The State Library of Victoria, well known for their innovative use of the web are looking for a senior web application developer. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, you can find more information at their web site.
Just over a week to go now until Web Directions UX - workshops start tomorrow week, while the conference itself is Friday week. Turnout so far has been fantastic, so thanks to all who've signed up so far, and if you don't want to miss out, you've got just ...
Web Directions, along with the Melbourne Web Standards Group, and proudly supported by the W3C Australia office are presenting a great free event in Melbourne on May 15th - the night before Web Directions User Experience.
The event features two wonderful speakers from the W3C - Joe Manuel Alonso, the head ...
The NSW government's ambitious free wifi plan for major CBD areas in the state has just been cancelled.
The overseas experience is that large-scale WiFi projects have proved ineffective in meeting the needs of local businesses and the community," Mr Roozendaal [Minister for Infrastructure] said.
Most schemes sponsored by overseas governments ...
Sadly this event has only just crossed our radars, but if you are in Sydney, and have an interest in news media, the Future of Journalism conference today looks well worth attending.
If you are going, please send your reports of the day!
Via Flowing Data, a fantastic site which explores data visualisation, is this beautiful map of the United States, developed by just one person, Ben Fry.
Only, there's a catch.
This map has no topograhical features. It has no geopolitical features. You can see ...
For our myriad Japanese readers, I'll be doing a number of presentations in Tokyo in June, on microformats, CSS3, and the web beyond the desktop.
More details here.
At Web Directions we've always had a strong commitment to diversity among our speakers, paying particular attention to ensuring at least a reasonable representation of women speakers. Many conference organisers have lamented the difficulty of finding women speakers, something which Jen Beckman helped address some time ago.
Now New Zealander ...
Stephen Collins will be known to many in the web industry in Australia as a consultant, blogger, and big thinker on all things 2.0
Stephen's also a great community contributor, having been one of the instigators of the recent BarCamp Canberra. He's also the founder of acidlabs, one of our ...
There's no doubt attending a conference is a very big investment of time, money and effort. So, how do you make the most of that investment? Neerav Bhatt has a very detailed post at his blog, looking at the things you can do before, during and after attending an ...
As we all probably know, an important event occurred in Canberra, the nations Capital this weekend just gone. And there was the 20/20 Summit as well.
Of course I'm talking about Barcamp Canberra, held at the Australian National University lat Saturday.
A fantastic turnout, of 60 or more attendees, ...
A number of supporters and exhibitors are coming on board for our upcoming events, and we are very thankful for their support. We still have a number of really great value expo and sponsorship opportunities, so if your company is interested in building connections with leading Australian web professionals in ...
Rich Internet Applications, a term increasingly used for desktop like web applications, or hybrid web applications, developed with technologies like Flash, Silverlight, AIR and others are gaining increasing attention among web designers and developers.
If you are interested in learning more about these specific technologies and their use, Adobe and Microsoft ...
One of our very favourite Web Directions speakers, social media/network/software guru Laurel Papworth has hit the big time. No, not a gig at the 2020 Summit, but even better - an interview on morning TV. Through the magic of YouTube, see Laurel on "9am with David and Kim"....
A quick note for anyone interested in coming to Web Directions Government or User Experience. Save $100 by registering before midnight tonight.
Just a couple of days to go now to take advantage of our early bird pricing of $100 off Web Directions Government and User Experience. So, to get to either of these conferences for just $495 (including GST), fully catered, with wonderful speakers like Andy Budd, Robert ...
Next week on the Wednesday the 23rd I have the pleasure and honour of speaking at the Melbourne Web Standards Group, along with Gerry Gaffney.
Gerry will be speaking on How users really search, while I'll be presenting a variation on the session I did with Dave Shea at Web ...
and cure cancer...
Despite newspaper sub-editors love hyperbole (hey you are reading this aren't you) sometimes the sensationally headlined articles are worth reading.
In last year's closing keynote presentation, the inspiring Mark Pesce mentioned the adoption of mobile phones in the fishing markets of Kerala in southern India, and how ...
One serious drawback of moving house in Australia is you'll typically wait no small time to get your internet connection moved. For the last three weeks, I've been in this situation, and as connection is not an option, I've needed and alternative until someone could be bothered providing me with ...
By now, I suspect all of our readers will be familiar with the idea of a barcamp - "unconferences" which have no agenda, no invited speakers, little or no cost, and which encourage everyone who turns up to participate.
Australia has seen a number of these events in ...
Like many a young, science focussed geek growing up, science fiction as well as science fact became a very important part of my teenage years. Towering above the great names of mid century SciFi like Asimov and Robert A Henlien to my mind at least was Arthur C. ...
It's a fair bet that Andy Budd, author, web designer and developer, renowned blogger, and organiser of the d.construct conferences among many other things will be known to most people in the web industry. We are really excited to have him as our opening keynote speaker, as ...
Along with our brand new site, we are even more excited to announce two brand new, one day conferences for Canberra and Melbourne in May - in addition of course to Web Directions South, set down for September 23-25 in Sydney again at the Convention Centre.
First up, ...
If you are reading this via RSS, you probably won't notice that there have been some big changes to the site. Firstly, we've got a brand new, very streamlined look, and overhauled information architecture, courtesy of Ben Webster at Conversant. Their philosophy is "sophisticated simplicity" which is precisely what ...
Earlier this month, the recently elected Australian government announced the 2020 Summit - a chance for the "best and brightest brains" to map out a strategy for Australia's long-term future in areas ranging from the economy and the environment to the arts and health.Which is of course a marvellous ...
One of my favourite ever speakers at Web Directions, and favourite web folks ever, is the incredibly talented diversely interested (one of the first google maps mashups (pre api), Django founder, his Firefox extensions were the inspiration for Greasemonkey, and he is a very talented jazz guitarist) Adrian Holovaty. Recently ...
Big changes and big announcements coming here in the not too distant future.
Pieces are falling into place. Hair is being torn out. Things are afoot.
Stay tuned!
On the frontpage of the Sydney Morning Herald (and in today's Next tech liftout in the dead tree edition) right now you'll find a story on Free Sydney Wireless, a grass roots effort to create a bottom-up mesh wifi network in Sydney. Now, not only is this ...
Well, 2008 for Web Directions is about to kick off with version 2.0 (sorry, couldn't resist) of Web Directions North in Vancouver next week. Great to see a few Aussie folks heading over - hopefully it's not just the bumper season at Whistler?
But all those in the Southern Hemisphere, fear ...
One of our most popular speakers last year, George Oates of Flickr, writes in detail today about a collaboration between the Library of Congress (the US National Library), and Flickr to enable anyone to tag the Library's photographic collection.
For now it's a pilot project of about 1500 photos, but hopefully ...
Can't make it to Web Directions North? Heading there, but want to take a little reminder with you? We'll, now you can get a range of clothing, mugs, mousepads and other gear featuring either the fantastic Happy Webbies bag design for WDN08, or Dave Shea's fantastic Web Direction ...
We were pretty disappointed over these parts to see that an early initiative of the new Australian Labor government was a continuation of the anti-technology, muddle headed thinking of the little lamented former Liberal government. The proposed legislation would require ISPs to block a black list of sites prepared by ...
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, ...
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).
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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!
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...
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 ...
If you are here at the conference, check out the Microsoft area in the breaks, where all kinds of folks are doing interesting presentations on technology. They've also got loads of interesting presentations on mapping, mashups, mobile, silverlight, and more. There's a timetable in your laptop bag, so check that ...
The fantastically talented dynamic duo of Tim Lucas and Cam Adams, builder of last year's web connections, have taken the wraps this morning off meetweaver a social site focussing on participants at conferences. Too hard to describe in a few words, so visit, and take a look - and ...
Web Directions 2007 is underway, kicked off with a fantastic presentation on social media, systems and software by Rashmi Sinha, CEO of Uzanto, who built SlideShare.
Much more to come, meantime check out photos on Flickr, blog posts at Technorati, the slides at SlideShare, and elsewhere online.
[tags]wds07[/tags]
Can't make it to Web Directions? Can't get enough anyway? Keep up to date with people's latest photos on Flickr (al those tagged WDS07), with our little app which updates the latest photos every 15 minutes or so.
So if you upload photos to Flickr, make sure you tag them ...
If you are coming to Web Directions - great news. If not, you have two days to get your act together, because, Microsoft has just come though as the closing night party sponsor. That means loads of food, loads to drink (in moderation, responsibly, and so ...
After an arduous decision making process, the Jury in this years McFarlane Prize has decided on the shortlist. The shortlisted sites this year are
EQASRM by Angela Bonfato Creative and Spoon Media
Occupational Psychiatry by August
Andrews Must Resign by Michael Koukoullis
SitePoint Design Contests by ...
Web Directions closing keynote speaker, Mark Pesce is interviewed in depth in today's Sydney Morning Herald.
So to get a sense of what he'll be talking about, and the ideas he is kicking around, take a look.
Our good friends at SitePoint are looking to fill a number of positions. So if you are looking for an interesting, challenging job in the web tech world, take a look.
Do you enjoy tinkering with the latest web technologies? Fancy yourself as a gun coder, a gifted communicator, ...
Scott Gledhill, who's speaking on "is SEO evil" at this year's conference is interviewed in builderAU today. A good interview on some key SEO issues for developers and designers. So for a primer on SEO, head over to BuilderAU.
One of the hardest things to get right at a conference is wifi internet access. You'd think it would be easy - afterall, setting up a network at home is simple stuff, right?
Trust us, it is hard. Wifi and internet access don't necessarily scale as easily as you'd think. Get ...
The divide between the 'virtual' and 'real' worlds is something we've long tried to address at our conferences. To me, the online world augments our 'real' lives - it's not separate, nor even an extension of our physical lives, they are part and parcel of the same life. And at ...
Since our very first conference, we've been fortunate to have the support of the W3C's Australia Office. Since last year, the office has been hosted by CSIRO, and this year, their support has grown yet again. Not only have W3C Australia ensured that we can entice Bert Bos ...
Well, it's a week and a day 'til our workshops, and we've just had our first sell out - 'Dr. Nic' William's Beginning Ruby on Rails.
Meanwhile, we have just a handful of places left for Andy Clarke's Transcending CSS, so if you want to get a day's insight ...
Via BuilderAU, our online partner at the conference, the thrilling, fascinating and disturbing story that suggests the most powerful supercomputer on earth (and that means ever) may be a botnet, of PCs infected with the Storm Worm.
Distributed processing applications like SETI@home have set a precedent for such massive, parallel ...
Tomorrow it's just two weeks 'til Web Directions South 2007. Already an audience of close to 600 is expected, from all over Australia, New Zealand, Asia Pacific, the US, South America and Europe. The only continent missing in Antarctica. So, first person who signs up from Antarctica gets a great ...
All you Sydney web folks, keen to catch up with peers in a relaxed setting? Well, Friday the 21st of September sees the first Geeks on the Grass.
One of the reasons we started doing the conferences in the first place is that having started to meet fellow designers and ...
For those coming to Web Directions, we've got some fun stuff planned. One of those is the use of various screens around the conference to show real time content from the audience (blog posts, photos and more) to see what others are saying, thinking and doing at Web Directions.
Right now, ...
I must admit I'm old school when it comes to email - I like it plain and vanilla. I read it and write it vanilla stylee. I use *this* for emphasis. But, that's my taste and choice (OK, so I have been using email, I kid you not, since 1985). ...
With a book on Javascript due out soon, Aaron Gustafson has been one of the quiet achievers of the web industry these last few years. A wonderful educator (his workshop with Andy Clarke at Web Directions North earlier this year was very well attended and received), Aaron has been ...
I hope it's reasonably well known that one of the principle foundations of Web Directions has always been standards, accessibility, and best practice in web design and development. For close to a decade, Maxine and I have evangelized standards, developed software all about developing standards based web sites, and provided ...