• Audio recording of session
• Session description
• About Christopher Giffard

Session description

HTML5 Video has been a hot topic for the last couple of years — but with new additions to the specification, we can now extend it beyond all recognition. In this session we’ll look at basic timed data, closed captioning and more — and as we adventure into more sophisticated uses of the technology, we’ll explore what additional value timed data can provide to your video, with attention paid to how you can implement it today.

The key focuses of this session will be accessibility, searchable media, and enriching existing multimedia experiences with timed data, all with a liberal application of flashy eye-candy. And of course we’re using the freshly minted Timed Text Track specification, soon appearing in a browser near you!

About Christopher Giffard

Christopher Giffard is a full stack web developer at the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations in Canberra. He’s somewhat new to the government, having a career background as a web guy in graphic design and advertising agencies — but hopes to bring a slice of that mad, informal world to the Australian public service.

He gets a kick out of solving problems everybody else avoids, has a soft spot for architecture and design, is particularly interested in electronic music, and the algorithmic generation thereof. His current secret project involves natural language processing… and sarcasm detection.

Follow Christopher on Twitter: @cgiffard

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• About Peter Mika

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Session description

The key idea of the Semantic Web is to make information on the Web easily consumable by machines. As machines start to understand web pages as sources of data that can be easily combined with other public data on the Web, the promise is that search on the Web will move well beyond the current paradigm of retrieving pages by keywords. Instead, search engines will start to answer complex queries based on the cumulative knowledge of the Web.

In this presentation, we overview the basic set of technologies that can be used to annotate web pages so that they can be processed by data-aware search engines. In particular, we discuss the RDFa and microdata standards of the W3C designed for marking up data in HTML pages. We look at the ways in which this information is currently used by search engines, including the latest schema.org collaboration between Bing, Google, and Yahoo!, which provides a basic set of vocabulary items understood by all three major search engines on the Web.

About Peter Mika

Peter Mika is a researcher and data architect at Yahoo! Research in Barcelona, working on the applications of semantic technology to Web search. He received his BS in computer science from Eotvos Lorand University and his MSc and PhD in computer science (summa cum laude) from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His interdisciplinary work in social networks and the Semantic Web earned him a Best Paper Award at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference and a First Prize at the 2004 Semantic Web Challenge. From 2006 to 2009, he has been a co-chair of the Semantic Web Challenge. Mika is the youngest member elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Web Semantics. He is the author of the book ‘Social Networks and the Semantic Web’ (Springer, 2007). In 2008 he has been selected as one of “AI’s Ten to Watch” by the editorial board of the IEEE Intelligent Systems journal. Peter is a regular speaker at conferences.

Follow Peter on Twitter: @pmika

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• Session description
• About Adam Bell
• About David Peterson

Presentation slides

Session description

The Australian War Memorial is connecting and enriching online archives and collections toward building a platform for telling history. Through Drupal 7 and Linked Data, the Memorial intends to develop tools that designers, researchers and historians can use to help find new ways of building historical narratives.

During this session we will demonstrate some early prototypes and experiments, key uses of Linked Data, practical publishing tools and discuss how this work is unfolding inside one of Australia’s major collecting institutions.

About Adam Bell

Adam Bell leads the web production team at the Australian War Memorial, where he works with curators and historians to publish the Memorial’s vast archives and collections online. He has a background as an artist, cultural worker, teacher and printmaker and plays in a rock n roll band.

Follow Adam on Twitter: @bumphead

About David Peterson

David Peterson has been pushing at the boundaries of Web development since 1995; that combined with a background in wildlife cinematography brings fresh insight into what can be a geeky sort of space. He has built a number of high profile sites for the ABC, Australian science groups and many others.

David works as a consultant with PreviousNext and lives way down south in cool Tasmania — regularly breathing on his fingers just to tap away at the keyboard. He is busy building Web apps built with Open Source toolkits utilising Java, PHP, Python, Linked Data and the almighty Drupal. He enjoys exploring deep into the guts of the Semantic Web and Linked Data to discover new connections and visualisations that help empower story tellers.

Follow David on Twitter: @davidseth

• Audio recording of session
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• Session description
• About Andrew Fisher

Presentation slides

Session description

In 2020 there will be nearly 10 times as many Internet connected devices as there are human beings on this planet. The majority of these will not have web browsers. When it comes to the “Internet of Things”, web designers and developers are uniquely placed to create, connect and produce innovative new ways for these devices to be used.

We are used to mashing up disconnected data sets, playing with APIs and designing for constantly moving standards in order to create compelling digital user experiences. “Old school” engineers are struggling to keep pace due to long processes for product and service design but as web creators we understand the value of rapid prototyping, user feedback and quick iterations. As developers, we play daily with a bewildering array of technologies that span networks, servers and user interfaces. As designers, we understand the nature of beautiful but usable technology.

These skills, and our innate understanding of how interconnectedness enhances and creates engaging user experiences, mean that web creators will be critical for the next generation of Internet enabled Things in our world. From a potplant that tweets when it needs water to crowd sourcing pollution data with sensors on people’s windows and visualising it on Google Maps these are the new boundaries of the web creator’s skills. Have you ever dreamt of sending your phone to the edge of space to take a picture of a country? Or how about a robot you can control via a web browser?

By exploring examples of things in the wild right now and delving into practical guidance for for getting started, this session will demonstrate how easy it is for web designers and developers to build Internet connected and aware Things.

About Andrew Fisher

Andrew Fisher is deeply passionate about technology and is constantly tinkering with and breaking something — whether it’s a new application for mobile computing, building a robot, deploying a cloud or just playing around with web tech. Sometimes he does some real work too and has been involved in developing digital solutions for businesses since the dawn of the web in Australia and Europe for brands like Nintendo, peoplesound, Sony, Mitsubishi, Sportsgirl and the Melbourne Cup.

Andrew is the CTO for JBA Digital, a data agency in Melbourne Australia, where he focuses on creating meaning out of large, changing data sets for clients. Andrew is also the founder of Rocket Melbourne, a startup technology lab exploring physical computing and the Web of Things.

Follow Andrew on Twitter: @ajfisher

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• About Brian Suda

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Session description

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is estimated to produce 15 petabytes of data per year. This is difficult to store let alone understand!

With connected devices quickly out numbering connected people, we are soon going to be swamped with data. Visualising the constant stream of information we are collecting so that it can be better understood is going to be a critical task.

In this presentation, I’ll walk you through a quick overview of some basic chart and graph design, then look at how easy it is to write some quick scripts in your favourite language to produce beautiful graphics. SVG is an under-​​rated technology, but it can be created programmatically and quickly to visualise data.

About Brian Suda

Brian Suda is an informatician residing in Reykjavík, Iceland. He has spent a good portion of each day connected to Internet after discovering it back in the mid-1990s. Most recently, he has written a book on the topic of charts and graphs entitled Designing with Data. His own little patch of Internet can be found at suda.co.uk where many past projects and crazy ideas can be found.

Follow Brian on Twitter: @briansuda

• Audio recording of session
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• Additional resources
• Session description
• About Aaron Parecki

Presentation slides

Session description

While location-based mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular, they are still relatively new. Special considerations need to be made for battery life and handling large data sets of geolocated data. The good news is there are many services and technologies you can use to assist you in building mobile location-based apps.

In this session, Aaron Parecki, co-founder of Geoloqi.com, shows you services you can leverage to do things like nearby business lookups, location-based triggers, nearest intersection queries, and more. Aaron also covers the location services available on the various mobile platforms as well as in HTML 5, and shares some insights on how to deal with battery life. The session concludes with some real-world use cases for real-time location such as turning on and off your lights in your house or notifying your boss if you’ll be late to work.

About Aaron Parecki

Aaron Parecki is a Portland-based iPhone and PHP developer interested in solving practical problems with technology. In his free time, he enjoys geolocation, linguistics, and building home automation systems and IRC bots with a sense of humor. For the past 2½ years, he has been tracking and visualizing his location every 6 seconds. He created Geoloqi.com with Amber Case in an effort to help people connect in the real world. He has 11 years experience in web app development, database design, and server administration.

Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronpk

• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Hilary Mason

Presentation slides

Session description

Many of us create and work with data that lives on the web. This kind of data has similar characteristics that makes it possible to learn successful techniques and avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ for analysis.

In this talk, I’ll give a brief history of the field with a focus on the fundamental math and algorithmic tools that we use to address these kinds of problems, then walk through several descriptive and predictive scenarios. We’ll also discuss the likely future evolution of this type of data and the active research problems that are currently fascinating.

About Hilary Mason

Hilary is the lead scientist at bit.ly, where she is finding sense in vast data sets. She is a former computer science professor with a background in machine learning and data mining, has published numerous academic papers, and regularly releases code on her personal site, hilarymason.com. She has discovered two new species, loves to bake cookies, and asks way too many questions.

Follow Hilary on Twitter: @hmason

• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Ryan Freitas

Presentation slides

Presentation slides are available to download (PDF).

Session description

Building compelling consumer experiences is often described as being more art than science. Increasingly, those who build them are under pressure to validate their design decisions with data. What is the appropriate role of quantitative and quantitative data when designing for interaction? What are the most effective ways to gather and interpret data that effectively improves the quality of the consumer experience? Ryan Freitas will tackle these and other issues while discussing the importance of integrating data-based iteration into your heuristics-driven design process.

About Ryan Freitas

Ryan Freitas is the founder and principal strategist at Second Verse, an experience design consultancy in San Francisco, California. Second Verse specializes in combining superior interaction design with compelling product strategy for technology startups and global media companies. Ryan enthusiastically pursues the opportunity to work on emerging user experience principles, and he has a strong interest in informatics, empathic design, and democratizing access to technology. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Kristen.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @ryanchris

• Audio recording of session
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Gordon Grace

Presentation slides

Session description

The USA and UK governments have made significant progress with linked, open data in recent months. Several fundamental datasets from the Australian Government are on the cusp of being exposed as meaningful, reusable, machine-​​readable assets, further driving the adoption of linked data within and around government.

Making better use of online data offerings using a combination of top-​​down policy and guidance, together with bottom-​​up development efforts from agency web teams, would seem to describe a sustainable, organic growth in linked government data.

Learn about the path to the first release of data​.gov​.au; a draft roadmap to future releases; the barriers to linked data and open public sector information (PSI); and the real-​​world questions this technology aims to solve.

About Gordon Grace

Based in the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), Gordon has been working on whole-​​of-​​government websites and Australian Government web policies since early 2006.

Gordon likes making attractive, useful things that matter to people. He’s some thing of a ‘plate spinner’, and likes to punish himself by taking on too many projects at once. Gordon can often be found prodding and lifting dirty great big IT systems over usability, accessibility and standards-​​compliance hurdles, gently preparing them for the hostile, unforgiving and unpredictable web.

Gordon lives in Canberra with his wife and two young children, who are rarely hostile, frequently forgiving, and always unpredictable.

Follow Gordon on Twitter: @gordongrace

• Audio recording of session
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Paul Hagon

Presentation slides

Session description

Libraries contain masses of beautifully structured data collected over many years. But these records may have their flaws and might now want to be used in ways, such as location based services, that weren’t imagined 30 years ago. How can we use existing API’s and web services to enrich this data to enable it to be used in a variety of ways. This data also needs to be exposed for others to use and build upon. With the recent release of the Government response to the Web 2.0 taskforce, how can institutions comply with these recommendations by providing their data in usable forms for the public. What’s involved in building an API into our resources and how can our data be given more meaning through semantic linkages like RDFa?

About Paul Hagon

Paul is the Senior Web Designer at the National Library of Australia and has been working on the web in cultural institutions since 1999. His job entails a mix of design, coding, and accessibility. He is a thinker and "ideas" man. He finds cultural institutions fascinating because of what they bring to society, they are rich resources of information and provide vast potential for exploring hidden treasures. Paul enjoys making these items available and telling their stories in ways that may not be the most obvious. He likes to use technology in a relevant way to enrich the way we can interact with these resources.

In 2010 Paul was named a "Mover and Shaker" of the library world by Library Journal.

Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulhagon