Web Directions » wds07 http://www.webdirections.org Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:02:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Ben Winter-Giles — Managing agile projects within large organisationshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-winter-giles/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-winter-giles/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:55:22 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/ben-winter-giles/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Ben Winter_Giles PortraitSo 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Presentation slides

Session description

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.

About Ben Winter-Giles

http://benwintergiles.wordpress.com/

Ben Winter_Giles PortraitBen Winter-Giles is a Consultant with SMS, is currently engaged at the Programme Management level of a whole of Government initiative with the Department of Treasury. Ben has over 10 years experience in Web, Design and Programme Management in the Government ICT sector. Ben also has specialties in enterprise level Human Factors Integration and user centered design for software.

Recently Ben has focussed his efforts on the development of integrated management and tactical solutions. Aiming to free creativity and promote responsiveness and flexibility as a way forward for delivering effective design and development solutions within the highly contained Federal Government environment.

Ben’s previous clients include, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Medicare Australia, Australian Taxation Office, and a large number of local government and Private sector clients. He is currently developing a Human Factors Integration assessment and blueprinting toolset.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/ben-winter-giles/feed/ 1 Angela Beesley — Wikis and community collaborationhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/angela-beesley/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/angela-beesley/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:46:56 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/angela-beesley/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Angela Beesley PortraitIn 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Presentation slides

Session description

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.

About Angela Beesley

http://wikiangela.com/blog/

Angela Beesley PortraitAngela Beesley is a founder of Wikia, the community-focused wiki hosting site which is developing over 2500 wikis. Angela is the Vice President of Community for Wikia and manages a remote team of community support staff located across five continents. Additionally, Angela is Chair of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organisation responsible for Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, and the other Wikimedia projects. She contributed a chapter on managing wikis to the book “Wikis: Tools for information Work and Collaboration” which was published in 2006, and has been involved with Wikipedia since early 2003. Her blog can be found at WikiAngela.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/angela-beesley/feed/ 0 Andrew Downie and Grant Focas — Javascript and other coding for good or evilhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/downie-focas/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/downie-focas/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:41:16 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/downie-focas/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Andrew Downie PortraitGrant Focas PortraitWhen 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

We’re sorry, but slides and podcast for this presentation are unfortunately not available.

Session description

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.

About Andrew Downie and Grant Focas

Andrew Downie PortraitAndrew Downie is a psychologist and also has a post-graduate diploma in education. He has, for both personal and professional reasons, a keen interest in making products and services available to the widest possible range of people. Andrew has worked for the NSW Department of Education and Training since 1992, providing adaptive technology resources to staff and students. As the world wide web has become more important in the educational environment, Andrew’s role has increasingly involved evaluating website accessibility.

Andrew is totally blind and uses screen readers to access computers. He has developed a working knowledge of HTML and is currently frustrated at his slow progress with Javascript.

Grant Focas PortraitGrant Focas is a Senior Educational Programmer for the Centre for Learning Innovation. He helped develop OptionKeys — a website provided by the NSW Department of Education and Training for students, teachers and resource developers to assist in the production of accessible online resources. For the past 6 years Grant has been a keen advocate of web standards. Though known to dabble in the dark arts of .NET he is happiest when eating the web trifle of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript with an entree of XSLT.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/downie-focas/feed/ 0 Rob Manson and Alex Young — E is for everywherehttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/manson-young/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/manson-young/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:34:21 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/manson-young/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Alex Young PortraitRob Manson PortraitIn 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Slidecast

Session description

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!

About Alex Young and Rob Manson

Alex Young PortraitAlex Young has been involved in online for over a decade, moving from instructional design, visual and interaction design through to project and people management within the education, training, TV and telecommunications fields. This journey has instilled a sense of purpose to strive for an optimal user experience for every solution or challenge that presents itself.

As part of Mobile Online Business, Alex is focused on how to help companies communicate better with their customers by understanding the pervasiveness of emerging technologies and the ways to best utilise these to communicate with their customers.

Rob Manson PortraitRob has been modeling Information Architectures and IA driven business models since 1989. As the technology landscape evolved he moved from digital pre-press, to interactive media, to network applications and finally to pervasive computing. Now he has joined Mobile Online Business (MOB) and is focused upon exploring life after Convergence — a place where objects and their interfaces Diverge allowing you to control them anywhere, anytime. His primary goal is to provide MOB’s clients with hands on, real world experience with this intangible new world.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/manson-young/feed/ 0 Adrian Holovaty — Being smart about your datahttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/adrian-holovaty/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/adrian-holovaty/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:29:31 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/adrian-holovaty/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Adrian Holovaty PortraitThe 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, washingtonpost.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime.org.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

We’re sorry, but slides and podcast for this presentation are unfortunately not available.

Session description

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, washingtonpost.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime.org.

About Adrian Holovaty

http://www.holovaty.com/

Adrian Holovaty PortraitAdrian Holovaty, a Web developer/journalist, is founder of EveryBlock, a local information startup in Chicago. He has worked as a programmer/journalist at washingtonpost.com and a number of other American newspaper Web sites. Just as newspaper reporters write articles and TV journalists shoot video, Adrian writes journalism Web apps.

Cocreator and lead developer of the popular Django Web framework, Adrian enjoys contributing to open-source projects, making information accessible for the public good and reverse-engineering things. His All Music Guide fixer was the inspiration for Greasemonkey, and his site chicagocrime.org was one of the original Google Maps hacks.

He lives in Chicago and at Holovaty.com.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/adrian-holovaty/feed/ 0 Aaron Gustafson — Learning to love formshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/aaron-gustafson/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/aaron-gustafson/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 04:25:59 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/aaron-gustafson/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Aaron Gustafson PortraitForms. 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Presentation slides

Session description

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.

About Aaron Gustafson

http://easy-reader.net/

Aaron Gustafson PortraitAfter getting hooked on the web in 1996 and spending several years pushing pixels and bits for the likes of IBM and Konica Minolta, Aaron Gustafson decided to focus full-time on his own web consultancy, Easy! Designs LLC. Aaron is a member of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) and the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS). He also serves as Technical Editor for A List Apart, is a contributing writer for Digital Web Magazine, and is quickly building a library of writing and editing credits in meatspace. He has graced the stage at numerous conferences including An Event Apart, COMDEX, SXSW, and The Ajax Experience and is frequently called on to provide web standards training in both the public and private sector.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/aaron-gustafson/feed/ 1 Stephen Cox — Building ethnography into the design processhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/stephen-cox/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/stephen-cox/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 03:37:35 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/stephen-cox/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Stephen Cox Portrait 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Presentation slides

Session description

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.

About Stephen Cox

http://www.intuity.com.au/wordpress/?page_id=6

Stephen Cox PortraitStephen is the Design Research Lead at News Digital Media (NDM) in Sydney. His job involves working with the business to help extend the work of the user experience team from the reactive day-to-day project work into the areas of strategy and innovation. The design research team utilises a range of techniques and theories from the social sciences to help capture and understand the motivations of real people. Working with the user experience team, business units and business strategists, the design research team helps create practical, effective and innovative design solutions.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/stephen-cox/feed/ 0 Raul Vera — Mashups, web apps and APIshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/raul-vera/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/raul-vera/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 03:28:48 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/raul-vera/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Raul Vera PortraitHear all about the exciting possibilities created by these technologies from Google Australia.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Session description

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

About Raul Vera

Raul Vera PortraitRaul has been involved in digital-media technology (video animation, graphics, image processing, printing) for over 25 years, as software developer, architect, entrepreneur, and team leader. He recently joined Google Australia where he is helping to build and manage the growing Engineering team.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/raul-vera/feed/ 0 Rashmi Sinha — The perils of popularityhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/rashmi-sinha/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/rashmi-sinha/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 03:26:51 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/blog/rashmi-sinha/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Rashmi Sinha PortraitCan 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Presentation slides

Session description

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.

About Rashmi Sinha

http://www.rashmisinha.com/

Rashmi Sinha PortraitRashmi Sinha is a designer, researcher and entrepreneur. She is the CEO for SlideShare, a rapidly growing site for sharing slideshows. Rashmi writes a blog at rashmisinha.com.

Rashmi received a PhD in cognitive psychology from Brown University in 1998. After moving to UC Berkeley for a PostDoc, she fell in love with the web, and realized that many issues that web technologists think about are problems of human psychology. She switched departments and worked on search interfaces & recommender systems at the Information School, UC Berkeley. Deciding that she enjoyed practical problems more, she co-founded Uzanto, a user experience consulting company. Lately Uzanto has focused on products — their first product MindCanvas (released Nov 2005) — reshapes traditional research techniques like card-sorting, and divide-the-dollar into game-like experiences for remote research. In Oct 2006, Uzanto released its second product — Slideshare, a website for sharing presentations. Now, Rashmi is focused on the business side of things but is still intimately involved with design for both products.

]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/rashmi-sinha/feed/ 0 Paul McCarthy — Which open source tools are fuelling today’s leading sites?http://www.webdirections.org/resources/paul-mccarthy/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/paul-mccarthy/#comments Sun, 30 Sep 2007 01:51:23 +0000 Maxine http://westciv.com/webdirections08/resources/paul-mccarthy/ A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Paul McCarthy PortraitMany 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.

]]> A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

We’re sorry, but slides and podcast for this presentation are unfortunately not available.

Session description

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.

About Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy PortraitPaul McCarthy is interested in innovation and the rapidly emerging global digital services economy. He is Manager, Strategic Projects with the NSW Department of Commerce, Government Chief Information Office and adviser to Australia’s peak interactive media industry group: AIMIA. Formerly, McCarthy was co-founder of The Digital Media Group Ltd, a financial software company and IBM’s Asia Pacific Multimedia Centre based in Sydney.

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