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Web Directions South 2007 » Uncategorized

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Podcasts and more coming online

Tuesday, October 10th, 2006

Now we’ve all had a little time to recover after the whirlwind of the conference (one day I hope to be able to just relax and enjoy it) we are putting together the resources that emerged from all the marvellous speaker’s sessions.

The first two of our podcasts, recorded and edited by Scott Bryant and Dan Boud, with some great pre production work by Andrew Krespanis, are online now. Sign up to the podcast RSS feed to keep track of these. BTW, we aren’t being cynical by releasing them a few at a time - post production takes time, and we know you simply can’t listen to nearly 20 hours of audio all at once! So as they become available, we’ll get them online.

We are also getting all the presentations transcribed - this will take a little time, and we have, and will have more of, the slides from presenters, along with Andrew K’s live blogging notes - all in all a great set of resources - many many thanks to our presenters for this.

For some of the slides, we are using a really interesting new service - slideshare. It lets you upload openoffice or powerpoint slides (keynote users, export as powerpoint) and makes them available online. It’s really nice, espceically as the service is new, and for us a big step up from PDFs which we’ve been using for a long time. You can comment on the slides too, so get along and start chatting.

For all the resouces, head over to the site, refresh your memory if you were there, or see what you missed out on if you weren’t (and get a sense of what Web Directions North in Vancouver, Canada, in February 2007 will be like.)

john

Technorati Tags: wd06, webdirections, conference

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Announcing the McFarlane Prize winners

Wednesday, October 4th, 2006

Last Thursday, at the end of day 1 of the conference, we announced the winners of the inaugural McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australian Web Design.

We were very honoured to have Nigel McFarlane’s parents at the ceremony, and the Prize was awarded by Nigel’s sister, Colleen.

Congratulations to the web development team from Museum Victoria, winners of the inaugural McFarlane Prize, for Caught and Coloured. It is a beautiful, well developed, usable and accessible site.

Congratulations too to Glass Onion, developers of the The Australian College of Physical Education site - highly commended by the Jury.

Thank you to all the nominees, and a particularly big thank you to Andy Coffey, for his painting “Page Impression” which was awarded to the winners of the prize, and to the Judges for their huge efforts and their expertise in deciding this year’s winner.

We’ll shortly be publishing some comments and thoughts from the Judges regarding the sites they saw - things developers are doing well, things that we could improve. So keep an eye here.

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Web Directions and Web Standards Group presents Jeremy Keith in Melbourne this Thursday

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

Fresh from sellout shows in Sydney, Ireland’s best export since Guinness, Jeremy Keith will be appearing for one night only, in Melbourne, presented by Web Directions and the Web Standards Group.

Centre for Innovation & Technology Commercialisation

Level 1, 257 Collins Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

For more info and to RSVP, see the WSG site

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Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson – What We Learnt Building Campaign Monitor

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Background

• started IT firm ‘Switch IT’ during the first web bubble 2003-2004 approached by more customers to send bulk email
• Always something missing from existing applications – the seed of idea is planted
• Took a few hours per day for 6 months to have a go at building their dream email campaign system
• Designed exclusively for web designers – 15,000 clients so far, 1,000 new users per month, 90 million emails delivered so far.
• Campaign moniter has grown from a project to a small software development company.

Deciding What to Build

• Knew there was a problem, knew how to fix it.
• Mentions example of 37signals and Basecamp – solving your own problem first, then making it available for others.
• Don’t try to please everybody
• Chose to target a small group of customers – in this instance, web designers. This choice allows you to develop the killer features that are perfect for that market.
• Kill the bloat your chosen market doesn’t need.
• Shows example of trying to do everything – ‘Constant Contact’ – requires 83 fields to be filled to send an email. Campagin Monitor uses one field by allowing designers to point to URL of their own email design
• More chance of creating passionate users – “It’s almost like it was built just for me”

Pricing Your Application

• Many people don’t think about pricing until the end; or throw it up for free and add a ‘beta’ tag
• Investigate competitors, but you don’t need to be the cheapest. If your biggest draw point is price, that can quickly fail.
• If you solve the problem better, don’t be afraid to charge more.
• Keep charges simple – charge in a way that is best for your users rather than best for you. Eg: no monthly charge on campaign monitor, charging by email recipient instead. Simple pricing model has worked for them to get more good publicity
• Try before you buy: C.M. allows campaigns to go to 5 subscribers for free.

Build the Sucker

• Identify ‘Need to Have’ features – light, agile.
• Give yourself a version 1 deadline and stick to it
• Use it yourself – Eat your own dogfood. This allows you to find the UI elements and features that may annoy future clients. Will result in a smoother, less frustrating end-user experience.
• If you’re not going to make your self-imposed deadline, re-asses the Must Have feature list and consider leaving some for a later iteration
• Early feedback: REAL customers. Iterate, iterate, iterate. Don’t dismiss this early feedback just because it might be opposed to what you thought they would want. Flickr given as an example – started as a game with a photo sharing app on the side. Photo app became much more popular, so Ludicorp dropped the game and kept with flickr.
• Technology is irrelevant – solve the problem and clients will be happy

Marketing and Support

• Make an app worth talking about – word of mouth is golden.
• Update religiously, be transparent. Shows community and activity around application, this in turn breeds confidence in potential users.
• If you’ve chosen to fix a problem for a small market, it is easier to market directly to them. Eg: tool for designers advertised on design sites
• Promotion through education – write about your industry to draw new traffic. More trust.
• Export Market Development Grant available in Australia to assist with international marketing and pushing your new product
• Feel their pain – Ben and Dave still do all their customer support.
• Opposite time zone troubles – provide a comprehensive help system within the application; increase the chance of the users helping themselves. Let them know what time it is where you are, eg: it’s 2:37am in Sydney right now

Technorati Tags: wd06, raw notes, campaign monitor

Posted in Uncategorized, notes | 3 Comments »

Notes from the Front Line

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

The following posts will be in raw note form for now so as to allow me to keep up with the presentations while getting as much online as possible. When I get some more this evening I will come back and expand upon the points.

Caution: falling character debris…

Technorati Tags: wdo6, raw notes

Posted in Uncategorized, events | 4 Comments »

Introducing Web Directions North - Feb 6-10 2007 Vancouver

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

Dave Shea, Derek Featherstone, Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp are proud to annouce Web Directions North 2007. Workshops, a two day conference featuring an amazing lineup of speakers, and two days of skiing and boarding (or just relaxing) at Blackcomb/Whistler.

All the details are available right now at the Web Directions North site.

Tickets will be on sale very soon, but email us at north@webdirections. and you’ll get first dibs on the limited number of early-booking discounted tickets, at CAD$795, which is $200 CDN off our standard rate.

Start planning now for what will really be a fantastic event.

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Wanted! Technical Editor (Web Design & Development)

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Sitepoint, Melbourne based publishing company, and platinum sponsors of Web Directions South, are looking for a web design and development expert technical editor to join their team. Read on if you are interested.

Technical Editor for Sitepoint

Want to work with the team behind one of the most popular web sites in the world and fastest growing companies in Australia?

If you’re a passionate Web enthusiast who loves tinkering with cutting edge technologies, and would like to help shape the future direction of sitepoint.com and our products, this is the one you’ve been waiting for…

As a technical editor working with our product team in Melbourne you will be responsible for helping SitePoint create best-of-breed educational publications for a world-wide audience of budding Web Developers and Designers.

Experience in as many Web technologies as possible is required, such as CSS, JavaScript, HTML, AJAX, PHP, and Ruby on Rails, along with an understanding and appreciation of Web Standards, and programming fundamentals. Excellent writing, editing and organizational skills are a must.

We’re looking for someone who is passionate about the Web, thrives on quality, and has a flare for teaching others through their writing.

To express your interest in this position, simply fill in our online questionnaire.

If we think you’ve got what it takes, we’ll invite you in for a chat to tell you more about this fantastic opportunity.

ABOUT SITEPOINT

SitePoint is a fast growing online media company and information provider targeting the Web professional market, specifically Web Developers and Designers. The company has five major revenue streams: advertising and sponsorship, content-based products (both online and in retail), software, and more recently streaming video subscriptions and classified listings.

sitepoint.com is currently the 275th most popular web site in the world, attracting millions of loyal visitors every month, and outranking well known Australian media properties such as ninemsn.com. (Source: Alexa.com)

SitePoint was recently recognized back-to-back in the 2004 and 2005 BRW FAST 100, Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and Deloitte Asia Pacific Fast 500 as one of Australia’s fastest growing companies.

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Web Directions T shirts and T shirt slogan competition

Monday, September 18th, 2006

We announced our “Web Direction’s design your own web 2.0 t shirt slogan and wear it to the conference” competition a few days ago. Sadly, because a trailing slash is sometimes important (well, the absence of it is), the link in that post was broken. So one more time, here is the story - start sharpening your wits, and you can win great stuff, plus make other people smile.

The last couple of years, the number one request has been for conference tee shirts. So we are excited to announce the Web Directions Tee Shirts, featuring our new logo, designed by guru and web superstar, Dave “CSS Zen Garden” Shea, available online now.

You can of course get a straightforward web directions tee shirt (in a range of long and short sleeve styles), but in the spirit of “user generated content” you can also customise it, with your own Web 2.0 inspired slogan, and we’ll be awarding prizes to the slogans which make us smile or even laugh the most.

The shirts are available through the Remo General Store, and come with free delivery. All you need to do is head over to to the Remo General Store where it’s all explained. Remo will deliver your shirt free of charge, ready to wear to WD06!

Prizes for making us laugh at the overhyped “web 2.0″ concept include a SONY Mylo, as well as Remo dollars, and other cool stuff.

Tee shirts are just $AUD38.50 (in GST), long sleeve $44, and singlets (hey, it’s warm here in Sydney) $36.30, including your customized slogan in a very Web 2.0 font, and delivery to your door.

Hope you enjoy, and looking forward to your cool slogans on show.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

Got the developer skills? Then you can “name your price”

Friday, September 15th, 2006

Yesterday I was having a chat with someone from a large Australian site who do all kinds of interesting work. They’d have to be close to one of the largest Australian sites in terms of traffic, and do lots of innovative stuff. We were talking about how easy, or otherwise it is to find people to work for them, or even with them.

We got round to the issue of Ajax/Javascript, and the conclusion was “if you have good Javascript skills, you can name your price”.

In fact, I think that’s true even more generally - if you are a good, knowledgeable, standards based developer - if you know your XHTML and CSS, and particularly if you can throw some scripting into the mix, then you’ll be beating clients and employers away with sticks.

In fact, people frequently approach me to ask whether we know anyone who meets their needs, either for some freelance or for a full time job. Sometimes we can help out, but not infrequently, even we are stumped.

The demand is out there - but do you have the skills to meet those needs?

Here in Australia, it can be hard to get good training. That’s why a lot of us are self taught, but it’s also why we’ve put together the workshops we have at web directions this year.

Two in particular might really be useful for helping you meet the needs of the market right now (though in truth, they’ll all be good for that).

Ajax - buzzword du jour

Few people know more about Javascript, DOM scripting and Ajax than Jeremy Keith. At Web Directions, Jeremy is doing a whole day workshop on this area, DOM Scripting and Ajax. So, do yourself a favour, and don’t miss this really rare opportunity.

Web Design - you aint seen nothing yet

If design more than development is your thing, then few people won’t benefit from a whole day with two of the web’s best educators, writers and designers - Molly Holzschlag and Andy Clarke. In Extreme Standards Molly and Andy talk about “Using markup and CSS to create detailed, aesthetic and progressive site designs”. If you are a web designer, even if you think you know all there is to know about CSS, take a look at the outcomes for the day, and you won’t be disappointed.

Opportunity knocks

Australia is a long way for international speakers to come, that’s why we just don’t get the chance to see speakers of this calibre from overseas very often. We’ve already got a great turnout for all our workshops, but there still are some places. So take another look at the workshops, but just don’t kick yourself for missing out!

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Announcing the Sitepoint closing party for Web Directions

Monday, September 4th, 2006

Last year, our impromptu closing night drinks at the Pumphouse Hotel Darling Harbour [1] was a great success. Tired but elated after three days of workshops and the conference, having packed up and left the venue, I walked down to the pub expecting to see a few people having a good time, and found a couple of hundred having a great time.

This year, Sitepoint have quite literally come to the party, making it an official closing night event. There’ll be drinks tokens you can win throughout the conference, and for everyone who comes to the party, as well as finger food, and DJs Cam “the man in blue” Adams, and Lucas from Sitepoint (you can catch him in Melbourne at the legendary Black Cat Cafe on Brunswick street from time to time).

So, if you are coming from out of town, get a late flight home, or even better stay another night, to get the chance to get to know others at the conference even better.

And a huge thank you to Sitepoint for all their support, and in this case making Web Directions even better.

[1]So named because it used to be the pumphouse for Sydney’s water based hydraulic system, which powered lifts and other heavy machine before electricity.

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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 […]