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Web Directions South 2007 » Uncategorized

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Mark Pesce on the iPhone

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

It should come as no surprise to anyone who heard Mark Pesce speak at Web Directions that he’d be excited by the iPhone. The reality, people who have beendead for several years are excited by the iPhone. Anyway, Mark is one of the web’s deep thinkers, and excellent writers, and gnerally makes me ashamed of my puerile rantings when I read his erudite pieces.

Mark concludes

While the iPhone both excites and dazzles me with its ingenuity, design and inventiveness, I am not completely satisfied with it. It is still a phone, an iPod, and an “internet communicator” rolled into one. It is not, in any true sense, wholly integrated. There is no way for my friends in San Francisco, with their iPhones, to know what my favorite songs are, or what I’m listening to at the moment, or what I’m reading on the web, or who I’m texting. It is halfway to the social device which I see as the inevitable end point. But the rest is just software. The hardware platform is there, ready and waiting, and will be disrupted by a dozen innovations that no one can yet predict

Check out the whole piece, and listen to his related closing keynote at Web Directions South 2006, Youbiquity (along with slides, and related resources).

By contrast, my puerile piece can be found here.

John

Technorati Tags: iPhone

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Digital Web/Web Directions design competition update

Friday, December 1st, 2006

You’ve got until just Monday to get your designs in for the Digital Web design a snowboard competition, to win a ticket to the conference, trips to Whister on the after conference ski trip, as well as a tonne of other great prices, including 50% off for life on Media Temple’s innovative new grid based web hosting service, a copy of Adobe Studio 8, great books from Friends of Ed, New Rider, iStockPhoto Credit, a copy of BBEdit, and more.

All you need to do is design a snowboard - you can grab a blank from here, and check out the current designs for some inspiration here. They can be stylish, witty, minimal, whatever. I can see myself riding this one

a good mix of style and quirkiness - the way I ride (in my dreams, I think I just ride quirky) but there are other great designs there too.

You’ve got ’til Monday, so block out some time this weekend, and you’ll have a great shot at some greeat prizes.

A big thank you to the wonderful Digital Web magazine for putting together such a great competition!

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Web Directions North Affiliate Program

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Want to come to Web Directions but not sure whether tyou have the budget? We’ve just made it a bit easier for you. We’ve created an opportunity for you to get yourself a free ticket, as well as hotel accomodation and places on the ski trip.

Join our affiliate program and get 4 people to sign up for the conference and we’ll give you a free ticket for youself. And then for every additional 5 after this, we’ll put you up for a night in the conference hotel, or give you a day of skiing and boarding at Blackcomb Whistler - up to you.

All you need to do is get your unique URL from us, and then you can spread the word in whatever way you think is right for you.

To get involved, all you need to do is send us your details via this page and we’ll send you your unique affiliate URL.

Once you have the URL you can promote the conference however you like - and it’s ok to get imaginitive with this. You can simply talk about the conference at your site, and use any of our badges.

Or, it’s absolutely OK to team up with 4 friends, use the URL to sign up, apply for the free ticket, then share the price of the 4 tickets between the 5 of you – this way you each pay just $716 – a 20% discount.

The combination of amazing speakers, fantastic location, and ofter hours events will make Web Directions North about as good as a conference can be. But the connections and friendships that you build there are what will make it even better. Start now with our affiliate program, and see you in Vancouver come February.

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Get creative and win a ticket to Web Directions North with Digital Web Magazine

Tuesday, November 21st, 2006

Our very good friends over at Digital Web Magazine are giving away a ticket to the conference (including a post conference day skiing or snowboarding at Whistler), and two runner up prizes of a day’s skiing or boarding at Whistler.

To win, submit your very own snowboard design! In the grand tradition of pro snowboarders and classic boardsmiths like Burton, Lib Tech, and Sims, we invite you to put your design skills into the most radical snowboard ever! Make it geeky, make it awesome, make it classic—whatever you want, it’s your design.

Not a designer? We’ve got an option for you. Take a photo of yourself on an improvised snowboard of your own invention. Sure, it might not be snow-legal, but it could work in a pinch. The more inventive, the better! Absolutely can’t attend? Enter your design anyway - join the fun! Plus, we just might have some other prizes.

Entry details over at Digital Web - so check ‘em out and start designing. - And here’s a blank to get you started.

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Announcing Webjam 2006 - December 12 at 6.00pm

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

Got a hankering to relive a bit of the Web Directions experience? Missed the conference but keen to stay in touch with the developer community? Like parties? Be there for Webjam on the evening of December 12.

Brought to you by Sydney developers Anson Parker and Lachlan Hardy, Webjam will be a fast paced shoot-out of home-grown innovation where designers, developers, information architects — really anyone in the web industry — will get 3 minutes each to present something they’ve been working on this year.

Come along, have a drink and a bite to eat with your peers and see what Aussie developers have been up to in 2006.

Be the entertainment

What have you been up to? Have you, your team or your company been working on the next big thing? Or maybe you’ve developed a cool new feature for your website. Perhaps you’ve overhauled a creaking old site into a masterpiece of usability and accessibility. Whatever it is, as long as you can tell us about it in 3 minutes, we would love you to come and show it off at Webjam.

The proposition is simple: we provide a laptop, a projector, 3 minutes and a room full of increasingly drunk peers — you do the rest! Register now.

To the voting public, we want you too! You will be the judges, voting on those presentations that educated, impressed or just plain amused. Come along, join us for a Christmas drink and enjoy a display of jaw-dropping technology from the guns of the Australian web development scene.

Details

What: Webjam 2006

When: 6.00pm for 6.30pm Tuesday December 12 2006

Where: Hotel CBD, Jam Bar, Level 4, 52 King Street, Sydney

Cost: Free, but please RSVP

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

World Usability Day

Wednesday, November 8th, 2006

Last year the usability community very cleverly started “World Usability Day” to promote the profession, practice, and importance of usability. This year, WUD is next week, November 14th, and Events are planned around the world, including in Sydney, at the State Library.

The focus is communicating ways of improving the user experience of products and services.

The program includes:

• The benefits of including usability when designing products and services;
• Microsoft’s usability strategy for Office 2007;
• Mobile phone usability and the opportunities for the future; and
• A demonstration of how vision impaired users experience the web and how it can be improved.

This event also provides an opportunity to talk to professionals and learn more about developments in usability.

For more information visit: http://www.worldusabilityday.org/event/show/163

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Web Directions North - Super Early Bird Tickets Now Available

Friday, October 27th, 2006

After months of feverish behind-the-scenes work, putting together a killer program, an amazing lineup of speakers, working on dates, venues, the site, a registration system and more, Web Directions North is now officially open for registrations.

After a fantastic conference in Sydney, we are really excited to be bringing Web Directions to Vancouver. So until November 3rd we are offering an extra special discounted price of just $CDN795, $200 off our standard price, for the first 100 people who sign up. We’ve already had quite a few early registrations, so don’t wait too long.

So take a look a our speaker lineup and program, check your diary, and register now.

We’ll see you in a bit over three months in Vancouver,

Dave, Derek, Maxine and John

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More podcasts and resources online

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

As promised, as they come to hand, more of our podcasts are going online.

We’ve just uploaded, Ben Barren’s “RSS will change everything” and Thomas Vander Wal’s “Information architecture for the come to me web”.

Follow this link to subscribe to our RSS feed for the podcasts.

We also have more and more slides from speakers going online, as well as the live blogging transcripts from each of the sessions at our resources section, and we’ll have full transcripts of all the podcasts soon too.

So don’t let the excitement of Web Directions fade!

Technorati Tags: wd06, podcasts, slideshare

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Laurel Papworth - upcoming courses

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

One of the meany fabulous local speakers at Web Directions this year was Laurel Papworth (whose collection of user generated video content was fantastically entertaining, but whose presentation on building online communities was all the more interesting) is giving two courses in the coming weeks. If they look remotely relevant to what you are doing, I suggest you get along.

MARKETING INTO ONLINE COMMUNITIES

9.00am - 5.00pm Friday 20 October: 1 day

How close to your market are you? The internet has come of age and today’s customers have real time discussions on accepting and rejecting products and services. If you’re eager to understand how to maximise the value of viral marketing to gain and manage a loyal customer community, and minimise the pitfalls of handing your brand (willingly or unwillingly) over to your customers, don’t miss this course! We’ll look at success stories, current and future trends in external marketing and internal communications, and readily available technology to facilitate user generated content within your customer networks.

Details, and full PDF course description

BLOGS AS A PUBLISHING TOOL

9.30am - 4.30pm Saturday 28 October: 1 day

Are you a budding journalist, writer or hobbyist who wants to gain an audience through a web log (blog)? See how others have used blogs to publish their books, such as Baghdad Burning, which was nominated for the BBC Four’s Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction. This course will show you how to start your own blog using free websites, and how to use tags, moderate comments, and add photos and video. We’ll also look at some opportunities available through blogs to make money from your writing.

Details, and full PDF course description

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Web 2.0 T Shirt Competition - Winners!

Wednesday, October 11th, 2006

We had to do a bit of deliberating on this, and between myself and John and REMO there was certainly some controversy. Thanks firstly to all those who entered, and all those who wore their t shirts to the conference.

After many heated arguments and soul searching we decided that the most worthy was Anson Parker’s

WALLET INSPECTR. NIGERIAN DIVISION, and that the two runners up should be Lachlan Hunt’s Wake Me for Web 3.14 and Nick Cowie’s the web is not a power drill. Anson’s got himself a neat little Sony Mylo (just as soon as they get released and Nick and Lachlan have got themselves some more REMO dollars - don’t spend it all on potato guns guys!

In other news, post conference resources are coming in - watch this space…..

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

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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 […]