Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Late last week we took the wraps off our 10th Anniversary conference, Web Directions South, taking place October 30 and 31, at the brand new location of the Seymour Centre, located in the heart of one of Sydney’s most vibrant, creative, and definitely up and coming areas, Chippendale (only a kilometre from the CBD for folks from outside Sydney).

The feedback we’ve got has been extremely enthusiastic, and we’ve never seen such an uptake of tickets, so we really recommend you don’t put off registering only to be disappointed. Our new venue means this will almost certainly sell out. And to make it easier, you can register right now at the lowest price, and pay us later.

In 2004 we put on one of the very first conferences anywhere in the world specifically for the Web industry, and, if we’re being a little self-congratulatory, created the template for so many events that have followed. For 10 years we’ve worked incredibly hard to stay that one step ahead, unearthing speakers who’ve gone on to speak all over the world, including Nicole Sullivan (OOCSS debuted at Web Directions North 2009), Lea Verou, Rachel Andrew, Pasquale DeSilva, and Australia’s own Dmitry Baranovskyi among many. And of course, we’ve brought extraordinary speakers here to Australia for the first and often only chance to have seen them.

Along the way, our program has constantly changed with the needs of our industry, and we’ve partnered with W3C Australia, and international research conferences like the International Semantic Web Conference last year to bring a diversity and depth of content you’d have to go a long way to find anywhere else.

But this year to start our second decade we really challenged ourselves to do something special. With a brand new venue, we have wiped the slate clean, and asked ourselves “what does our industry in Australia look like, and why does it need to be thinking deeply about?” Our thinking coalesced around two main areas of focus, Engineering, and Product. And so we set out to put together the best program, not just in Australia, but the world for those designing, managing and building digital experiences (with of course as always a strong Web focus).

Whether we’ve succeeded in such a lofty ambition is ultimately for you to judge, but we don’t think we could have done much better. Some of the particular highlights for us include:

• Enticing the recently departed long time Creative Director of Twitter, Douglas Bowman back to our shores. Douglas spoke at our first ever conference, when he was a well known Web designer, having recently helped ignite the Web standards revolution with his redesign of the Wired website. His career trajectory, Visual Lead at Google, and then Creative Director at Twitter, in many ways follows the trajectory of the Web over the last decade, from a static text heavy medium, to a platform for delivering rich, engaging, sophisticated experiences and applications.
• Being able to lure the Senior Director of Business Engineering at PayPal, Bill Scott to our shores. Bill’s vital role at a company that demonstrates the importance of the Web as a platform reinforces how mission critical Web engineering has become for delivering business services.

But in truth, there are 24 extraordinary, world-leading speakers, working in the near future, each one of whom we’re extremely proud and excited to bring to you. All you have to do is clear two days of your time in late October.

This year too, we’ve experimented a little with pricing. We’re still offering the same amazing two days of speakers, fully catered, with world class coffee, and parties, for the same price it’s been for years. But we’re offering some additional benefits for those with a little more budget to spend. It’s all explained at the conference site, but do drop us a line if you have any questions at all.

If you’ve been to a Web Directions event before, you know we’re passionate, independent supporters of the Web and all it can do. We promise you all this and more.
If you’ve not been to one of our events before, leave your pre-conception as to what a conference is like, and what it can do for you, at the door. We promise something special, that might even transform your life.

Check out all the details, at our rather spiffing conference site, and see you in October!