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Web Directions South 2007 » 2006

Archive for 2006

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Cameron Adams and Kevin Yank - JavaScript APIs & Mashups

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Cameron Adams and Kevin Yank

Presentation slides

Session description

Adding JavaScript to your portfolio used to mean more work. Thanks to the wide range of APIs springing up from the likes of Google (Mail, Maps, Ads, Calendar, Search, etc.), Yahoo! (Flickr, Maps, Search, etc.) and Microsoft (Virtual Earth), JavaScript can actually save you a lot of work these days. JavaScript veterans Cameron Adams (The Man In Blue) and Kevin Yank (SitePoint) will take a whirlwind (and somewhat irreverant) tour of the "free stuff" you get from JavaScript today, and the creative things people are doing with it.

About Cameron Adams and Kevin Yank

Cameron Adams

Cameron Adams has a degree in law and one in science; naturally he chose a career in Web development. When pressed, he labels himself a “Web Technologist” because he likes to have a hand in graphic design, JavaScript, CSS, Perl (yes, Perl), and anything else that takes his fancy that morning. While running his own business he’s consulted and worked for numerous government departments, nonprofit organisations, large corporations and tiny startups.

Cameron is one of the founders and judges of the Web Standards Awards – a site that aims to promote web site design using W3C standards by seeking out and highlighting the finest standards-compliant sites on the Internet. He has also written a book – The JavaScript Anthology – which is one of the most complete question and answer resources on modern JavaScript techniques.

You can see more of Cameron’s design work on his portfolio, and if you’re interested his services are available for hire.

Cameron lives in Melbourne, Australia, where – between coding marathons – he likes to play soccer and mix some tunes for his irate neighbours.

Kevin Yank

Kevin Yank is a professional know-it-all. As Technical Director of sitepoint.com, he keeps abreast of all that is new and exciting in the world of web technology. He oversees all of SitePoint’s technical publications - books, articles, newsletters and blogs - but is best known for his book, Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL, now in its third edition.

Kevin also writes The SitePoint Tech Times, a free e-mail newsletter first published in November 2000 that goes out to over 120,000 subscribers worldwide every two weeks, and regularly contributes to SitePoint’s blogs.

Kevin is thinly spread in his spare time, performing improvised comedy with Impro Melbourne, co-producing the Lost Out Back podcast, contributing to open source projects like the BlogBridge feed reader and flying light aircraft whenever he can afford to.

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Derek Featherstone - Designing for Accessibility

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Derek Featherstone

Session description

A combination of practical "how-to" examples alongside several "how-not-to" cases from real accessibilty assessments and testing sessions.

About Derek Featherstone

Engaging, surprising, and inspiring, Derek Featherstone has a gift for taking a fresh look at virtually every aspect of web development and teaching it in a way that renews our passion for making the web better for everyone. Featherstone is an internationally-known authority on accessibility and web development, and a respected technical trainer, and author.

Creator of in-depth courses on HTML, CSS, DOM Scripting, and Web 2.0 applications, his approach never fails to champion the cause of web standards and universal accessibility. As founder of Furtherahead, he has been an in-demand consultant to government agencies, educational institutions and private sector companies since 1999. His wealth of experience and insight enables him to provide audiences with immediately applicable, brilliantly simple approaches to everyday challenges in website design. He serves on the Accessibility and DOM Scripting Task Forces of the Web Standards Project, and comments on a variety of subjects at the popular boxofchocolates.ca.

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Jeremy Keith - Explaining Ajax

Monday, October 9th, 2006

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• s
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Jeremy Keith

Presentation slides

Session description

Apart from being the buzzword de jour, what is this Ajax stuff that everyone is talking about? Take a look at some implementations out there and start thinking about how Ajax can add value to your site.

About Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith is a web developer with the web consultancy firm Clearleft in Brighton, England where he enjoys building accessible, elegant websites using the troika of web standards: XHTML, CSS and the DOM. His online home is adactio.com.

Jeremy is a member of the Web Standards Project where he serves as joint leader of the DOM Scripting Task Force. He wrote the book DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model.

When he’s not building websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the alt.country band Salter Cane. He is also the creator and curator of one of the Web’s largest online communities dedicated to Irish traditional music, The Session.

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Cheryl Lead and Ben Buchanan - Moving your organisation to web standards

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides (Ben Buchanan)
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Cheryl Lead and Ben Buchanan

Presentation slides

Session description

This was one of our most loved sessions last year, so much so that we decided to do it again this year, with some new faces, some new experiences. With speakers from both government/education as well as the private sector, get advice from those who’ve already been there on dealing with recalcitrant management, teams members and agencies, building by stealth and making incremental change.

About Cheryl Lead and Ben Buchanan

Cheryl Lead

Cheryl Lead is the Online Manager at Virgin Money and was responsible for driving the design and development of the redesigned Virgin Credit Card site and the recently launched Virgin Home Loan website. She is a strong champion of accessibility, usability and web standards. Her key drivers were to ensure that they are optimally accessible to the largest client base, and clearly and simply designed to encourage people to navigate through complex product documentation to gather information and apply online, as well as reflecting the Virgin brand values and sense of fun.

Ben Buchanan

Ben Buchanan started creating web pages ten years ago while completing a degree in everything but I.T. He started working as a web developer in 1999 and was the Web Standards Developer at Griffith University for six years (2000-2006). He worked with a wide range of clients within the University and was involved with the development of three generations of the Griffith website.

Ben Buchanan is known as a passionate web standards and accessibility advocate through his work, public speaking and writing at the 200ok weblog. He now works as a Frontend Developer for News Interactive.

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Donna Maurer - IA: a "how to"

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Donna Maurer

Presentation slides

Session description

There are 2 aspects to making IA work in a project - an understanding of the key principles of information architecture and a knowledge of activities to put them into practice. This presentation will examine the "how to’s" of information architecture. We’ll look at how to take a content inventory, analyse content, conduct card sorting, analyse user research, choose the right structure, create an information architecture and test it. These activities drive an informed design process so you can be confident in your decisions and communicate them to other people.

About Donna Maurer

Donna Maurer is a freelance interaction designer and information architect who specialises in making complex systems simple for people to use. She has loads of experience, with more than 6 years in senior consulting and in-house roles. She has designed intranets, websites, e-commerce sites, search systems, business applications and a content management system. She has conducted so much user research she can’t count it but knows she has facilitated more than 200 usability tests. She continually surprises her colleagues by talking to people rather than computers, and using as many coloured markers as possible.

Donna is an experienced speaker and has presented sessions and workshops at many events, including the Information Architecture Summit. She is currently writing a book on card sorting.

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Thomas Vander Wal - IA for Web Developers

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• About Thomas Vander Wal

Presentation slides

Session description

Thomas will provide an overview of information architecture for web designers and developers. He will cover the what and why, with a sprinkling of how. Knowing how to work with an information architect or how to build the skills into your role will be covered.

About Thomas Vander Wal

Thomas Vander Wal has a broad background in information management, which encompasses information architecture, interaction design, web development and information design. Thomas has 18 years of professional experience in the web and technology sector. He has spoken on information architecture, interaction design, accessibility, web standards, and user-centered design at IA Summit, STC, SXSW, Design Engaged, WebVisions, BayCHI, and various workshops. Thomas helped found Boxes and Arrows and the Information Architecture Institute (Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture), and is currently on the Steering Committee for the Web Standards Project. In 2004 he coined the term Folksonomy and is researching, advising, and developing tagging systems and services. He is the founder and principal of InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., a web consulting and product development firm.

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John Allsopp - Microformats

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About John Allsopp

Presentation slides

Session description

The problem of bringing richer semantics to the world wide web has been challenging standards bodies and developers for several years. Approaches like “The Semantic Web” promise much, but require us to throw away the accumulated efforts, skills and tools of more than a decade. Over the last year or two, an evolutionary approach to richer semantics for today’s web, based on HTML, current developer practices, and tools, called Microformats, has been spreading like wildfire among tool developers, and web publishers large and small.

In this presentation John Allsopp looks at why microformats are necessary, what organisations like Yahoo! are doing with them, and how your organisation can benefit from them right now.

About John Allsopp

John Allsopp is a founder of Westciv, an Australian web software development and training company, which provides some of the best CSS resources and tutorials on the web. Westciv’s software and training are used in dozens of countries around the World.

The head developer of the leading cross platform CSS editor, Style Master, John has written on web development issues for numerous web and print publications and was one of the earliest members of the Web Standards Project.

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Mark Pesce - Youbiquity

Monday, October 9th, 2006

These resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Share Alike License

• MP3 of presentation
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Mark Pesce

Presentation slides

Session description

The collection of social and information technologies informally known as Web2.0 have created a rich universe of applications - but a scattershot one. We plug lots of our information into websites everywhere - MySpace and Digg, Friendster and Yahoo!, and everywhere, Google, Google, Google. Yet it’s as if we’re spending all of our time building information silos; piles of data which are essentially unconnected. It’s getting dull. How many times do I need to list my friends, or my contact information, or my favorite bands?

We know why it’s happening: commercial interests are overruling the natural pooling and sharing of information that would actually bring some utility to this mountain of data we’re generating about ourselves. Yet the pressure to share is building up: the recent explosive emergence of mash-ups, which juxtapose two or three or more services in unique and valuable ways shows us that the hybrid always trumps the thoroughbred. And that’s just on internet services. Very few of us control the mountain of data we generate as we pass through this world - everyone wants it (for their own purposes), yet we - who are creating it - never have access to it.

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.

About Mark Pesce

Known internationally as the man who fused virtual reality with the World Wide Web to invent VRML, Mark Pesce has been exploring the frontiers of media and technology for a quarter of a century. The author of five books and numerous articles, Pesce has written for WIRED, Feed, Salon, PC Magazine, and The Age. For the last two seasons, Pesce has been a panelist on the hit ABC show The New Inventors. From 2003 to 2006, Pesce chaired the Emerging Media and Interactive Design Program at the world-renowned Australian Film Television and Radio School. In February he received an appointment as an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, and has gone on to found FutureSt, a Sydney media and technology consultancy.

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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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