Web Directions » web2.0

Mark Pesce — Closing keynote: This, that, and the other thing

jessie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:27:49 +0000

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 4.05pm.

Presentation videos

Opening video:

Video introducing part 2 (at 9:30 minutes in):

Video introducing part 3 (at 19:32 minutes in):

Session description

This is what it feels like to be hyperconnected: a new kind of community – pervasive, continuous, yet strangely tense and tenuous, like a balloon inflated to the point of bursting. The limits of the neocortex meeting the amplifier of the Human Network. That creates unique opportunities: we can come together at a word, self-organize around or against a blog post, a live-streamed video, an automated reply from a faceless, rent-seeking organization. Nothing can stop us. We can’t even stop ourselves. But what do we want? And the other thing? You’ll need to be at Web Directions South, for the closing keynote, if you want to find out.

About Mark Pesce

Known internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web to invent VRML, Mark Pesce has been exploring the frontiers of media and technology for a quarter of a century. The author of five books and numerous articles, Pesce has written for WIRED, Feed, Salon, PC Magazine, and The Age.

For the last three seasons, Pesce has been a panelist on the hit ABC show The New Inventors. From 2003 to 2006, Pesce chaired the Emerging Media and Interactive Design Program at the world-renowned Australian Film Television and Radio School. In February he received an appointment as an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, and has gone on to found FutureSt, a Sydney media and technology consultancy.

David Peterson — Semantic web for distributed social networks

jessie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:24:39 +0000

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 2.40pm.

Presentation slides

Session description

Hear how Drupal, Semantic MediaWiki and other bleeding edge tech were enlisted along with pixie dust, FOAF, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, Linked Data (basically all the Semantic Web stuff) to build a distributed social network. The focus will be not on evangelism (I don’t really care about that) but how disparate open source platforms can talk and work together. This stuff actually works and makes development more fluid. These technologies make local development easier, but when it is time to broaden your scope, classic search is still king. How can you leverage this? Newcomers such as Yahoo Searchmonkey can play an important role in the creation of a truly distributed information system.

About David Peterson

David Peterson has been a web developer since 1995. He works way up north in the tropics of Townsville, about as far from any tech as possible. Currently he is Head of Research at BoaB interactive and is working hard to kickstart the Semantic Web down under. Not only that, but he is an Advisory Committee representative to the W3C. Wow.

His wonderful family, making lovely photographs and searching for the perfect espresso keeps him happy.

Matt Webb — Movement (Web Directions North Closing Keynote)

jessie — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:43:00 +0000

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 31 2008.

Session description

We’ve always had metaphors to understand and design for the Web.

The original conception of the Web was as a library of documents. Our building blocks were derived from spatial ideas: “breadcrumbs,” “visits” and “homepages” were used to understand the medium.

Website-as-application was a new and novel metaphor in the late 1990s. The spatial concept of navigation was replaced by concepts derived from tools: buttons performed actions on data.

These metaphors inspire separate but complementary models of the Web. But the Web in 2008 has some entirely new qualities: more than ever it’s an ecology of separate but highly interconnected services. Its fiercely competitive, rapid development means differentiating innovations are quickly copied and spread. Attention from users is scarce. The fittest websites survive. In this world, what metaphors can be most successfully wielded?

Matt takes as a starting point interaction and product design, with ideas from cybernetics and Getting Things Done. He offers as a metaphor the concept of the Web as experience. That is, treating a website as a dynamic entity — a flowchart of motivations that both provides a continuously satisfying experience for the user… and helps the website grow.

From seeing what kind of websites this model provokes, we’ll see whether it also helps illuminate some of the Web’s coming design challenges: the blending of the Web with desktop software and physical devices; the particular concerns of small groups; and what the next movement might bring.

About Matt Webb

Matt Webb is a principal of the creative design consultancy Schulze & Webb where his work has included material prototypes for Nokia, Web strategy for the BBC, and exploration into the future uses of RFID. S&W works in near-term product R&D and, as embodied in the USB puppet Availabot, has a special focus on the social life of stuff. Matt speaks on interaction design and technology, is co-author of Mind Hacks, cognitive psychology for a general audience, and builds polite social software and Web toys. He can be found at Interconnected and in London.

Tara Hunt — Government 2.0: Architecting for collaboration

jessie — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:35:15 +0000

A presentation given at Web Directions North, Vancouver Canada, January 30 2008.

MP3 of presentation
Presentation slides
Session description
About Tara Hunt

Presentation slides

Session description

What does Web 2.0 mean and, specifically, what does it mean for the future of governments? Tara Hunt has been speaking all over the world, talking to government audiences on this subject. She believes that Web 2.0 has very little to do with the technology and everything to do with people. Her talk will cover the main tenets of Web 2.0: openness, collaboration and community and what it means for government.

About Tara Hunt

“Miss Rogue” defines herself as a customer first, marketer second. In 2005, Tara became the marketing director at Riya, where her community marketing theories resulted in huge gains, such as national news mentions before launch and over one million photos uploaded within 24 hours of launch. She doesn’t believe in PR, only in the power of building relationships with a community. She co-founded Citizen Agency in 2006 with the mission of teaching her clients how to work more effectively with the communities they serve. Tara has over seven years experience in non-traditional marketing planning. She maintains a successful blog over at HorsePigCow.

Speaking of community, Tara is a community-based movement evangelist, spending all of her free time on Barcamp, Coworking and Winecamp. She is also a supporter of the Open Source movement, the EFF, Creative Commons and the Intelligrid.