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maxine | Web Directions

Posts by Maxine Sherrin

Shall we click bracelets?

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• March 19th, 2008

OK, off the cuff I'm troubled by all the references to girls and fairies in this interview with Chris Heatherly, Disney's VP of Technology and Innovation, but there is mention of an innovative solution to a real problem. That problem being risks to personal security of children brought ...

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Donald Norman takes on 37Signals

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• March 18th, 2008

Or should that be 37Signals takes on Donald Norman? Responding to a Wired Magazine article in which he was quoted as saying that the kind of simplicity embodied in the products of organisations like 37Signals was overrated, Donald Norman blogs Now, I have always admired 37signals. Nice website, intelligent articles. ...

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Scott Gledhill - Real world web standards

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Those initial stages of converting your company to web standards are much like trying to score that first kiss with the princess. You seduce them with the business benefits of web-standards development, and the rest of the arguments we have all read, written, and preached to anyone who will listen. But getting corporate web standards in place is just a sign that the real relationship is about to begin. The honeymoon is over, and now it’s time to figure out what has gone wrong and why the prince and princess now seem to be constantly bickering—when they were meant to live happily ever after.

Scott draws on his experiences leading the development of eight large media web sites for News Digital Media to examine the ideals of web standards and how they translate within a large organisation. Learn how to make web standards work for you, when rules must be broken and how to deliver a final product that meets deadlines and still keeps project teams happy.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• strategy
• web standards

Robert Hoekman Jr - The essential elements of great web applications

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008, or in Canberra at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, May 19 2008.

Most great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet — can you achieve them consistently in your own projects?

In this closing keynote, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders) describes the seven qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve each and every one of them by learning to communicate through design. See why it’s important to build only what’s absolutely essential, apply instructive design, create error-proof interactions, surface commonly-used features, and more in this informative session that will change the way you work and enable your users to walk away from your software feeling productive, respected, and smart.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• interaction design
• user experience
• web apps

Ralph Douglas - GovDex: Collaborating online in a secure environment

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

This session will look at the government collaborative tool Govdex, how it is currently used by agencies, what it provides, and how you can use it for your projects. GovDex is a resource developed by the Department of Finance and Deregulation to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios and jurisdictions.

GovDex, managed by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in the Department of Finance & Deregulation, promotes effective and efficient information sharing, which is core to achieving collaboration. It provides governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms. GovDex is a key enabler to a whole of government approach to IT service development and deployment.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• government

Patrick Lee - One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Whoever you are, if you’re writing JavaScript, there’s some aspect of your development that you would love to change if you had the chance. But the reality is you’ll never find yourself working in this ideal environment: dealing with legacy browsers, platforms and content management systems will be your constant as a developer. Patrick Lee is going to show you some tools and techniques that will help you make your peace with this fact.

This session will explore how you can find ways to do the cool stuff you really want to do with JavaScript whilst working in the real world. And you won’t even have to sell your soul in the process.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• CMS
• coding
• forms
• javascript

Oliver Weidlich - The mobile web user experience - we’re starting to get it right!

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Historically the mobile web has been a terrible experience, but things are starting to change. Really! We are now at the point that the mobile web is becoming easier to access, both on-deck & off-deck, there’s useful & tailored services out there, and killing some time on the train home doesn’t cost more than your weekly train ticket. We’ll check out the latest and greatest in the world of mobile web and what makes them different from the others. We will also cover the important things to keep in mind for making a better mobile web customer experience.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• design
• mobile
• user experience

Matthew Hodgson - Social computing for knowledge management

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

The world is abuzz with social computing: Facebook, My Space, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, blogs, wikis and other spaces powered by Web 2.0 technology. It’s a social revolution, empowering individuals to communicate, share what they know online, and help others locate information that is important to them in both their private and working lives.

Some see all this as a big waste of corporate time, but is it? Is there value in handing over control of collaboration and sharing knowledge to individuals, rather than hoarding it in records systems, knowledge systems, and thousands of network dive folders? Is there a way you can harness this social revolution to help improve our organisation’s knowledge management practices? Is there actually a solid business value proposition for social computing?

Matthew will look at knowledge management in modern organisations, and how you can benefit by learning from the principles of social computing and Web 2.0 technologies. Matthew will introduce two case studies in government that demonstrate successful and not-so-successful ways of employing social computing tools, the factors that contributed to their success, and the pitfalls to watch out for. In particular, he will look at the issues in relation to corporate culture by drawing on recent research in blogs and wikis based on work in organisational psychology by Hofstede.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• government
• social media
• wikis

Mathew Patterson - Delivering user experience to the inbox: designing for email

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

So you’ve designed a fantastic website for your client, tested in all the major browsers and everything looks great. Now they want to send an email newsletter to all their customers, using the new design.

No problem right? Just need to test in Outlook 07, and 06. Yahoo and Hotmail too, of course. Oh, and Gmail, Lotus Notes, AOL…Of course, the design may not work that well for an email anyway, and isn’t there some kind of anti-spam laws?

Like it or not, HTML email is here to stay and the responsibility for doing it right belongs to web designers. Learn how to plan, design and build an email newsletter that will provide a great user experience to the recipients, and great value to your clients.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• css
• design
• email
• html
• user experience
• visual design
• web standards

Lisa Herrod - User testing for the rest of us

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Everyone knows they should be doing it, but like software testing, it’s one of those things we often don’t get round to. In this presentation, Lisa Herrod looks at some sure fire user testing techniques that produce proven results, don’t cost the earth, and are easy to implement. After this session you won’t have any more excuses for not doing solid user testing of any site or application you develop ever again.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• testing
• usability
• user experience

José Manuel Alonso - Improving Government through better use of the Web

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

It’s no secret that just as the web has revolutionised business, the media, and many other parts of our lives, it is also revolutionising how governments and citizens interact, and how government provide services.

But how to do it well is still something of a black art.

In this keynote presentation, the lead of the W3C’s eGovernment initiative, José Manuel Alonso, looks at the opportunities the web provides governments, the challenges, old and new, the web poses, and the role of the W3C in helping to develop underlying, interoperable technologies with which to build these services.

José’s presentation will cover best practices and methodologies for providing eGovernment services, and look at case studies of how governments and communities are connecting via the web around the world.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• government
• strategy

Jenny Telford - Opening up government data

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Mapping and other mashups have taken the web world by storm - driving innovation in business and government alike. While much of the focus has been on the actual mashup applications, without the data to mashup, we have no mashups. Government, from local to Federal level, collect and manage a significant amount of data, across a very broad range of areas. But giving access to this data to web application developers has technical, policy and legal challenges. In this presentation, Jenny Telford of the ABS looks at these issues from their experience of opening up data from the Australian Census.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• data
• government
• mashups
• strategy
• web apps

Jason Ryan - Govt 2.0: the public management challenge

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this special Breakfast Executive Briefing live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Technology changes present complex challenges and rich opportunities for senior public sector managers. Finding the balance between innovation and risk management is not easy in an environment where successful engagement depends upon relinquishing control. Using examples from New Zealand’s experience, Jason will share lessons and observations about the inevitable growing pains of public sector agencies as they evolve towards Govt 2.0.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• government
• innovation
• strategy

Jackie Moyes - Converting research findings into business speak

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Getting your company to adopt a user-centred design approach can be an uphill struggle. The first stage typically is to get them to agree to incorporate usability testing in to the development process, at a stage early enough to actually implement any design recommendations. The second stage is to convince them to do more ethnographic style research to understand the larger context of the task that the site is trying to support. The biggest challenge comes last – how to help the business owners make the mental leap between the in-depth findings from the research and the implications and opportunities it presents to your core business strategy and product roadmap.

This is the challenge that the User Experience team at News Digital Media have been addressing. In this presentation, Jackie will discuss this issue in more depth and present examples of ‘design tools’ the team have been experimenting with to try and bridge this gap and help the business develop more user-centric strategies.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ethnography
• strategy
• testing
• usability
• user experience
• user research

Emily Boyd - Creating great user experiences with Ajax

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

How does the way we build user experiences change when we incorporate Ajaxian techiques? How can we delight our user, make their experience seem magical, diminish the frustration that often comes with sites and applications?

In this presentation, Emily Boyd, from the hugely successful task management web app, Remember the Milk, looks at some of the ways you can use Ajax techniques to make your user experience even better.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• coding
• javascript
• user experience
• web apps

Donna Maurer

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

We all know that great content is a core part of the website user experience. So why is it so hard to find content that isn’t dull, lifeless and uninteresting - blah, blah, blah?

Web content can be vibrant, interesting and fun. It can draw you in, fill your head and make you learn without having to think. And it’s not really hard to write. Three simple tricks can turn poor content into a great experience - remember that readers care more about themselves than you; write in real words with authentic voice; play show and tell.

This presentation will discuss these principles, with plenty of funny and not-so-funny examples. You’ll go away with practical steps to make your writing kick-ass. And you won’t even have to think.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• content
• copywriting
• user experience

Andy Budd - Designing the experience curve

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

These days people expect more from a website than a handy set of tools and a pretty interface — they want an experience. From the moment somebody enters your site they’ll be judging you on everything from the way the site looks to the tone of your error messages. And they won’t just be judging you against other sites. They will be judging you on every customer experience they have ever had, from the rude man at the train station to the lovely hotel clerk that checked them in on holiday. So in order to compete, we need to up our game and look at experiences both on and off-line.

In this session Andy Budd will look at the 9 key factors that go into designing the perfect customer experience. By taking examples from the world around us, Andy will discuss how we can turn utilitarian experiences into something wonderful.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• design
• interaction design
• usability
• user experience
• web apps

Andrew Kesper - ABC’s election site: making the most of dry data

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 10th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

While elections can be exciting times, the underlying data - swings, booth counts, and the like is probably only riveting to psephological tragics. Yet the ABC’s election web site managed to take this raw data and make it attractive, compelling and interactive.

In this session, the ABC’s Andrew Kesper takes us through the election site, looking at the design decisions, and uses of technology like Ajax, Flash, and interactive maps - tools which have wide applicability for government sites looking to present data in more user-friendly and attractive ways.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• data
• design
• flash
• government
• interaction design
• javascript

Steve Baty - Analysing user research data

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• March 5th, 2008

Catch this presentation live at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

In our efforts to better understand the end users of the sites & applications we design, we generate a great deal of data. That data is useless to us until it has been analyzing and interpreted. This presentation looks at some of the methods & techniques we can use to make sense of user research data in a meaningful & rigorous way. The presentation will look at some of the common types of quantitative data collected during user research, and the statistical analysis methods we can employ to make the most of our data-gathering efforts. The session covers practical examples such as task completion rates, time-to-completion, page view comparison, as well as some basic concepts in statistics.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• testing
• usability
• user research

Validation: coming soon to a web site near you

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• February 7th, 2008

Ben Buchanan got in touch a few weeks back, excited to let me know that after a long struggle over at News Digital Media, they'd got the Aus IT home page to validate. Other people over at NDM have written in the past about the long march ...

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• Tags
• web standards

Looking for shared office space in Sydney?

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• February 7th, 2008

After too many years trapped inside the four walls of my own home, I'm bustin' loose later this month and moving Web Directions Global HQ to Surry Hills, into what I think will be some very sweet office space - check the photo here. The good news is that for ...

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Perth event: Ideas 4

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• January 20th, 2008

Tickets have just gone on sale for Ideas 4, the fourth in a series of great evenings brought to you by the Australian Web Industry Association, to be held on January 30 at the Melbourne Hotel, Perth. Sounds like a great line up with usability expert Lisa Herrod of ...

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Scott Berkun Podcast and slides now available

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• January 10th, 2008

The Myths of Innovation, presented by Scott Berkun was one of the most intriguing and challenging presentations of Web Directions South 2007. It's just a shame a few people missed it as it was on first thing on the Friday morning. The good news is that the MP3 Scott's thought provoking ...

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Who does these things?

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• January 2nd, 2008

Is it just me, or is there anyone else out there utterly gobsmacked by the fact that in 2008 one can go to the site for one of the country's leading cultural events only to be blasted by blaring objectionable music that can't even be turned off properly, at ...

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What don't you want for Christmas?

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• December 20th, 2007

Yes, it's true, those crazy lads Tim Lucas and Cameron Adams have way too much time on their hands, but let's indulge them in a bit of silliness shall we? Don't let that acidic Chirstmas vitriol fester in your stomach until it explodes in a shower of turkey giblets on December ...

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Email Standards Project launches

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• November 28th, 2007

The Email Standards Project is a great advocacy and support initiative from the Campaign Monitor crew. Launched today, it aims to work with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email. It really is hard to believe that it's been 10 ...

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New blog at the Powerhouse Museum

• In: Blog
• By: maxine
• November 27th, 2007

Just launched is a new blog at Australia's own Powerhouse Museum - Photo of the Day, showcasing some of the incredible photography created on a day by day basis by the museum's photographers. Here you will see photography that goes far beyond that which simply documents museum's collection, or ...

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The Future of Email Design

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 22nd, 2007

Yeah look, I can be irked by an HTML email as much as the next person, but step outside the rarefied atmosphere we all live and breathe for a moment and talk to some friends who work in just about any other sector and you'll understand why they just aren't ...

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Why wikipedia does not run ads

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 22nd, 2007

I'm kind of guessing that all of you who have looked up anything on Wikipedia in the last 24hrs will have seen the link to Why Wikipedia Does Not Run Ads. Check it out if not. It has some really strong arguments about how destructive the injection of cash could ...

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Ghost Town - another reason to check out Perth’s ByteMe! festival

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 21st, 2007

Web Directions attendee Kate Raynes-Goldie has started a pervasive gaming company over in Perth - Giant Dice. Their first Perth venture, a mobile locative game called Ghost Town, will be held from December 2-9, as part of the ByteMe! Festival of digital content. Mobile locative games are an ...

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Cricket action via twitter

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 20th, 2007

OK, let me preface this by saying that my care factor for cricket per se is barely measurable on on the non quantum level. What does interest me though is people's obsessive fascination with the game. An obsessive fascination that leads to this fine bit of work by Myles Eftos, an ...

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Off to Perth again

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 12th, 2007

Isn't it funny how you will have never been to a particular city in your life, and then you find yourself going there twice in just a few months? I had a great time checking out Perth and Margaret River back in August when the good people from Western Australian ...

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Relive Mark Pesce’s Mob Rules at Youtube

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• November 1st, 2007

Mark Pesce's closing keynote, Mob Rules, was definitely one of the high points of Web Directions South this year. Most of you have probably had a look at the transcript, and maybe even listened to the MP3. But what's really great is that Mark has gone to the ...

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First Slidecast available

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 24th, 2007

I'd say you've been following the podcasts of the presentations from Web Directions South as they come onstream, and we've also gathered together a lot of the slides into the resources site. But something new and supercool has just come online: Scott Gledhill has gone the extra mile and ...

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Make the world a better place, one micropayment at the time

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 22nd, 2007

Got wind of a really cool Aussie project today: The Footprints Network. This is a great little system to easily funnel micropayments from any online store's customers to genuinely needy organisations the world over. There's an approval process to join the network, but then you get an API that you can ...

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Powerhouse Museum - Jobs

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Folksonomies, mashups, data visualisation, UCD, usability, experimentation? One of the speakers from Web Directions South this year, Sebastian Chan from the Powerhouse Museum, just got in touch this morning to say his team is looking to fill a couple of developer roles. Sebastian's presentation - Social Media and Government 2.0 - ...

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Ben Winter-Giles

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Managing agile projects within large organisations MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Ben Winter-Giles Presentation slides Session description So you work at enterprise level. Lots of stake holders, lots of competition for time, need to deliver to multiple demands that…POP up. All ...

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Alex Young and Rob Manson

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

E is for everywhere: mobile content, services and commerce strategies in Australia MP3 of presentation Analysis of data gathered during the presentation Presentation slides Session description About Alex Young and Rob Manson Presentation slides Session description In 1998 the American Dialect Society voted “e-” ...

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Scott Gledhill

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Is SEO evil? MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Scott Gledhill Presentation slides Session description There can be a feeling in the web development community that “SEO is evil” - Scott Gledhill cuts through the hype to focus on how developing accessible, ...

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Sebastian Chan

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Social media and Government 2.0 MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Sebastian Chan Presentation slides Session description More than ever before there is an enormous amount of publicly held data about our community, our culture, and citizens. How can government respond to ...

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Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Wig meets Web (2.0): harnessing the law to commercialise and protect your IP MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Scott Buchanan and Ben Maguire Session description Innovation and development in web 2.0 moves ever faster, the law as slow as always. So how can you ...

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Mike Cannon-Brookes

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Organisational wiki adoption MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides Session description About Mike Cannon-Brookes Presentation slides Session description Wikis are the buzzword-du-jour but practical on the ground experience can be hard to come by for those working within organisations. How are enterprises using them? ...

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Scott Berkun

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

The myths of innovation MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Scott Berkun Session description Much of what we know about innovation is wrong. That’s the bet this entertaining keynote takes as it romps through the history of innovation, dispelling the mythologies we’ve constructed about how we got here. ...

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Angela Beesley

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Wikis and community collaboration MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Angela Beesley Presentation slides Session description Wikipedia has brought the concept of a wiki to many people’s attention and now Wikia is aiming to broaden that concept. If you think of Wikipedia ...

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Mark Pesce

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Mob rules MP3 of presentation Transcript Presentation slides - to come Session description About Mark Pesce Session description Sometime shortly after Web Directions South concludes, somebody (probably a somebody in the “developing” world) will become the three billionth mobile phone subscriber. Good for the providers, of course - but the effects of ...

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Chris Wilson

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Moving the web forward MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides Session description About Chris Wilson Presentation slides Session description In this keynote, Chris Wilson examines the state of the web, some of the problems facing browsers (as platform Architect of the Internet Explorer ...

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Raul Vera

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Mashups, web apps and APIs MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Raul Vera Session description Hear all about the exciting possibilities created by these technologies from Google Australia. About Raul Vera Raul has been involved in digital-media technology (video animation, graphics, ...

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Mark Mansour

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

RedBubble: Building a site for people with big imaginations MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Mark Mansour Presentation slides Session description RedBubble is a social networking platform and marketplace, not to mention a successful homegrown web app. In this session RedBubble’s software ...

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Paul McCarthy

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

What’s under the hood? Which open source tools are fuelling today’s leading websites MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Paul McCarthy Session description Many of the today’s leading and most innovative websites are now running or developed using open source software and tools. This talk ...

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Adrian Holovaty

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Being smart about your data MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Adrian Holovaty Session description The Web is full of information that is presented inefficiently - both for machines and for humans. Adrian Holovaty shares philosophies and strategies for efficient data collection and information design, ...

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Aaron Gustafson

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Learning to love forms MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Aaron Gustafson Presentation slides Session description Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t understand them. In this ...

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Andrew Downie and Grant Focas

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Javascript and other coding for good or evil MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Andrew Downie and Grant Focas Session description When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned to ...

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Bert Bos

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

A new life for old standards - revisions to HTML, CSS and others MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides Session description About Bert Bos Session description CSS level 2 became a standard in 1998. The last revision of HTML4 dates from 1999. That’s long time ago in Web years, but ...

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John Allsopp

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Trends and predictions in web technology MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About John Allsopp Presentation slides Session description Web designers and developers are a very practical bunch, often too busy with today’s challenges and workloads to find time to keep up with ...

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Cameron Adams

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

The future of web based interfaces MP3 of presentation Session description About Cameron Adams Session description Ajax brought about a host of new possibilities in online interfaces, but where are we going next? Cameron Adams will look at the evolution of dynamic interfaces; interfaces that truly meet the needs of all ...

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Rashmi Sinha

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

The perils of popularity MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Rashmi Sinha Presentation slides Session description Can web-based social systems with their wide reach, user-generated and user-filtered content harness the wisdom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent experiments reveal how popularity based web ...

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Laurel Papworth

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Social networks and mobiles MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Laurel Papworth Presentation slides Session description It's not just about email and Twitter: industry analysts agree, virtually every online social network application will develop a mobile feature in the next year ...

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George Oates

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Human Traffic MP3 of presentation Presentation slides (PDF) Session description About George Oates Session description If there’s one thing about Web 2.0, it’s that we’re realising that there are actually people using the internet. It’s no longer about Human to Computer interaction, but rather Human to Human. Discover some of the ...

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Lisa Herrod

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Usability: more than skin deep MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Lisa Herrod Presentation slides Session description Web Usability is far more complex than User Testing and Interaction Design alone. And while interface design is an important consideration, there’s more to a ...

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Justin French

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Pushing beyond design MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Justin French Presentation slides Session description You're a great web designer. You craft beautiful interfaces, you've nailed standards based design, and you’re at the top of your game. So now what? Based on ...

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Brian Fling

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Web 2.0 + Mobile 2.0 = ? MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides - to come Session description About Brian Fling Session description Web 2.0 redefined how we look at websites. Mobile 2.0 is redefining how we look at mobile. What happens when you add these two seemingly separate worlds together? ...

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Stephen Cox

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Making useful things no one knew they needed: building ethnography into the design process. MP3 of presentation Presentation slides Session description About Stephen Cox Presentation slides Session description Working in usability and user experience can give you some great insights into the product design ...

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Jonathan Boutelle

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Ajax or Flash: what's right for you? MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides Session description About Jonathan Boutelle Presentation slides Session description The web is finally moving beyond simple html. How can you make rich web-based user experiences that don’t surprise or ...

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Andy Clarke

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 14th, 2007

Think like a mountain MP3 of presentation - to come Presentation slides Session description About Andy Clarke Presentation slides Session description Once seen as unsophisticated, childish and of low artistic value, comic-book art and culture has inspired artists and designers for generations and are now ...

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Making Links - Special Offer for Web Directions delegates

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 9th, 2007

Making Links 2007 is one of Australiaís leading forums for workers and activists in the not-for-profit sector to share skills and information relating to website development, online campaigning, online social networking and community building, and other ICT issues. The conference is in Sydney, October 30th - 31st This year the ...

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Slides and podcasts

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• October 3rd, 2007

Just a quick note for all those who have been emailing us asking after these. As many of them as we can gather together will be posted at the site real soon now. It does take a little time to contact all the speakers and get their slides and notes from ...

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Ben Winter-Giles - Managing agile projects within large organisations

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

So you work at enterprise level. Lots of stake holders, lots of competition for time, need to deliver to multiple demands that…POP up. All projects incur change over time, that’s the way of the world. Using a benefits driven approach to delivery rather than a process driven or methodology governed approach frees the team to think laterally, and be responsive to client demands.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• agile methodology
• project management
• wds07

Angela Beesley - Wikis and community collaboration

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

In this session, Angela Beesley will explain how Wikia is not only hosting but actively developing wikis and creating hundreds of thriving communities. The methods and processes that have led Wikipedia to be the world’s largest encyclopedia can be adopted for any type of wiki use, including educational and business communities. Using examples from successful online wiki communities, Angela will explain how to enable a wiki community to manage itself, and how to minimise the common problems that wikis have, including ways to deal with unhelpful or unreliable information, lack of adoption of a wiki, and the problems of malicious edits on open wikis.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• online communities
• wds07
• wikis

Andrew Downie and Grant Focas - Javascript and other coding for good or evil

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

When Version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines is finally released, the status of Javascript will be quite different to that assigned to it in Version 1.0 back in 1999. Back then, Javascript was to “degrade gracefully”. Currently AJAX offers increased usability for visual users, but may detract from accessibility. In future, use of JavaScript will be encouraged but, of course, must enhance rather than detract from accessibility. During this presentation, Andrew and Grant will demonstrate how Javascript, when implemented well, offers enhanced accessibility. By way of balance, they will also present examples of scripting that causes problems. Importantly, they will provide corrections to the errant coding.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• accessibility
• ajax
• coding
• javascript
• wds07

Rob Manson and Alex Young - E is for everywhere

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

In 1998 the American Dialect Society voted “e-” (as in electronic) as the “word of the year”. This signified how important the internet had become in our world. Almost 10 years later we’re undergoing an even larger change. Only this time the “e-” prefix stands for “everywhere”. Mobile content, services and commerce are changing the way we communicate, work and do business. And these changes are building upon the already massive revolutions brought about by the internet - only faster and made more pervasive. This presentation will look at the strategic issues facing managers and developers as they strive to adapt to this literally “moving” target.

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• Tags
• mobile
• strategy
• wds07

Adrian Holovaty - Being smart about your data

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

The Web is full of information that is presented inefficiently - both for machines and for humans. Adrian Holovaty shares philosophies and strategies for efficient data collection and information design, drawing from his experiences at data-heavy news sites lawrence.com, washingtonpost.com) and side projects such as chicagocrime.org.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• coding
• data
• wds07

Aaron Gustafson - Learning to love forms

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Forms. We all have to make ‘em, but few of us love ‘em. Aaron Gustafson believes that this is because we don’t understand them. In this session, we will explore forms from top to bottom, examining how they work and how their components can be incorporated with other elements to maximize accessibility, improve semantics, and allow for more flexible styling. You’ll get to see the complete picture with forms, including error, warning and formatting messages, styling and its implications, as well as best practices for manipulation with Javascript and Ajax.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• coding
• css
• forms
• html
• javascript
• wds07

Stephen Cox - Building ethnography into the design process

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Working in usability and user experience can give you some great insights into the product design process. Yet few organisations know how to take advantage of this information silo. As a user experience expert do you sometimes wish you could have more input into product ideas handed down from above? Ever wanted to have the ear of business strategists? Even be best friends with marketers and sales people? Stephen Cox explores some of the exciting things that can happen when the disciplines of usability and user experience are allowed to seep out into the realms of strategic and tactical design innovation. He approaches the field of ethnographic design research in practical terms illustrating how News Digital Media has come to embrace the idea of extensive customer research, and the benefits that this has brought to different levels of the organisation.

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• Tags
• design
• ethnography
• innovation
• strategy
• usability
• user experience
• wds07

Sebastian Chan - Social media and Government 2.0

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

More than ever before there is an enormous amount of publicly held data about our community, our culture, and citizens. How can government respond to the opportunities of Web 2.0? How can government websites and databases become more citizen-centric, and more responsive by leveraging social media? In 2006 the Powerhouse Musuem, a NSW State Government institiution, opened its core information asset - its collection and research database - to public tagging, and dynamic user-driven recommendations. In the same year the Museum launched a range of public-facing blogs, inviting comment from visitors and audiences. Sebastian Chan will discuss 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.

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• Tags
• government
• social media
• user generated content

Raul Vera - Mashups, web apps and APIs

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Hear all about the exciting possibilities created by these technologies from Google Australia.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• APIs
• mashups
• wds07
• web apps

Rashmi Sinha - The perils of popularity

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Can web-based social systems with their wide reach, user-generated and user-filtered content harness the wisdom of crowds? Duncan Watts’ recent experiments reveal how popularity based web social systems can throw up fickle, random trends that are essentially unreplicable, and only tangentially related to quality. However, popularity as a way to filter information continues to rise in popularity - replacing hierarchical menus, overtaking tags, and even used in lieu of relevance. Rashmi will link decades of psychology research on group decision making and social influence to what is happening on the web today. She will discuss different models of popularity based filtering such as Digg and YouTube. What are ways to avoid the Watts dilemma - including Google’s model of sociality, tag-based social systems, and object-based social networks. She will present some principles for the design of web social systems and how there were used in the design of SlideShare and discuss how SlideShare as an evolving social system handles popularity.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• information architecture
• tags
• user generated content
• wds07

Paul McCarthy - Which open source tools are fuelling today’s leading sites?

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Many of the today’s leading and most innovative websites are now running or developed using open source software and tools. This talk aims to provide an insiders look at the growing array of open source software driving today’s leading websites.

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• Tags
• CMS
• open source
• wds07

Scott Gledhill - Is SEO evil?

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

There can be a feeling in the web development community that “SEO is evil” - Scott Gledhill cuts through the hype to focus on how developing accessible, standards compliant websites is the first step in creating search engine friendly websites – and also talks about what is being done in the industry to make websites more findable, sometimes at the cost of making them less usable.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• seo
• wds07
• web standards

Cameron Adams - The future of web interfaces

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Ajax brought about a host of new possibilities in online interfaces, but where are we going next? Cameron Adams will look at the evolution of dynamic interfaces; interfaces that truly meet the needs of all their users. Through the careful use of Web Standards, client-side scripting, and server-side intelligence, it’s possible to create interfaces that shape, adapt to, and predict a user’s needs.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• design
• interaction design
• interface design
• wds07

Andy Clarke - Think like a mountain

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Once seen as unsophisticated, childish and of low artistic value, comic-book art and culture has inspired artists and designers for generations and are now are often untapped resource for web design inspiration. In this session, designer and author of Transcending CSS, Andy Clarke will examine comic book layout, conventions and colour in the context of making inspirational designs for today’s web.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• design
• visual design
• wds07

Scott Berkun - The myths of innovation

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Much of what we know about innovation is wrong. That’s the bet this entertaining keynote takes as it romps through the history of innovation, dispelling the mythologies we’ve constructed about how we got here. This talk, loosely based on Scott Berkun’s recent O’Reilly book (May 2007), will help you to recognize the myths, understand their popularity (even if you don’t believe in them), and how to use the truth of innovations past to help you in your work today.

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• Tags
• design
• innovation
• strategy
• wds07

Mike Cannon-Brookes - Organisational wiki adoption

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Wikis are the buzzword-du-jour but practical on the ground experience can be hard to come by for those working within organisations. How are enterprises using them? What’s the best way to get one adopted? What should a wiki not be used for? Pragmatic enterprise wiki adoption lessons and experiences.

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• Tags
• wds07
• wikis

Mark Pesce - Mob Rules

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Sometime shortly after Web Directions South concludes, somebody (probably a somebody in the “developing” world) will become the three billionth mobile phone subscriber. Good for the providers, of course - but the effects of the network on human social organization are far more profound. From the dhows of Kerala to the cities of China to the beaches of Cronulla, we’re all coming into contact with - and learning how to master - the subtle skills of spontaneous self-organization which are the essential fact of life on the network. We can get in front of this spree of self-organization - or get run over by it. Either way, mob rules are the new laws of business, politics, and culture.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• mobile
• social networks
• wds07

Mark Mansour - RedBubble: Building a site for people with big imaginations

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

RedBubble is a social networking platform and marketplace, not to mention a successful homegrown web app. In this session RedBubble’s software architect Mark Mansour will present the challenges the team has faced, and talk through some of the solutions they’ve discovered, during the building and scaling one of Australia’s largest Rails applications. Along the way you’ll learn RedBubble’s tenets for software design, the what’s and how’s of their database and web servers, plus processes that made their team more effective. If you’re a developer dreaming of going out on your own and building a successful online business around a web app, don’t miss this session.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• rails
• wds07
• web apps

Lisa Herrod - Usability: more than skin deep

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

Web Usability is far more complex than User Testing and Interaction Design alone. And while interface design is an important consideration, there’s more to a usable site than what’s on the surface. We all know the importance of accessibility and web standards, so let’s take that knowledge one step further and into the realm of usability. In this session Lisa Herrod will redefine the common definition of usability by introducing a greater focus on accessibility and web standards. By taking a more holistic approach you will soon see why usability is more than skin deep.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• accessibility
• design
• interaction design
• interface design
• usability
• wds07
• web standards

Laurel Papworth - Social networks and mobiles

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

It’s not just about email and Twitter: industry analysts agree, virtually every online social network application will develop a mobile feature in the next year or two. From Flickr pre-installed on Nokia phones to an up-to-date map of your buddies locations, mobile devices are ready to come pre-loaded with new friends for you to play with. Before you tune out to listen to music tagged and delivered to your mobile by your social network, or press SEND on a stinging critique of the Web Directions dining hall food to restaurant review mobile sites, why not attend an informative yet fun session about the latest and greatest in GPS and location based services connecting online communities on your mobile? For those who want to focus on the business model not the technology.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• mobile
• social networks
• strategy
• wds07

Justin French - Pushing beyond design

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

You’re a great web designer. You craft beautiful interfaces, you’ve nailed standards based design, and you’re at the top of your game. So now what? Based on real world experiences, this presentation encourages you, the modern web designer, to ignore the title on your business card and to start thinking about your real role in the development process - what you have to offer, what your team really needs, and what you could do to dramatically increase your value on a daily basis.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• career
• design
• wds07

Jonathan Boutelle - Ajax or Flash: what’s right for you?

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

The web is finally moving beyond simple html. How can you make rich web-based user experiences that don’t surprise or aggravate your users? When should you use AJAX, when should you use Flash, and when should you mix the two? What are the opportunities and pitfalls when creating richer web interfaces? In this talk, Jonathan will argue that Flash and AJAX are complementary tools in the web developers’ toolbox, and that building effective web experiences often requires a blending of the two technologies.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• ajax
• flash
• interaction design
• interface design
• wds07

John Allsopp - Trends and predictions in web technology

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Web designers and developers are a very practical bunch, often too busy with today’s challenges and workloads to find time to keep up with developments over the horizon. In this session John Allsopp looks at what trends that are important for web designers and developers and innovators generally - what future versions of browsers have in store, what devices people will be using to access the web, and more. A perfect complement to Bert Bos’s focus on coming web standard technologies.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• mobile
• strategy
• wds07

George Oates - Human traffic

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 28 2007.

If there’s one thing about Web 2.0, it’s that we’re realising that there are actually people using the internet. It’s no longer about Human to Computer interaction, but rather Human to Human. Discover some of the user experience ideas and strategies behind the design of flickr.com, one of the richest Human to Human places on the web today.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• design
• online communities
• user experience
• wds07

Chris Wilson - Moving the web forward

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

In this keynote, Chris Wilson examines the state of the web, some of the problems facing browsers (as platform Architect of the Internet Explorer browser) and standards (as co-chair of the HTML Working Group) and explores what we need to do together to move the web forward.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• wds07
• web standards

Brian Fling - Web 2.0 + Mobile 2.0 = ?

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

A presentation given at Web Directions South, Sydney Australia, September 27 2007.

Web 2.0 redefined how we look at websites. Mobile 2.0 is redefining how we look at mobile. What happens when you add these two seemingly separate worlds together? Is it the mash-up of all time, or something different altogether? Will it create an unholy union or can the merger of these two principles redefine how we look at information? In this session we will explore what Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0 mean and what happens when they come together. We’ll discover what we can learn from both and apply it to the work we create today.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• mobile
• wds07

Bert Bos - A new life for old standards

• In: Resources
• By: maxine
• September 29th, 2007

CSS level 2 became a standard in 1998. The last revision of HTML4 dates from 1999. That’s long time ago in Web years, but they aren’t forgotten: after several years of work, CSS is close to a revision and browser support is better than ever. It’s necessary, because CSS needs to grow: vertical text, columns, print support, complex layouts and much more is increasingly demanded. Likewise, there is a big effort to revise HTML. Interest is so high, the W3C is trying a new process, to let more people participate in the editing work. There are also new forms, standards for combining SVG and HTML and new work on the security of forms. Bert’s here to tell us: we haven’t seen the end of the Web page yet.

See the slides and hear the podcast »

• Tags
• coding
• css
• html
• wds07
• web standards

Is your website greenhouse friendly?

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• September 20th, 2007

Carbon offsetting and green energy are ideas that have really gained traction over the last 8 months or so. Have you considered the impact your website activities might be having on the environment? Perhaps your website is already hosted on a green server powered by renewable energy or with a hosting company ...

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Hatch Day on hold

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• September 5th, 2007

Sadly, based on the feedback of many folks, who loved the idea, and wanted to get involved, but who weren't sure that right now they'd be able to commit the time and effort required to really make a go of Hatch Day, we've decided to put it on hold for ...

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Web Directions Mikons - Winners

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• September 4th, 2007

Thanks so much to everyone who got involved in helping design the Mikon set for Web Directions South. It was great that so many people participated, and intriguing to see how we choose to ideentify ourselves. Check them all out. The hard part of course was choosing just 35 to ...

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Legal session finalised

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• September 2nd, 2007

Previous attendees will notice that this year we've broadened the focus of Web Directions a little. In addition to the same number of sessions on web design and development we've always had, we now also have presentations we've put under the banner of "Management and Strategy". I've just slotted in the ...

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Social Events around Web Directions South

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• September 1st, 2007

During the conference we've organised a reception to be held at the venue on the 27th, and of course there will also be a big party on the closing night, the 28th. But during that week lots of people will be in town from all over Australia so it's a great ...

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Discount Pricing and McFarlane Prize deadline

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• August 26th, 2007

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 ...

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Sessions

• In: Uncategorized
• By: maxine
• August 22nd, 2007

Design Jonathan Boutelle – AJAX or Flash: what's right for you? Andy Clarke – Think like a mountain Stephen Cox – Making useful things no one knew they needed: building ethnography into the design process Brian Fling – Web 2.0 + Mobile 2.0 = ...

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