Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

It’s that time of the year again when John and I start writing ideas and names on post it notes, shuffling them around, and coming up with the program that will be Web Directions South, this October 18 and 19. The only thing that scares us is that 2011 was just so good, we really hope we can better it :)

Every year we scour the globe looking for people who are saying, and more importantly doing, really interesting work, the kind of work that is making the web a better and more fascinating place for all of us.

But we also cast our net locally: we want to get you up on that stage as well!

So, do you reckon you’ve got something that might be of interest to the Web Directions audience?

Our program

To give you some idea of how the program works, the conference has 3 tracks:

– Design: user experience, design strategy, design process, design case studies, CSS3, interaction design, interface design, content strategy, usability, ethnography.

– Development: JavaScript and HTML5, though feel free to pique our curiosity with ideas that fall outside these two very broad headings :)

– Big Picture: interesting or unique perspectives at the edges of the web. What are the possibilities that are open to us as people who work on the web? What ideas are just over the horizon? Ideas that get the audience excited about working in this awesome field at this incredible time.

Don’t feel too troubled with trying to slot your idea into one of these if that doesn’t come easily to you: this is a challenge we are used to!

Most of our sessions have traditionally been 45-50 minutes long. This year we are also exploring the idea of having shorter sessions – 15ish minutes – in the dev track. This is the perfect amount of time to show off a neat JS library, or demo some other problem solving wizardry you have mastered. So if you’ve got an idea that you don’t think is quite up for a 50 minute session, but would work in this shorter format, please do send it in!

Where do I apply?

Do you think you’ve got what it takes? We definitely want to hear from you some time in the next couple of days then. It doesn’t have to be a fully formed session proposal or anything like that, so don’t labour it, give us as much detail as you can, and just get it in! To keep all these ideas in one place, please help me out by entering it via this form.

Very much looking forward to hearing from you.