The format was simple — each of the speakers had 5 minutes to tell the audience something they know — think of it as super-concentrated (and fun) lessons in all sorts of cool stuff.

The crowds had a blast, and even better, we captured everything that happened on screen that night, along with audio.

Presentations covered all manner of design, development and other web related topics. So, in 5 minutes you can learn more than you might have thought possible on

• Bezier curves
• Accessing the gyroscope and accelerometer in mobile browsers (watch a live web based take battle built specially for the night!)
• WCAG ARIA
• Mobile HTML emails (our Sydney winner!)
• CSS3 Media Queries (our Melbourne winner, and great fun)
• Parallax effects in CSS

and much much more, including the world premier of Dmitry Baranovskiy’s Newton.js game dev engine (featuring an Angry Birds clone he built with it)

So, head over to the video page, and check out 100+ minutes of fantastic fun interesting presentations, 5 minutes at a time.

And stay tuned, as What Do You Know might be headed to your city early 2012 (well, if you are in Australia)

And, if you like the concept, then go ahead and borrow it — maybe in house at work, or with your meet up group, or your own community What do you know event. Drop us a line, and we’ll gladly give you some thoughts about how to go about it, and help get the word out if you like!

Well done to the Australian Web Industry Association (the association formerly known as Port80) for putting together a fine, very worthwhile awards programme, and congratulations and good luck to all the finalists.

So, if you are over in the West, take a look at their upcoming workshops.

Writing for the Web Workshop

Perth — 28 August 2007

Vision Australia is partnering with respected usability and accessibility expert Dey Alexander to offer a unique Writing for the Web workshop. Dey is co-convenor of the Web Accessibility Network of Australian Universities and is a regular presenter on useable and accessible web writing to the education, corporate and government sectors.

Focusing on excellent content writing, this practical workshop complements the Vision Australia

Further information is at: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=49

Web Accessibility Workshop

Perth — 30 August 2007

This full-day workshop run by Vision Australia is targeted at web-development team leaders, corporate communications professionals and business managers, along with content authors, web programmers and designers and web contract managers.

This workshop provides a thorough overview of accessibility issues and how to address them. It covers the World Wide Web Consortium’s Content Accessibility Guidelines and their implementation and a consideration of assessment tools and techniques.

Further information is at: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=1653&event=54

First up, Microsoft is running a local version of their MIX conference, ReMIX which has strong web focus. See what Microsoft are doing with technologies like Silverlight, their recently released online app framework. It’s on in Melbourne, June 25th and 26th.

Meanwhile, also in Melbourne next Wednesday, May 30, Professor Margaret Jackson, RMIT Professor of Computer Law, and Jonathan O’Donnell of RMIT are organising a Web Legalities workshop, covering

Privacy Act
Trade Practices Act (and Victorian equivalent)
Merchant obligations imposed by banks and credit providers

and the relevant legal issues to address when designing a Web site.

This is an area that many people, in our experience, know little about, and yet the business and legal implications are potentially very significant. It’s free, but do RSVP.

The following day, the Web Standards Group has presentations in both Sydney and Canberra. Web Direction’s John Allsopp is presenting on Microformats in Canberra (with copies of his new microformats book to give away), along with Brian Hardy of Vision Australia on accessibility and PDF, while in Sydney, Shane Morris of Microsoft and Patrick Kennedy of StepTwo are presenting. Head to the WSG site for details and to RSVP.

The same day, Google is holding its first Developer Day in Sydney, which may or may not be booked out — so head over and take a look. They’ll also be streaming live their developer day from the Googleplex in Mountain View.

Then in early June, on the 7th, Webjam returns to Sydney. It’s free and fun. Check it out. There’s also a Webjam in conjunction with ReMIX, for those in Melbourne.

Plenty afoot, which is great for the local industry. As we said, if you are running or know of a related event, please let us know!

[tags]wds07, auswebevents[/tags]

Speakers for 2007 include

• Andy Clarke — Transcendent CSS
• Aaron Gustafson — Javascript and Ajax
• Brian Fling — designing for the mobile web
• George Oates — user experience design for communities
• Bert Bos — co-creator of CSS on the future of Web Standards
• Rashmi Sinha — online communities
• Adrian Holovaty — making data smart
• Mark Pesce — commons based peer production

plus many more new and old faces to educate and inspire us all once again this September. We’ve even got a couple of surpise speakers up our sleeves as well.

This year at Web Directions South alongside our traditional Design and Development focus, there’s a new Management/Strategy track. So, if you design or develop for the web, manage web teams, or if your business relies on the web, we’ve got two full days full for you.

And that’s just the conference. We’ve also got 6 workshops over the two days before Web Directions South:

• Brian Fling — Designing for the mobile web
• Aaron Gustafson — Progressive enhancement with Javascript
• Andy Clarke — Transcending CSS
• Laurel Papworth — Building vibrant and successful online communities
• Startup and freelance bootcamp. Every thing you need to know about going out on your own as a freelancer or startup company.
• World Wide Web Consortium SIG technology day — W3C experts covering the latest developments in web standards

Be sure to register before June 30 to take advantage of our excellent value early bird price of just $795. And if been to one of our previous conferences check your email on Monday for an additional discount by way of thanks for all your support over the years. If you don’t receive this email, please let us know.

This year, in yet another first, we’ll be featuring the Web Expo — running thoughout the conference at Darling Harbour.

And perhaps most exciting of all, we’ll be hosting Australia’s first Web Hack day, on the Saturday following the conference.

And of course there’ll be all the usual parties and opportunities to catch up with old friends, and make new connections.

We are really excited with the quality and range of speakers we’ve been able to get all the way to Sydney, the great new venue at Darling Harbour, with the new Expo, the extended range of workshops, and WebHack, and hope you’ll be too. We look forward to seeing you in Sydney at the end of September for what promises to be one of the stand out web events anywhere in the World — Web Directions South 2007.

Maxine and John

Caution: falling character debris…

[tags] wdo6, raw notes[/tags]

Poort80 is looking to start up a Sydney chapter, to go along with their Perth, Melbourne and Canberra chapters (and Rochester New York too), and are having an inaugural meeting on the eve of Web Directions, Wednesday 27th September. All are welcome, even if you can’t quite make it to Web Directions this year.

We need organisations like this in our industry! There is no focussed web industry association in Australia (we have related ones, it’s true, but they frankly don’t have the focus required).

So if you are arriving wednesday, you’ll have aready made social event to attend. Here are the details.

Port80 touches down in Sydney

Port 80 (the Australian Web Industry Association) is hoping to open a chapter* in Sydney!

That’s right folks — Sydney folks (and those visiting for Web Directions 06) get to find out what those in WA, VIC, ACT and in the USA have known for a while;

1. Meeting colleagues and peers in the web industry is great
2. It’s even better on the first Wednesday of the month, with a beer in hand.
3. Hey, lets start a club and have a reason to go to the pub!

The Wednesday evening of Web Directions week, that’s Wednesday 27th September, starting at 6.30pm, come along and meet your peers in the industry, have a drink, talk about where the industry is heading and be a part of the local web industry. There’s no lectures, no sponsor talks, it’s all very informal and friendly. It all happens at;

Pumphouse Bar
17 Little Pier Street,
Darling Harbour

For a map to the venue (5 minutes walk from UTS), please visit http://www.pumphousebar.com.au/location/
For more information about Port80, see http://www.port80.asn.aucommittee@port80.asn.au

We look forward to seeing you there!