Title: E-Books and Publishing

By: Craig Mod

Favourite Quote: Digital is blurring of the notion of the artifact

Table of contents:

• translating analog into e-publishing
• Wikipedia, books and analytics
• Books, kindle and iPad

Appendix: Listen to Craig’s talk from Web Directions South 2010, How Digital Affects Books and Publishing.

• Books beyond artifacts…0:22
• Books as digital souvenirs…2:26
• Walking through Wikipedia…4:20

Footnote: James really admires the ultimate Cyberpunk William Gibson as well as another WD speaker Craig Mod, whose views on e-books will be uploaded next week.
Appendix: Check out James’ entire presentation here.

Appropriately enough, our first interview will be with our Opening Keynoter from the whole event, Obama Campaign Design Director, Scott Thomas. Scott proved to be a terrific choice to open our 2011 Sydney event — take a couple of minutes to see a few more thoughts from him below.

Enjoy this exclusive to Web Directions interview with the always intriguing Scott Thomas, as he talks about:

• Online, Organizations
• Branding, Books
• Amazon, Analysis
• Mass Media
• Artifacts and America

Check out Scott’s views on Politics and branding (0:24), messages through images (1:36) and humanizing the web (2:24). His own branding is simple, rich and personable – the man truly practices what he preaches. Plus we reckon that Scott’s own beard-brand resonates that of Trotsky :) What do you think?

I think Joe puts things a lot more eloquently than I ever will, so I asked him to turn it into a guest blog post. If you’ve got time and inclination to help out, there’s details for who to contact at the bottom of the post. Read on …

Preposterous Australian sport needs credible new Web site

If you’re an Aussie standardista, two things are probably true: You like to do the right thing and a lot of people try to shake you down for freebies. I will be guilty of the latter in this posting. But the project is so preposterous you’ll find it irresistible:

Create a brand new Web site for an Australian bobsleigh team.

Yes, the country that hosts tennis tournaments in 42° C weather has a bobsleigh team. Several sleds, in fact. Now, you may think sports-mad Australia would stop at nothing to win medals. You may believe yours is one of those countries where sport funding flows like water. Not for bobsleigh, where athletes’ stipend of $18,000 a year hasn’t budged. In fact, athletes are on the verge of leaving the program because it’s so underfunded, and one already defected to Canada.

The Aussie sport establishment seems officially uninterested in a sport in which you push a sled down an ice track. For a hot country, this makes sense on the surface. Bobsleigh really is the most preposterous Australian sport.

All the better reason to help it out.

Meet the Spence Bob Squad

Ladies and gentlemen, meet one of your Australian Olympians, Mr. Heath Spence.

Yeah, he’s a ginger. This may or may not be a value-adding feature. I have my own opinion there.

Heath and his new brakeman in the two-man event, Alex Zborowski (whom Heath picked up in a bar in Calgary – have him tell you that story sometime), are just barely getting by in New York State, Alberta, Utah, and the other world capitals where bobsledders train. They’re more or less eating, but their equipment is lousy – they’re using third-rate hand-me-down sleds. (Even really good teams compete in used sleds, but there are better and worse models. Heath’s are worse.)

Still, Heath managed to finish fifth in two heats at the America’s Cup in Lake Placid in mid-January ’011. Even in a sport where luck plays a large part, that’s an amazing result.Cool Runnings this isn’t; Heath could actually take home a medal at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014. (“In Soviet Russia, Australia bobsleds you!”)

For that, he needs help. Let’s start with a new Web site.

Carte blanche

Heath’s team, the Spence Bob Squad, runs a site that is more or less a blog with a photo gallery attached. This is hardly good enough for the 21st century, is it?

With Heath’s blessing (and Maxine’s help in posting this item), this is an invitation for the very best Australian standardistas to volunteer for a small pro bono job: Update the Spence Bob Squad site.

Our minimum requirements are the same as any modern site’s:

• Valid, semantic HTML5
• Works very well in good browsers, OK in crappy ones
• Responsive design for mobile browsers and wide screens; definite attention paid to iPhone and iPad experience
• Viable print stylesheet
• RSS, Twitter, Facebook
• Meets WCAG 2 Level A at a minimum
• Contains a blog, preferably WordPress

Don’t be afraid to throw out what’s already there and start over. Beyond the list above, the big issue is graphic design. This thing has to look smashing. For that, we also invite responses from Australia’s best designers. (Or, if you’re the new breed of designer/developer, you can do both.)

We also need some kind of donation or E-commerce angle, which could be as simple as PayPal and Kickstarter integration. (These kids have to raise about $25K for new equipment, but that isn’t part of this project.)

Why do it? Because Australian bobsledders are underdogs – 6′2″, 210-pound underdogs who can run like the wind, but underdogs nonetheless. A new site is the first step in getting Heath Spence (and, eventually, the entire bobsleigh team) to the place they need to be: The medal podium.

Interested? Drop me a line at joeclark at fawny dot org, and/or hit up Heath on Facebook.

Once the dust settles on our move, we’re going to be continuing the fortnightly Jellies (casual co-working), as well as other events throughout the year. And if you’re here from out of town any time, please drop by and work from the bench!

Want to join us?

Tim and Mike went to some trouble to create a convivial but productive shared space — we’re feeling really privileged to be moving in there. And we’ve even got a spare deskspace if you’d like to join us.

The office is on Foveaux St, down near Central Station, right in the heart of Surry Hills.

Each of the spaces is a bit of an “discrete space”, so you’ve got plenty of room to set up whatever gear you have, and the rental includes everything — electricity, wifi, cleaning, security — you just have to move in.

We think it’s going to be a really fun office to be a part of — please get in touch if you’d like to come round and have a look.

In addition to our already stellar lineup of keynote speakers, we have the privilege of having Tim Harrison, until recently a creative director at Apple, who will be closing the event. Tim, a mentor at Stanford University’s DSchool, will look at how design driven companies, like Apple, are changing the way all companies, big and small are thinking about design, and its place in their decision making.

We’ve also announced several new sessions in our Big-Picture track, including The Form and the Future of the Book from James Bridle, a big hit at the recent d.Contruct conference, and Craig Mod of Artspace Tokyo fame with thoughts on How Digital Affects Books and Publishing.

We’re really proud of how this track has turned out and are excited about it becoming one of the highlights of the conference.

We’ve also finalized the W3C South track, curated by the Australian W3C office, and including in depth sessions on HTML5, W3C Mobile Widgets, eGovernment, RDFa and accessibility.

So, as promised, 36 huge sessions, over two amazing days — I’m pretty confident you’ll regret it if you’re not there :)

There’s also loads of other events happening in Sydney as part of Australian Web Week, so even if you can’t make Web Directions, there’s plenty else to keep you occupied.

Look forward to seeing you in Sydney next week!.

Nominations close on September 21, the shortlist will be announced on October 7, and then the McFarlane Prize will be awarded at Web Directions South on October 14.

Founded in 2006, in memory of the late Nigel McFarlane, The McFarlane Prize is awarded to an Australian designer or team for a site launched or significantly upgraded between September 20th 2009 and September 21 2010. Sites may be designed for Australian or non Australian individuals, organisations, companies or governments, but must be designed and developed by an individual or team which works in Australia for an Australian company, or by Australian citizens or permanent residents. Anyone may nominate a site, and there is no cost for nominating or being nominated for the prize.

We’re very proud of the prize, the way it has grown over the years, and in particular the way it has provided inspiration to Australian web designers and developers to push for “the things that matter” about the web within their organisation and on their projects. We’re very much looking forward to some more great submissions again this year — be sure to get that nomination in by September 21.

SitePoint are in need of a talented PHP developer — check out their job description at our jobs board and get your application in — you never know, they might even end up sending you to Web Directions in Sydney this year!

Help us make it all worthwhile by spreading the word about these amongst everyone you know who might be interested — there’s something here for everyone who works on the web!

• Remy Sharp, “Browsers with Wings — HTML5 APIs”
• Sandi Wassmer, “Inclusive design is for everyone”
• Patrick Lauke, “Brave New World of HTML5”
• Christian Crumlish, “Designing for play”
• Simon Willison, “Building crowdsourcing applications”
• John Resig, “Testing mobile JavaScript”
• Mark Boulton, “Designing grid systems”
• Tom Hughes-Croucher, “An introduction to server-side JavaScript”