Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Robert O’Callahan – The Open Web Platform in the mobile era

Photo of Robert O'CallahanIn this talk I will describe the work we’re doing to ensure that the standards-based Web wins again — developing new technologies, extending Web standards, and shipping great products on all kinds of devices. I’ll talk about the challenges we face and what people who care about competition and freedom can do to help.

Lachlan Hardy – The open web

Lachlan Hardy PortraitThe Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it’s more than that. It is a philosophy.

David Peterson – Semantic web for distributed social networks

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

David Peterson PortraitHear 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.

Gina Trapani – Better Gmail: How Google Opened Gmail’s Web Interface to Any Developer Who Cares (And Why You Should)

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

Gina Trapani PortraitLast year, Google released an experimental Greasemonkey API for Gmail: coding hooks that let anyone add CSS and Javascript to Gmail that enhances how it looks and behaves. Why would you want to do this? Why wouldn’t you? Hear how Google’s using Greasemonkey to distribute Gmail development amongst independent web developers–and how those developers are integrating their own product into Gmail — resulting in a Better Gmail for everyone.

Boris Mann – The 3 stages of dynamic systems

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

Boris Mann Portrait

Content management systems have all but replaced the former art of publishing static HTML pages. From letting clients edit and add content, to content like calendars and forums that defy the “page” convention, dynamic interactive websites keep visitors coming back. At some point your website goes beyond just a site filled with HTML pages and actually becomes a full-fledged web application.

From these features, we extract three stages of content management — simple content management, beyond the blog, and building your own web application.

Paul McCarthy – Which open source tools are fuelling today’s leading sites?

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.

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Three days of talks, two of them in the engineering room. Web Directions you have broken my brain.

Cheryl Gledhill Product Manager, BlueChilli