it create an unholy union or can the merger of these two principles redefine how we look at information? In this session we will explore what Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 mean and what happens when they come together. We’ll discover what we can learn from both and apply it to the work we create today.
CSS level 2 became a standard in 1998. The last revision of HTML4 dates from 1999. That’s long time ago in Web years, but they aren’t forgotten: after several years of work, CSS is close to a revision and browser support is better than ever. It’s necessary, because CSS needs to grow: vertical text, columns, print support, complex layouts and much more is increasingly demanded. Likewise, there is a big effort to revise HTML. Interest is so high, the W3C is trying a new process, to let more people participate in the editing work. There are also new forms, standards for combining SV