Things have been a bit tricky, for obvious reasons, when it comes to what hashtag people should be using for the event, in particular when it is referred to on Twitter. After considerable thought we have decided that now might be the time to pull all Web Directions events under the same hashtag, so let me introduce to you #wdx.

Our thinking on this is that the usefulness of hashtags is very time specific, so it doesn’t matter that Web Directions @media 2010 will have the same hashtag as Web Directions South 2010, for example. When we are one day holding simultaneous events, we will solve that problem :). The important thing was to come up with something short and memorable, and unlikely to be used too frequently for something other than a Web Directions event.

It will really help us if you could start using #wdx any time you refer to a Web Directions event, and in particular it will help make things like Tweeps and Web Directions NOW very super cool indeed.

#wdx, your time starts now :)

There’s a great deal new, and much for us in the web design and development community to be encouraged by, and you can learn more in a series of posts at the IEBlog.

While HTML5 and CSS3 are currently getting a lot of attention, IE9 will support SVG, making it the last of the major browser to do so. While wonderful shims like Raphaël from Australia’s own Dmitry Baranovskiy (which provides a JavaScript interface for SVG and Microsoft’s SVG-like VML), and Google’s SVGWeb which transparently adds support for SVG in IE versions 8 and older using Flash (developers only need to add a link to the library and their SVG works in IE via the magic of Flash), having full native support of a standard vector format is a big step in the development of the web.

At @media in London in June, Doug Schepers, the W3C’s go to guy for SVG is presenting the timely “SVG Today and Tomorrow” — a get up to speed quick session for designers and developers on SVG. Just another reason to get to the event, which we believe features our best lineup yet, and indeed one the best lineups of experts covering relevant up to the minute topics you’ll ever see.

And for those looking for a quick primer on SVG, there’s a chapter dedicated to it (and HTML5 Canvas) in my Developing with Web Standards

Check it out for yourself — after the conference we published the slides, podcast, and even a transcript at our resources site. It really is a great read or listen.

The really great news is that three years on, Scott is going to remix and remaster The Myths of Innovation for our opening keynote at Web Directions @media.

Hype and tall tales dominate our knowledge of innovation history, and without awareness of the truth, we are set up to fail as creators, progressives, engineers and designers in our own time. This fun, fast paced, provocative keynote, based on a fresh take from the bestselling book The Myths of Innovation, will dissect the deepest mythologies and the latest misguided hype laden marketing propaganda, revealing the truths about good ideas and progress that anyone can use in their own work.

So, check out The Myths of Innovation (part 1), and get excited about seeing Part 2 in London in June: it’s going to be an incredibly good start to a fantastic couple days, I just know it!

A few weeks later, Bob was visiting Sydney, and on one of the hottest days ever in Sydney, with our daughter about 5 weeks old, we spent a wonderful evening of conversation, something anyone with young kids will tell you can be quite rare.

We catch up with Bob every year or so, and keep in touch, not least via his wonderful photo essays he sends of his pretty amazing trips around the world, writing for Magazines, researching books, and so on. At the end of 2008, his collection of dozens of photos with commentary was so funny, intelligent and moving, I asked him whether he’d be interested in turning it into a presentation for the upcoming Web Directions. Generously, Bob said yes.

The presentation closed Web Directions North, in Denver in 2009. Right slap bang in the middle of the GFC, numbers were down on previous years, but the event itself as so many attendees commented was fantastic — tremendous presentations (Nicole Sullivan introduced the world to OOCSS there, and the presentation went onto have over 100,000 viewers) and fantastic energy.

Bob’s presentation, which really had little to do with technology, or the web directly, coming at the end of long days of presentations and parties was in some ways a bit of a risk all round. Within a minute though, he had the audience laughing, and thinking, and I remember as I got up at the end to thank him and wrap up the conference, I turned to see most of the audience on its feet, and many folks with a hint of a tear in their eye. It was a marvellous privilege to be there.

Bob’s recently uploaded video of the presentation to YouTube. If you’ve got a spare moment one evening, I really recommend you take a look.

The survey, follows up on last years and aims to get a snapshot of the technologies and techniques web professionals like you are using right now.

Like last year we’ll publish the anonymized data in full, along with a detailed analysis, comparisons with last year’s results, and of course lots of pretty graphs.

To top it off, anyone who does the survey instantly receives a PDF copy of Scroll Magazine editions 1 and 2, and there’ll be prizes including copies of my book “Developing with Web Standards”, and even tickets to Web Directions.

Thanks to those who’ve taken the survey to date,and the more we get, the more useful the results will be.

And (free) places at the Boagworld Big Breakfast on Friday the 11th (includes breakfast) are fast running out — so register for the conference to secure your place.

We’ve got a number of announcements planned for the coming weeks as we head toward the conference, so stay tuned. @media in June is going to be pretty special, we promise.

It’s a great honour for us that the episode for the week of June 13 will be recorded live at Web Directions @media, and we’d love you to be there for this the inaugural Boagworld Big Breakfast. We just know this is going to be a highlight of the conference, but make sure you don’t miss out. As numbers are limited, we’ll be including a free pass to the breakfast only for the first 200 people who register for the conference, so make sure you get that registration in early!

As web applications mature, the need to test systematically and thoroughly is becoming increasingly important, and few people are more experienced in these matters than John. If you are a professional web developer, this really is an increasingly core skill to have. So, let John Resig get you up to speed.

Couple this with sessions like Steve Souders on web site and application performance, Remy Sharp’s session on HTML5 for web app developers, and Matt Biddulph on making your web applications and sites geo-aware, and this really is, if we say so ourselves, an amazing lineup.

And that’s just some of the developer track sessions.

Remember, early bird pricing of just £449 (£399 for past attendees) is available until March 1st.

With 18 categories, including startups, tools, tourism, student projects, education and government, whatever solutions you build there’s a good chance there’s a category for your company or organisation.

It would be great to see the strong Australian Web industry start making it’s mark on the IT industry in Australia more broadly, so take a look, and think about entering.

First up, if you haven’t taken the time to submit your thoughts on what you’d like to see at Web Directions this year, and what you’d like the event to be like, please do so — we’d love to hear from you.

Over the next few weeks, and especially after the survey closes, I’d like to publish my thoughts on interesting ideas and proposals that emerge. It’s useful for me to be structure my responses in this way, and it’s also a way to maybe hear your thoughts on my thoughts!

I’m always a bit stumped by what to do with highly polarised responses. For example when I see things like

I would also like to see more forward-thinking, futuristic talks. I always look forward most to the keynotes, as they help inspire me to push the field forward, rather than being mired in the minutiae of current day techniques and implementation (which I find relatively useless at a conference given that it’s far more effective to read about it online).

beside things like:

Speakers covering the web from a ‘real’ position — there’s lots of aspirational and ideal world talk at conferences, the best things I find to take away are those which are attainable, achieveable goals not just shooting for the stars. As always, it’s about finding the right mixture.

or this

I would be interested in learning the best practices for freelancers and small shops that help them stay organized, focused, and productive.

beside things like:

I’ve also felt that the last conference was more targeted towards freelancers and less to those ‘professional’ developers/ designers who have a lot of internal politics to get through.

it’s always amusing and disheartening in equal measure. Ultimately we do the numbers on comments like this and disregard things which seem to be in the minority, or strike compromises when there really does seem to be a collection of polarised opinions on a topic. But it does always give you pause as we’re sorry to displease anyone really.

Anyone got any thoughts on what’s really going on when you get comments like that?