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webdirections | september 26-29 2006

Web Directions 06 was four days of education, enlightenment, inspiration, knowledge sharing, and networking. Over the coming weeks we'll be making the podcasts available, so make sure you subscribe, and we've already got some of the speaker's notes and slides to hand - more to come soon! You'll find all of these in the WD06 resources section of the site

Web Directions Blog

OZ-IA/2006 Conference and Retreat - Registration now open

Information architects will be very keen to hear that registration is now open for OZ-IA/2006 Conference and Retreat, to be held in Sydney 30 September and 1st October, the weekend directly after Web Directions.

With the line up at this very reasonably priced two day event including

• Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems
• Thomas Vander Wal of InfoCloud Solutions
• Dan Saffer of Adaptive Path

amongst a whole lot of Australian experts as well, all of a sudden it’s become a busy busy week for web design in Sydney.

• Read more about OZ-IA/2006
• Full program
• Register now

Posted by Maxine on 7/08/06 at 4:17 pm | No Comments »

Thomas Vander Wal - an IAs perspective

In the areas that interest you about the web, what has changed the

most in the last couple of years, and what do you see changing most

in the next couple?

The biggest change I have been noticing on the web is a change of its usage.

The web has been shifting from a destination spot to a container and content

terminal (like a train station). The increased use of RSS/ATOM and other

feeds has created a transition for how people find and consume information.

Digital content creators are realizing that the web is just one medium to

hold content and it is increasingly the jumping off point and the

place of permanence that is pointed to. People consuming a site’s content

may read it on their mobile device in an RSS reader, but when the

information is shared and pointed to, it is the web pages for the content that

are the end point. This shift requires well structured pages that can be

easily parsed and reconfigured. Standards compliant pages can be parsed

mechanically with a script and ported to another format that meets the needs

of the person consuming the information.

Posted by Maxine on 4/08/06 at 11:55 am | No Comments »

Jeremy Keith: browser optimist

In the areas that interest you about the web, what has changed the most in the last couple of years, and what do you see changing most in the next couple?

There’s a lot that’s changed over the past few years: more people have broadband, more people are using the mobile web, and more people are becoming publishers themselves, putting photos, videos, and blog posts online.

For web developers, the biggest change has been in the browser landscape. Okay, so Internet Explorer has been stagnant, but it wasn’t that long ago that we had to support Netscape 4. Compared to those days, cross-browser development today is a lot easier. It’s because of this relatively stable browser market that we’re starting so see such rich web applications. CSS, JavaScript and DOM support have reached levels that are good enough to allow us to make the most of these technologies.

Over the next few years, I expect this trend to continue. IE7 and Firefox 2 will bring even better support for web standards. The browsers we consider top-notch today will become the legacy browsers of tomorrow. I think we’ll see more maturity in web applications. Today, we’re pushing the boundaries and making great discoveries but also lots of mistakes. Those mistakes are as valuable as any technological breakthrough; we need to learn from them if we’re to move forward.

Posted by Maxine on 1/08/06 at 10:58 am | No Comments »

Molly Holzschlag on the need for quality education

Continuing on in our “one question” interview series I asked Molly for her view. Maybe it’s a bit self serving on my part but I love her answer because it’s exactly what I would say myself.

In the areas that interest you about the web, what has changed the most in the last couple of years, and what do you see changing most in the next couple?

The need for quality education is clearly becoming the most difficult issue in our field to address effectively and consistently.

While the logic and benefits of Web standards has finally made it into the consciousness of today’s competitive Web professional, the realities in terms of actual practice are a different issue.

With massive confusion in the browser market; a significant learning curve with CSS and accessibility concepts, tools and techniques; companies applying old ideas to a new medium; and inconsistent information filling the bookstore shelves and college classrooms, it’s easy to see that the problem isn’t going to be fully addressed any time soon.

It takes efforts such as Web Directions to give people world over a leg up in terms of knowing what’s the latest, where to go for the best resources, and to get information that’s not only quality, but most up-to-date. While conferences cannot take the place of ongoing learning and experience, they certainly can go a far way to provide people with a fantastic checkpoint for their own learning process, expose them to new ideas, and perhaps most importantly - expand their social network to include supportive and knowledgeable friends and colleagues.

I’m not very good at predicting the future, but that’s one thing I know won’t change: being a true Web professional today means embracing lifelong learning. Those that do are sure to succeed.

We work in an industry which is noteworthy for its lack of formal educational/career pathways as well as standardised certification and industry associations. This is natural in the early days of any industry when best practices have not yet in fact been settled on. But we are moving away from that now. I think spending money on education in our industry has been sidelined in the same way as visual designers have. It will be interesting to see what will emerge as things crystallise and the environment in which we work becomes increasingly reliable.

Posted by Maxine on 31/07/06 at 11:11 am | No Comments »

Andy Clarke on the role of the visual designer

As I mentioned yesterday, Web Directions this year is all about looking outward to the future, while recognising and celebrating the evolution of our strong technological foundations. In this spirit we’ve asked our speakers to comment on the following open ended question.

“In the areas that interest you about the web, what has changed the most in the last couple of years, and what do you see changing most in the next couple?”

First up, the man otherwise known as Malarkey, Mr Andy Clarke, on the role of the visual designer.

As a visual designer with a strong interest in markup and CSS, over the last year it has been very interesting for me to visit with, and talk to other visual designers and developers and to try to understand how they percieve their role within modern web design.

In the early days designing for the web, a ‘web designer’ was a jack of all trades, a bit of design, a bit of code, a bit of Flash, maybe a bit of SEO knowledge all rolled into one. Today things are a little different, and specialisation and collaboration seem to have become the watch words.

Information architects organise data relationships, user-interface designers make decisions about how interfaces look and work, accessibility specialists advise not only on matters of code but also matters of look-and-feel. What seems to have been lost in this mix of new professionalism is what role the visual designer can play to add the most value.

It is true that with so many different areas of expertise impacting on visual layout or design for the web, that the role of the visual designer has sometimes been relegated to making things look pretty or adding a layer of gloss to the ’science’ of web design.

I hope that over the next few years that visual designers will once again be allowed to take their place as the lynch pins of a project as it is designers that are uniquely qualified to bring all of the various web design elements and specialties together and to give them a human quality - emotion.

I think visual designers on the web have copped a bit of a caning and marginalisation in the process of the maturation of the web, and that this is becoming increasingly unfair. From this person, to Michelangelo and Peter Saville visual designers created the cultural artefacts by which we represent ourselves and understand history. Can we lose this in the digital age?

Posted by Maxine on 26/07/06 at 11:51 am | 1 Comment »

Web Directions Closing Keynote: Mark Pesce - You-biquity

Web Directions Closing Keynote: Mark Pesce - You-biquity

When we launched Web Directions this year we intentionally left the closing session on day 2 open in recognition of our belief that epiphanies are worth waiting for. In previous years we’d had the crazed irreverence of The Smackdown, something for which those involved are yet to forgive us, and then last year the excellent Jeff Veen on Building the Next Generation of Web Apps. At the end of two very packed days we think people want something which is content rich, but inspirational and thought provoking. And for ourselves we wanted something which really closed on the theme of this conference: standing on solid technological ground, with our eyes trained on the far horizons.

Anyway, John and I were talking through a few possibilities one day when we just looked at each other and said the same name: Mark Pesce. Or so the story goes.

Mark is a pioneering thinker, writer and speaker on media and technology, renowned internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web to invent VRML. He was enticed to Australia to chair the Emerging Media and Interactive Design Program at the world-renowned Australian Film Television and Radio School and has now gone on to receive an appointment as an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, as well as found FutureSt, a Sydney media and technology consultancy. And of course, you may know him from such ABC programs as The New Inventors. He’s such a perfect fit for how we wanted to close WD06 this year that we couldn’t believe it when he said yes.

So, we’re really excited to announce that this year WD06 will be closing with Mark Pesce on You-biquity.

It’s time to revisit the entire philosophy of interaction design on the Web, time to move the focus away from the site-as-resource, toward an idea of the site-as-personal-enabler. What we each bring to a website - or rather, what we should bring to a website - is a wealth of information about ourselves. This is the real resource of Web2.0, and the next place the Web is going. The exuberance around social networks shows us that people want to connect - it’s time for designers to build the tools which will truly enable that connection.

Posted by Maxine on 25/07/06 at 11:09 am | No Comments »

Web Directions presents Ben Barren of gnoos.com.au in Melbourne August 10th

Following the tremendous success of our recent evening with Lars Rasmussen and Dean Jackson in Sydney, Web Directions is excited to announce our first ever event in Melbourne, an evening with Ben Barren of gnoos.com.au, speaking about the trials and tribulations of setting up an Internet business in 2006 along with Web Direction’s own John Allsopp talking about Microformats, one of the hottest topics in web development.

Ben Barren

After spending over a decade working in online media for groups such as ninemsn and Sensis, in early 2005 Ben Barren co-founded Feedcorp Pty Ltd, with the aim of bringing the best of Web 2.0 Downunder. Hear about Ben’s experience of launching gnoos.com.au - Australia’s first local blog and media search engine - and the trials and tribulations of setting up an Internet business in 2006. The role of developers, designers, and product planners, will all be discussed.

John Allsopp

Software and web developer, writer, speaker, and standards evangelist John Allsopp has been working with new web development technologies since his infatuation with CSS nearly a decade ago. During the last couple of years, he’s focussed more closely on semantics for the world wide web, which lead him to microformats soon after their conception.

Find out what the heck these microformats things are anyway, why you should care about them, and how you can use them right now without breaking any browsers, taking advantage of all that HTML know-how you already have.

If you work with the web, we know you’ll be enthused, inspired, and informed by what you hear, and it’s also a great opportunity to meet other interesting and talented people who work in your industry.

We’ll be providing finger food for the night, and there’ll be a cash bar if you feel like a drink.

You’ll also have the chance to win a ticket to the Web Directions Conference later this year in Sydney, valued at $850, as well as places at our exclusive breakfast with web guru Molly Holzschlag.

Details

What: Web Directions presents Ben Barren from gnoos.com.au and John Allsopp from westciv and Web Directions

When: 6.00pm for 6.30pm Thursday August 10 2006

Where:Bell’s Hotel and Brewery, 157 Moray St, CNR with Coventry, South Melbourne

Cost: Free, but please RSVP info@webdirections.org

Tags wd06 gnoos.com.au Ben Barren John Allsopp microformats

Posted by John on 5/07/06 at 7:58 pm | 4 Comments »

Early Bird Pricing finishing Tuesday July 4

A quick note to let you know that early bird pricing of $750 for the conference finishes next Tuesday July 4 at midnight (we’ve extended it for a few days to let you take advantage of the discount for the next financial year). But, you do have to register before midnight Tuesday for the discount. If you need to get your conference fees into this years budget or tax year, remember June 30 (tomorrow) is the end of financial year in Australia. If you want to account for the conference in the next financial year, then you can register now to pay later, or register before Tuesday night to get the early bird pricing.

If you register for the conference now, you can always register for workshops later and still get the conference attendee discount of $100 off per workshop.

If you are in Sydney, hope to see you tonight at our evening with Lars Rasmussen and Dean Jackson at the CBD Hotel. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Posted by John on 29/06/06 at 11:59 am | No Comments »

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