Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Natalie Downe & Simon Willison – Lanyrd: From side project to startup

Photo of Natalie DownePhoto of Simon WillisonThis talk will tell the story of Lanyrd, from a two-week proof of concept to a full-fledged startup via three intensive months of Y Combinator in Silicon Valley. They’ll share the trials, tribulations and lessons they learned along the way. This is the talk they wish they’d heard before they got started!

Paula Bray – Connected digital initiatives and strategies

Paula Bray PortraitThe Powerhouse Museum has been working towards making its digital initiatives widely accessible and to a broader audience, online and onsite, to enable a connected digital future. With a blossoming of blogging, significant Flickr and Facebook presences the Museum has been developing great connections with a new audience that has led the institution to rethink access with an emphasis on the importance of community connections and participation. This thinking has had an impact on the Museum’s Strategic Plan and several digital initiatives are now driving change within the organisation.

Tatham Oddie – Practicing Web Standards in the Large

Tatham Oddie PortraitWeb standards might be second nature to all of us here, but they don’t always fly so easily in the enterprise. Obscure browsers and CIOs watching their bottom line can often leave a passionate development team feeling stifled. In this session we’ll look at how a number of large scale websites successfully adopted new standards and opened their content to more audiences and devices than ever before.

Josh Williams – Keynote: Where are we going?

Josh Williams PortraitDuring this brisk discussion we’ll separate fads from the future, debate native apps versus the mobile web, take an honest look at the hype behind geo-location, then take a step back to ask ourselves where the web—and we ourselves—are going. Hold on, it’s going to be a wild ride!

Grant Young – Creating platforms for social innovation

Grant Young PortraitIn this presentation Grant Young will examine how innovative organisations are using social technologies and design methods to create multi-dimensional value — both for the organisational and community — and will explore the themes that underpin the examples with a view to applying them in your context.

Matt Balara – Flogging design: best practices in online shop design

Matt Balara PortraitConsidering how many businesses depend upon the web for their income, it’s shocking how poorly designed most shops are. Not only aesthetically, but also as far as ease of use, retail psychology and user experience are concerned. How can we design better shops? If customers enjoy shopping more, won’t our clients earn more? Can forms be fun? What’s the psychology behind online purchases? How can online and offline buying experiences be harmonised? Matt Balara will share some of his 15 years of experience designing web sites, the vast majority of which have sold something or other.

Andrew Fisher – Cloud computing

Andrew Fisher PortraitCloud services change the way a business or campaign can operate, increasing flexibility, taking less time to deploy and introducing superb cost efficiencies so that we can redirect finances to where they’ll really pay for us – in innovation, experimentation and planning ahead. With these opportunities, however, come challenges around data and platform security, change management and who “owns” the platform and data you are using.

Cheryl Gledhill & Scott Gledhill – Beyond SEO

Cheryl Gledhill PortraitScott Gledhill PortraitSearch engine optimisation (SEO) is a unique mix of marketing, usability and technology which can often cause confusion on how it is implemented across different organisations. An important part of your SEO strategy is getting the most out of your SEO dollars. This session will explain what your developers, designers, producers, content authors and marketers should all know about SEO to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on your SEO.

Fergus Pitt & David Peterson – The mashed up playlist

Fergus Pitt PortraitDavid Peterson PortraitThe ABC launched three new socially networked digital radio websites: ABC Dig Music, ABC Jazz and ABC Country in July 2009. They are the first of several ABC projects involving content aggregation. As well as having slick, highly usable designs the music platform integrates with various sources including MusicBrainz, YouTube, Last.fm and Wikipedia. This aggregation functionality graphically illustrates the possibilities of Semantic Web technology for an editorial organisation such as the ABC.

Pete Ottery – Designing for suits

Pete Ottery PortraitDesigning websites in amongst the “suits” and their business models, targets, projections and synergies (ha!) can be death by dot point. Or fun. What are manager types actually thinking when they brief (or don’t) you. How do you translate their KPI’s into interface designs that

  1. 1. get their point across & achieve their targets
  2. 2. contribute to a profitable business
  3. 3. are easy to use (who would have thought the users get a say! ;-)

Laurel Papworth – The business of being social

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 10.45am.

Laurel Paprworth PortraitIt’s not true that there are no proven monetisation models for online communities; in fact, there are distinct revenue streams that have been successful over many years. This session looks at the soft returns on investment for engaging with user generated content, communication and collaboration with the consumer and then moves into how social networks earn money for their investors and developers.
The aim of this session is to limit the slapping of banner ads on every niche community online – you might be surprised to learn that the least profitable revenue model is… Advertising! Come, spend an hour on the Dark Side, and find out which social networks are making money, how much and by what means and learn about the business models in this growth industry.

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I had an absolute blast, learnt so much, and met so many great people

Carmen Chung Software engineer, Valiant Finance