Sessions

This year’s Web Directions Breakfast, an optional extra on the morn­ing of the 28th of September will be hosted by co-​​creator of CSS and gen­uine web inno­va­tor, Bert Bos of the W3C.

  • Think like a mountain

    Andy Clarke

    Once seen as unso­phis­ti­cated, child­ish and of low artis­tic value, comic-​​book art and cul­ture has inspired artists and design­ers for gen­er­a­tions and are now are often untapped resource for web design inspi­ra­tion. In this ses­sion, designer and author of Transcending CSS, Andy Clarke will exam­ine comic book lay­out, con­ven­tions and colour in the con­text of mak­ing inspi­ra­tional designs for today’s web.

  • Making use­ful things no one knew they needed: build­ing ethnog­ra­phy into the design process.

    Stephen Cox

    Working in usabil­ity and user expe­ri­ence can give you some great insights into the prod­uct design process. Yet few organ­i­sa­tions know how to take advan­tage of this infor­ma­tion silo. As a user expe­ri­ence expert do you some­times wish you could have more input into prod­uct ideas handed down from above? Ever wanted to have the ear of busi­ness strate­gists? Even be best friends with mar­keters and sales people?

    Stephen Cox explores some of the excit­ing things that can hap­pen when the dis­ci­plines of usabil­ity and user expe­ri­ence are allowed to seep out into the realms of strate­gic and tac­ti­cal design inno­va­tion. He approaches the field of ethno­graphic design research in prac­ti­cal terms illus­trat­ing how News Digital Media has come to embrace the idea of exten­sive cus­tomer research, and the ben­e­fits that this has brought to dif­fer­ent lev­els of the organisation.

    You’ll see real world exam­ples of what the team has achieved and learn how to con­nect some of the more eso­teric and the­o­ret­i­cal find­ings of research with tan­gi­ble real world design solutions.

  • Web 2.0 + Mobile 2.0 = ?

    Brian Fling

    Web 2.0 rede­fined how we look at web­sites. Mobile 2.0 is redefin­ing how we look at mobile. What hap­pens when you add these two seem­ingly sep­a­rate worlds together? Is it the mash-​​up of all time, or some­thing dif­fer­ent alto­gether? Will it cre­ate an unholy union or can the merger of these two prin­ci­ples rede­fine how we look at information?

    In this ses­sion we will explore what Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 mean and what hap­pens when they come together. We’ll dis­cover what we can learn from both and apply it to the work we cre­ate today.

  • Pushing beyond design

    Justin French

    You’re a great web designer. You craft beau­ti­ful inter­faces, you’ve nailed stan­dards based design, and you’re at the top of your game. So now what? Based on real world expe­ri­ences, this pre­sen­ta­tion encour­ages you, the mod­ern web designer, to ignore the title on your busi­ness card and to start think­ing about your real role in the devel­op­ment process — what you have to offer, what your team really needs, and what you could do to dra­mat­i­cally increase your value on a daily basis.

  • Usability: more than skin deep

    Lisa Herrod

    Web Usability is far more com­plex than User Testing and Interaction Design alone. And while inter­face design is an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the surface.

    We all know the impor­tance of acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards, so let’s take that knowl­edge one step fur­ther and into the realm of usabil­ity. In this ses­sion Lisa Herrod will rede­fine the com­mon def­i­n­i­tion of usabil­ity by intro­duc­ing a greater focus on acces­si­bil­ity and web stan­dards. By tak­ing a more holis­tic approach you will soon see why usabil­ity is more than skin deep.

  • User expe­ri­ence in online communities

    George Oates

    If there’s one thing about Web 2.0, it’s that we’re real­is­ing that there are actu­ally peo­ple using the inter­net. It’s no longer about Human to Computer inter­ac­tion, but rather Human to Human. Discover some of the user expe­ri­ence ideas and strate­gies behind the design of flickr​.com, one of the rich­est Human to Human places on the web today.

  • Social net­works and mobiles

    Laurel Papworth

    It’s not just about email and Twitter: indus­try ana­lysts agree, vir­tu­ally every online social net­work appli­ca­tion will develop a mobile fea­ture in the next year or two. From Flickr pre-​​installed on Nokia phones to an up-​​to-​​date map of your bud­dies loca­tions, mobile devices are ready to come pre-​​loaded with new friends for you to play with. Before you tune out to lis­ten to music tagged and deliv­ered to your mobile by your social net­work, or press SEND on a sting­ing cri­tique of the Web Directions din­ing hall food to restau­rant review mobile sites, why not attend an infor­ma­tive yet fun ses­sion about the lat­est and great­est in GPS and loca­tion based ser­vices con­nect­ing online com­mu­ni­ties on your mobile? For those who want to focus on the busi­ness model not the technology.

  • The per­ils of popularity

    Rashmi Sinha

    Can web-​​based social sys­tems with their wide reach, user-​​generated and user-​​filtered con­tent har­ness the wis­dom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent exper­i­ments reveal how pop­u­lar­ity based web social sys­tems can throw up fickle, ran­dom trends that are essen­tially unreplic­a­ble, and only tan­gen­tially related to qual­ity. However, pop­u­lar­ity as a way to fil­ter infor­ma­tion con­tin­ues to rise in pop­u­lar­ity — replac­ing hier­ar­chi­cal menus, over­tak­ing tags, and even used in lieu of rel­e­vance. Rashmi will link decades of psy­chol­ogy research on group deci­sion mak­ing and social influ­ence to what is hap­pen­ing on the web today. She will dis­cuss dif­fer­ent mod­els of pop­u­lar­ity based fil­ter­ing such as Digg and YouTube. What are ways to avoid the Watts dilemma — includ­ing Google’s model of social­ity, tag-​​based social sys­tems, and object-​​based social net­works. She will present some prin­ci­ples for the design of web social sys­tems and how there were used in the design of SlideShare and dis­cuss how SlideShare as an evolv­ing social sys­tem han­dles popularity.

  • The future of web based interfaces

    Cameron Adams

    Ajax brought about a host of new pos­si­bil­i­ties in online inter­faces, but where are we going next? Cameron Adams will look at the evo­lu­tion of dynamic inter­faces; inter­faces that truly meet the needs of all their users. Through the care­ful use of Web Standards, client-​​side script­ing, and server-​​side intel­li­gence, it’s pos­si­ble to cre­ate inter­faces that shape, adapt to, and pre­dict a user’s needs.

    Cameron will also be exam­in­ing how the emer­gence of browser-​​based tech­nolo­gies such as Canvas and SVG will change the way we think about inter­ac­tion on the Web.

  • Trends and pre­dic­tions in web technology

    John Allsopp

    Web design­ers and devel­op­ers are a very prac­ti­cal bunch, often too busy with today’s chal­lenges and work­loads to find time to keep up with devel­op­ments over the hori­zon. In this ses­sion John Allsopp looks at what trends that are impor­tant for web design­ers and devel­op­ers and inno­va­tors gen­er­ally —  what future ver­sions of browsers have in store, what devices peo­ple will be using to access the web, and more. A per­fect com­ple­ment to Bert Bos’s focus on com­ing web stan­dard technologies.

  • A new life for old stan­dards — revi­sions to HTML, CSS and others

    Bert Bos

    CSS level 2 became a stan­dard in 1998. The last revi­sion of HTML4 dates from 1999. That’s long time ago in Web years, but they aren’t for­got­ten: after sev­eral years of work, CSS is close to a revi­sion and browser sup­port is bet­ter than ever. It’s nec­es­sary, because CSS needs to grow: ver­ti­cal text, columns, print sup­port, com­plex lay­outs and much more is increas­ingly demanded. Likewise, there is a big effort to revise HTML. Interest is so high, the W3C is try­ing a new process, to let more peo­ple par­tic­i­pate in the edit­ing work. There are also new forms, stan­dards for com­bin­ing SVG and HTML and new work on the secu­rity of forms. Bert’s here to tell us: we haven’t seen the end of the Web page yet.

  • Javascript and other cod­ing for good or evil

    Andrew Downie and Grant Focas

    When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the sta­tus of Javascript will be quite dif­fer­ent to that assigned to it in Version 1.0 back in 1999. Back then, Javascript was to “degrade grace­fully”. Currently AJAX offers increased usabil­ity for visual users, but may detract from acces­si­bil­ity. In future, use of JavaScript will be encour­aged but, of course, must enhance rather than detract from accessibility.

    During this pre­sen­ta­tion, Andrew and Grant will demon­strate how Javascript, when imple­mented well, offers enhanced acces­si­bil­ity. By way of bal­ance, they will also present exam­ples of script­ing that causes prob­lems. Importantly, they will pro­vide cor­rec­tions to the errant coding.

    In these days of web-​​based mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­zas, par­tic­i­pants will also have the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence some of the very help­ful things that can be achieved with Flash, includ­ing screen reader acces­si­bil­ity. One of the issues to be cov­ered is embed­ding of Flash into IE fol­low­ing the EOLAS ver­sus Microsoft case – Javascript to the rescue.

    Andrew and Grant will also show­case the poten­tial of AutoHotkey, a free script­ing lan­guage for Windows as an acces­si­bil­ity tool. While scripts can be writ­ten to meet a wide vari­ety of needs in var­i­ous cir­cum­stances, we will con­cen­trate on one which pro­vides fast and accu­rate cod­ing for web pages.

  • AJAX or Flash: what’s right for you?

    Jonathan Boutelle

    The web is finally mov­ing beyond sim­ple html. How can you make rich web-​​based user expe­ri­ences that don’t sur­prise or aggra­vate your users? When should you use AJAX, when should you use Flash, and when should you mix the two? What are the oppor­tu­ni­ties and pit­falls when cre­at­ing richer web inter­faces? In this talk, Jonathan will argue that Flash and AJAX are com­ple­men­tary tools in the web devel­op­ers’ tool­box, and that build­ing effec­tive web expe­ri­ences often requires a blend­ing of the two technologies.

  • Learning to love forms

    Aaron Gustafson

    Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t under­stand them. In this ses­sion, we will explore forms from top to bot­tom, exam­in­ing how they work and how their com­po­nents can be incor­po­rated with other ele­ments to max­i­mize acces­si­bil­ity, improve seman­tics, and allow for more flex­i­ble styling. You’ll get to see the com­plete pic­ture with forms, includ­ing error, warn­ing and for­mat­ting mes­sages, styling and its impli­ca­tions, as well as best prac­tices for manip­u­la­tion with Javascript and Ajax.

  • Being smart about your data

    Adrian Holovaty

    The Web is full of infor­ma­tion that is pre­sented inef­fi­ciently — both for

    machines and for humans. Adrian Holovaty shares philoso­phies and strategies

    for effi­cient data col­lec­tion and infor­ma­tion design, draw­ing from his

    expe­ri­ences at data-​​heavy news sites (lawrence​.com,

    wash​ing​ton​post​.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime​.org.

  • What’s under the hood? Which open source tools are fuelling today’s lead­ing websites

    Paul McCarthy

    Many of the today’s lead­ing and most inno­v­a­tive web­sites are now run­ning or devel­oped using open source soft­ware and tools. This talk aims to pro­vide an insid­ers look at the grow­ing array of open source soft­ware dri­ving today’s lead­ing websites.

    What is open source soft­ware and how can I use it to improve our web­site design, devel­op­ment and man­age­ment effort? What open source tools are today’s lead­ing web­site design­ers and pub­lish­ers already using? What’s pop­u­lar now? What’s emerg­ing? This talk takes you under the hood of some the world’s lead­ing web­sites to see what makes them tick. And what open source soft­ware, tools and plat­forms they’re using to deliver bet­ter online services.

  • RedBubble: Building a site for peo­ple with big imaginations

    Mark Mansour

    RedBubble is a social net­work­ing plat­form and mar­ket­place, not to men­tion a suc­cess­ful home­grown web app. In this ses­sion RedBubble’s soft­ware archi­tect Mark Mansour will present the chal­lenges the team has faced, and talk through some of the solu­tions they’ve dis­cov­ered, dur­ing the build­ing and scal­ing one of Australia’s largest Rails applications.

    Along the way you’ll learn RedBubble’s tenets for soft­ware design, the what’s and how’s of their data­base and web servers, plus processes that made their team more effec­tive. If you’re a devel­oper dream­ing of going out on your own and build­ing a suc­cess­ful online busi­ness around a web app, don’t miss this session.

  • Mashups, web apps and APIs

    Raul Vera

    Hear all about the excit­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties cre­ated by these tech­nolo­gies from Google Australia.

  • Moving the web forward

    Chris Wilson

    In this keynote, Chris Wilson exam­ines the state of the web, some of the prob­lems fac­ing browsers (as plat­form Architect of the Internet Explorer browser) and stan­dards (as co-​​chair of the HTML Working Group) and explores what we need to do together to move the web forward.

  • Mob rules

    Mark Pesce

    Closing keynote

    Sometime shortly after Web Directions South con­cludes, some­body (prob­a­bly a some­body in the “devel­op­ing” world) will become the three bil­lionth mobile phone sub­scriber. Good for the providers, of course — but the effects of the net­work on human social orga­ni­za­tion are far more pro­found. From the dhows of Kerala to the cities of China to the beaches of Cronulla, we’re all com­ing into con­tact with — and learn­ing how to mas­ter — the sub­tle skills of spon­ta­neous self-​​organization which are the essen­tial fact of life on the net­work. We can get in front of this spree of self-​​organization — or get run over by it. Either way, mob rules are the new laws of busi­ness, pol­i­tics, and culture.

  • Wikis and com­mu­nity collaboration

    Angela Beesley

    Wikipedia has brought the con­cept of a wiki to many people’s atten­tion and now Wikia is aim­ing to broaden that con­cept. If you think of Wikipedia as the ency­clo­pe­dia, then Wikia is the rest of the library. Wikia hosts 3000 openly editable wikis that are built up by com­mu­ni­ties of fans who are pas­sion­ate on top­ics that range from solar cook­ing to Neopets.

    In this ses­sion, Angela Beesley will explain how Wikia is not only host­ing but actively devel­op­ing wikis and cre­at­ing hun­dreds of thriv­ing com­mu­ni­ties. The meth­ods and processes that have led Wikipedia to be the world’s largest ency­clo­pe­dia can be adopted for any type of wiki use, includ­ing edu­ca­tional and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties. Using exam­ples from suc­cess­ful online wiki com­mu­ni­ties, Angela will explain how to enable a wiki com­mu­nity to man­age itself, and how to min­imise the com­mon prob­lems that wikis have, includ­ing ways to deal with unhelp­ful or unre­li­able infor­ma­tion, lack of adop­tion of a wiki, and the prob­lems of mali­cious edits on open wikis.

  • The myths of innovation

    Scott Berkun

    Much of what we know about inno­va­tion is wrong. That’s

    the bet this enter­tain­ing keynote takes as it romps through the his­tory of

    inno­va­tion, dis­pelling the mytholo­gies we’ve con­structed about how we got

    here. This talk, loosely based on Scott Berkun’s recent O’Reilly book (May 2007), will help you to rec­og­nize the myths, under­stand their pop­u­lar­ity (even if you don’t believe in them), and how to use the truth of inno­va­tions past to help you in your work today.

  • Organisational wiki adoption

    Mike Cannon-​​Brookes

    Wikis are the buzzword-​​du-​​jour but prac­ti­cal on the ground expe­ri­ence can be hard to come by for those work­ing within organ­i­sa­tions. How are enter­prises using them? What’s the best way to get one adopted? What should a wiki not be used for? Pragmatic enter­prise wiki adop­tion lessons and experiences.

  • Wig meets Web (2.0): har­ness­ing the law to com­mer­cialise and pro­tect your IP

    Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire

    Innovation and devel­op­ment in web 2.0 moves ever faster, the law as slow as always. So how can you best har­ness the law in com­mer­cial­iz­ing and pro­tect­ing your intel­lec­tual prop­erty? Scott tack­les some of the thorny issues web con­tent cre­ators face in com­mer­cial­iz­ing and pro­tect­ing the IP in their con­tent and ven­tures into the con­tro­ver­sial ter­ri­tory of access­ing the cre­ative power of cus­tomers through user-​​generated con­tent. Ben draws on his expe­ri­ence advis­ing Virgin com­pa­nies in a range of indus­tries and coun­tries to explore the prac­ti­cal issues fac­ing busi­nesses try­ing to pro­tect their IP. He also looks at some of the dilem­mas – and pos­si­ble solu­tions – for busi­nesses using user-​​generated con­tent. Both promise not to wear a tie.

  • Social media and Government 2.0

    Sebastian Chan

    More than ever before there is an enor­mous amount of pub­licly held data about our com­mu­nity, our cul­ture, and cit­i­zens. How can gov­ern­ment respond to the oppor­tu­ni­ties of Web 2.0? How can gov­ern­ment web­sites and data­bases become more citizen-​​centric, and more respon­sive by lever­ag­ing social media?

    In 2006 the Powerhouse Musuem, a NSW State Government insti­tiu­tion, opened its core infor­ma­tion asset — its col­lec­tion and research data­base — to pub­lic tag­ging, and dynamic user-​​driven rec­om­men­da­tions. In the same year the Museum launched a range of public-​​facing blogs, invit­ing com­ment from vis­i­tors and audi­ences. Sebastian Chan will dis­cuss why the museum has made these very suc­cess­ful for­ays into social media, and how a small in-​​house web devel­op­ment unit was able to push through and launch a project which is counted among Australia’s top web 2.0 appli­ca­tions. If you work in a large organ­i­sa­tion and have dreams of social media, do not miss this session.

  • Is SEO evil?

    Scott Gledhill

    There can be a feel­ing in the web devel­op­ment com­mu­nity that “SEO is evil” — Scott Gledhill cuts through the hype to focus on how devel­op­ing acces­si­ble, stan­dards com­pli­ant web­sites is the first step in cre­at­ing search engine friendly web­sites – and also talks about what is being done in the indus­try to make web­sites more find­able, some­times at the cost of mak­ing them less usable.

    SEO is big busi­ness and it’s attract­ing a whole new breed of web prac­ti­tion­ers into our indus­try. Learn the advan­tages that we have as web stan­dards devel­op­ers when it comes to the prac­tice of search engine opti­mi­sa­tion, as well as some of the dis­ad­van­tages, and how to over­come them.

    We will dis­cuss how to han­dle overzeal­ous search engine mar­keters, how to find your way through the hype and buzz­words of the indus­try and, most impor­tantly, how not to com­pro­mise your web­sites’ integrity, best prac­tice devel­op­ment and usabil­ity when being con­fronted by SEO.

  • E is for every­where: mobile con­tent, ser­vices and com­merce strate­gies in Australia

    Rob Manson and Alex Young

    In 1998 the American Dialect Society voted “e-​​” (as in elec­tronic) as the “word of the year”. This sig­ni­fied how impor­tant the inter­net had become in our world. Almost 10 years later we’re under­go­ing an even larger change. Only this time the “e-​​” pre­fix stands for “everywhere”.

    Mobile con­tent, ser­vices and com­merce are chang­ing the way we com­mu­ni­cate, work and do busi­ness. And these changes are build­ing upon the already mas­sive rev­o­lu­tions brought about by the inter­net — only faster and made more per­va­sive. This pre­sen­ta­tion will look at the strate­gic issues fac­ing man­agers and devel­op­ers as they strive to adapt to this lit­er­ally “mov­ing” target.

    The ses­sion will be highly inter­ac­tive in nature so make sure you bring your mobile device!

  • Managing agile projects within large organisations

    Ben Winter-​​Giles

    So you work at enter­prise level. Lots of stake hold­ers, lots of com­pe­ti­tion for time, need to deliver to mul­ti­ple demands that…POP up. All projects incur change over time, that’s the way of the world. Using a ben­e­fits dri­ven approach to deliv­ery rather than a process dri­ven or method­ol­ogy gov­erned approach frees the team to think lat­er­ally, and be respon­sive to client demands.

    Agility is more than a project man­age­ment approach, it’s a way of oper­a­tion and cul­ture that enables and man­ages rather than con­strains change. Ben will unpick how a fluid agile team can be estab­lished and run within a con­strained envi­ron­ment, AND deliver qual­ity respon­sive ser­vices to a large organisation.

    Ben will present real world case stud­ies and exam­ples of how he has used agility cul­tured teams to deliver cre­ative solu­tions to com­plex prob­lems, with­out burn­ing out the fun in our work. He will also demon­strate tech­niques on rapid mod­el­ing which can save you hours of labor over low yield tasks. All of which will give you the free­dom to work more cre­atively and dynam­i­cally while meet­ing the highly reg­i­mented needs of your enter­prise or Government clients.

15 responses to “Sessions”:

  1. […] I’ve just slot­ted in the last of these now: IP lawyers Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire will be pre­sent­ing Wig meets Web (2.0): har­ness­ing the law to com­mer­cialise and pro­tect your IP. […]

  2. […] by Stephen Cox on ethnog­ra­phy. Oh and did I men­tion George Oates of Flickr fame talk­ing about user expe­ri­ence in online com­mu­ni­ties? I can’t wait for that […]

  3. […] Usability: More than skin deep […]

  4. […] back into think­ing online. I’m really look­ing for­ward to Web Directions 07 in about a month. Scott will be speak­ing on the evil­ness (or not) of SEO. Unfortunately he’s on at the same time as Brian Fling from […]

  5. […] South 2007 con­fer­ence in Sydney, Microsoft’s Chris Wilson will be speak­ing on the sub­ject of “Moving the web for­ward.” I expect this talk to be sim­i­lar in spirit to a lengthy state­ment he made this past April, in which […]

  6. […] Sydney for Web Directions South. I am doing the keynote for the con­fer­ence, speak­ing about “The per­ils of pop­u­lar­ity“. This talk is a riff on social design, pop­u­lar­ity dri­ven nav­i­ga­tion of the web and the […]

  7. […] pre­sented “The per­ils of pop­u­lar­ity” (click here for the slides) which was an inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion on how to drive hits to your […]

  8. […] the speak­ers weren’t half bad either. I enjoyed the open­ing keynote by Rashmi Sinha. Slideshare is a fan­tas­tic app and Rashmi has a great per­spec­tive on…everything. I walked […]

  9. […] pre­sented “The per­ils of pop­u­lar­ity” (click here for the slides) which was an inter­est­ing pre­sen­ta­tion on how to drive hits to […]

  10. […] there was a great line-​​up of speak­ers today, pos­si­bly bet­ter than yes­ter­day. We started with Scott Berkun talk­ing about inno­va­tion, or indeed talk­ing about not talk­ing about inno­va­tion. This was a great […]

  11. […] in the process of upload­ing slides from my recent pre­sen­ta­tion last Friday at Web Directions 07. So depend­ing on how slowly I type and how quickly you read this […]

  12. […] sec­ond high­light was Alex Young and Rob Manson pre­sent­ing mobile con­tent, ser­vices and com­merce strate­gies. This was prob­a­bly one of the coolest pre­sen­ta­tions I’ve seen as it was very interactive — […]

  13. […] is that peo­ples pur­chas­ing deci­sions are moti­vated by an increas­ing desire to be “INTERESTING” (George Oates of Flickr). The avail­able inven­tory to assist in becom­ing inter­est­ing was once lim­ited to fash­ion accessories […]

  14. […] pre­sen­ta­tion — Social Media and Government 2.0 — was one of the high­lights of the con­fer­ence this year, and the museum is acclaimed for its […]

  15. […] Gledhill of the Molt:n team recently did a pre­sen­ta­tion on Is SEO Evil? at Sydney’s annual Web Directions South. The pre­sen­ta­tion went well and Scott received some […]

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