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Geek Trivia Night

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Know who invented the Internet? Any ideas what WWW stands for? Clued up on who the first blogger was?

If so, keep August 9th free, as News Digital Media and Web Directions are hosting a night of networking for fun and profit on August 9 at the Vault Hotel in Sydney. Compete with your peers in a world first: a trivia night where all the questions will focus on the web, tech, and online life.

There’ll be free drinks and food and all manner of awesome prizes, so be sure to RSVP now as numbers are most certainly limited.

Don’t worry about forming teams or otherwise, this will all get sorted out on the night. Just bring yourself and your friends, and a bag to carry home all your bounty.

What: Geek Trivia Night

When: August 9, from 5.30 for 6.15 start

Who: Anyone who thinks they could have a stab at answering the question “Who invented the internet?”

Where: Downstairs at the Vault Hotel, 122 Pitt St Sydney (Map)

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Social media and government 2.0 at Web Directions South this year

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

A while back I was browsing George Oates’ blog when I came across a reference to a pioneering project happening right here in Australia at the Powerhouse Museum, where, to put it briefly, the collection has been opened to public contribution through tagging. The project, which has been widely recognised and applauded, is being run by Sebastian Chan, a name I recalled from listening to so many Tuesday afternoons on 2SER Radio.

It’s very exciting to announce then the latest addition to the Web Directions South program for 2007: Sebastian Chan on Social media and government 2.0. Come along to hear why the museum has made these very successful forays into social media, and how a small in-house web development unit was able to push through and launch a project which is counted among Australia’s top web 2.0 applications. If you work in a large organisation and have dreams of social media, do not miss this session.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

New addition to program - Javascript and other coding for good or evil

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

We’re very pleased to announce an addition to our already full program for Web Directions South 2007 - Andrew Downie and Grant Focas from the DET’s Centre for Learning Innovation will now be presenting a session on coding, and in particular the use of Javascript, for accessibility, in our development track.

Andrew provides adaptive technology resources to staff and students at the NSW Department of Education and Training, where Grant has long been a keen advocate of web standards.

Their presentation, Javascript and other coding for good or evil, will be an important session, helping attendees to go back to their workplace armed with hands on techniques that ensure the projects they work on are available to the widest possible audience. A big thanks to Andrew and Grant, and all our speakers, for giving so generously of their time and expertise.

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McFarlane Prize 2007 - nominations now open

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Nominations have just opened for the McFarlane Prize for 2007. This prize for excellence in Australian web design will be awarded to an Australian designer or team for a site launched or significantly upgraded between August 1 2006 and July 31 2007.

The winner of the prize will be announced during Web Directions South, on September 27.

In 2006, its first year, the prize was an enormous success, bringing attention as it did to web standards and accessibility, in combination with excellence in user experience design, and giving recognition to those people and organisations who genuinely address these areas in their work.

A very high standard was set with the entries last year, but we fully expect that standard to be exceeded in 2007.

Full details are available at the McFarlane Prize site, but key dates are as follows:

August 31 - Nominations close

September 22 - Shortlist announced

September 27 - Winner of the McFarlane Prize for 2007 announced

Very much looking forward to what everyone has been doing these last 12 months.

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So much to learn, so little time

Friday, July 13th, 2007

OK, I’ll be the first to admit to having played fast and loose with the law at various stages of my career. But, I’ve largely worked as an individual, or as part of a very small, under resourced organisation.

There is no excuse at all for playing fast and loose when you are the marketing department of a major international telecommunications company, or the people who run their marketing campaigns for them.

Things like this really should not happen. The fact that they do shows a disturbing lack of knowledge on the part of every person who signed off on it. I suspect no lawyer looked at it at all, as checking that model releases had been obtained would be the most basic due diligence. However, anyone in the creative industries, particularly the commercial creative industries, should know about them as well.

I doubt any legal action will come of this, and that’s really not the point. However I would like to think that someone who thought they were pretty clever and funny, is now feeling pretty damn stupid.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

New workshop for September 25 - Beginning Ruby on Rails

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

Maintaining what has become a tradition, we have a late addition to the Web Directions South Workshop program for this year: Dr Nic Williams will be hosting Beginning Ruby on Rails on Tuesday September 25.

Anyone involved with the web would be aware of the phenomenal growth in popularity over the last several years of this full-featured, industrial-strength framework for building web applications.

The really good news for developers who are keen to give it a go is that it is very fast to learn and get started. Useful web apps can be developed after one or two days of education. This workshop is an outstanding opportunity to get that education right here in Australia with one of the most well respected members of the Ruby on Rails community, Dr Nic Williams.

The full day workshop will be perfect for anyone who has a desire to find out more about Ruby on Rails, and put it into practice.

If you have

• basic programming skills in any language
• an understanding of object-orientation
• knowledge of database design and access using SQL

then don’t miss this chance to participate in an enlightening, practical day that will stand you in good stead as you move deeper into developing apps with this new framework.

Beginning Ruby on Rails is priced very reasonably at $395 for conference attendees, or attendees of another workshop, $495 standalone.

If you are already attending the conference or another workshop, just register for this new one with the same address and the discount will be applied automatically. And please do get in touch if you would like to swap into Beginning Ruby on Rails from another workshop, as this can be arranged, no problem.

Beginning Ruby on Rails - Sept 25, 9.00am-5.00pm

About Dr Nic Williams

Register Now

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Danah Boyd in Australia

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007

If you have any interest at all in the future of online social networking, and in particular its implications for the education sector, don’t miss this upcoming Education.AU seminar:

Danah Boyd: Generation MySpace - Social networking and its impact on students and education



Danah, an internationally recognised authority on the way people use networked social media, will discuss critical issues such as

• What today’s youth are really doing online and does it matter?
• What are the trends in technologies and social networking we need to be aware of?
• What does this mean for work in the 21st Century?
• What does this mean about Gen X, Y learners?
• What opportunities are educators missing out on if they don’t engage?

I’ve seen Danah speak a few times at SXSW. She comes from an academic background, but has an outstanding ability to see phenomena such as MySpace and other aspects of online life in their broader historical and cultural context. I really think it will be a great day.

• August 6 - Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre
• August 8 - Melbourne RACV Club, 17th Floor 501 Bourke Street Melbourne.

Check the Education.AU site for full details.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Community

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

While it didn’t make it to the list, I fear this word has probably become so widely and thoughtlessly used as to render it meaningless, so it probably should have a place on this other list. However, for want of a better term, I shall push on regardless.

I’m sitting here going through my database of previous attendees, thinking about how to do a final mailout about the June 30 deadline for early bird pricing. Looking through all these names always gets me thinking about the first time we ran a web development conference here in Australia, what seems like centuries ago. How humble it was, and its 220 attendees, its single track, its presentations on topics which seemed so vital then, so quaint now.

There’s a lot I could say about that content, and how it has changed so much over the intervening years. How sessions such as User Experience in Online Communities and Ajax or Flash: what’s right for you?, not to mention Mashups, Web Apps and APIs would not even have been bleeding edge. We simply did not have the vocabulary to express these ideas in 2004. What’s great to see is how quickly, and even painlessly, this revolution has happened.

But what I really want to take this opportunity to do is thank those 220 people who did find out about us and come along in 2004. Without you 2007 most likely would not be happening at all, or it would be some massive product oriented event run by some faceless corporation, possibly not even based in Australia.

Without being creepy about it, you were our true founders.

What’s great to see is that at the same time as the idea of an online community has taken off and spawned more web applications than anyone cares to think about, a genuine offline community has found fertile ground, and flourished here in Australia. I’m intrigued by the relationship between these two communities, the online and the offline: the nodes at which they connect to each other, and how we as individuals pass seamlessly through the porous barrier that separates them, what we leave behind, what we take with us.

Stay tuned.

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Looking for a place to party till dawn after Web Directions?

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

Don’t just stand around like a pork chop after the closing night party! Impress your newly found friends by whipping out your Opera Mini and pulling up this bookmarked Gridskipper post: Drink Till Dawn in Sydney. Time was when rubbing shoulders with the doyennes of The Taxi Club was your only option, but I’m here to tell you that those days are over.

Enjoy! But remember all things in moderation, don’t forget Web Hack on Saturday morning - more info about that coming real soon.

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Westciv free self paced courses back online

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

This week Westciv is restarting the free course program, kicking off with the brand new edition of their CSS Level 1 course.

CSS Level 1 starts with the absolute foundations of CSS and standards based web development so it’s probably a little too basic for regular readers of this blog. However, I thought it was worth posting about here for you to pass around the office to anyone who might be interested in learning a bit about the code from the ground up.

All it takes is to come back to the site every Monday for 10 minutes or so over the next 12 weeks, to get a really solid grounding in hand coding of CSS, and a deep understanding of all the principles of standards based web development.

So if you know anyone who might benefit, do pass this on to them.

http://www.westciv.com/courses/free/index.html.

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Conference

Register now for the early bird price

$895

Testimonials

• Coming from a large Government department I found that the choice and range of topics were extremely useful and relevant. – Ruth Ellison, Dept of Immigration and Citizenship
• New ideas, new ways of working and some great perspectives on where the web industry was going. – Gavin Jacobi, Freelance developer

News

• Discount Pricing and McFarlane Prize deadline

  Just a quick reminder about two deadlines happening this Friday at midnight:
  
  Discount pricing for Web Directions South ending
  
  If you work in the web industry, you’ve got until Friday at midnight to get tickets to the event of the year here in Sydney for just $895.
  
  Remember too - it’s ok to register now and pay later […]

• Full programme now online

  Quick note to let you know that the full, (highly microformatted) conference programme is now online (and downloadable for any application which supports hCalendar/iCalendar through the magic of microformats and Brian Suda’s X2V).
  
  With three tracks to choose from, you’ll have a month to work out what you want to see. The three rooms are very […]