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Web Directions » Maxine
Web Directions » Maxine http://www.webdirections.org Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:24:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 What Do You Know Melbourne — wrap-uphttp://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-melbourne-wrap-up/ http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-melbourne-wrap-up/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 03:51:18 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4545 Last week was huge for Web Directions, as we backed up from our What Do You Know Brisbane event on Wednesday and headed straight for What Do You Know Melbourne on Thursday. It’s been great to share the “web design and development in 5 minutes” learning right across the east coast of Australia over the last couple of weeks, also hosting What Do You Know Sydney on the Thursday before Easter.Thanks to everyone that came along in Melbourne — all 200 of you! As we mentioned on the night, the rooftop marquee (a substantially larger and better laid out space) was torn down in the winds on Good Friday, leaving us with no choice but to move to the less ideal basement space. Thanks for bearing with us.
We started the evening with Mark Dalgleish, who always does such a great job of presenting. This time he went all recursive on us and talked through Bespoke.js, his DIY presentation Microframework. Check out the presentation itself here.
Next up, for something completely different we had Carla Hackett who showed us all about the fine old art of hand lettering. Carla’s beautiful presentation is all written up in this blog post, and check her out on Instagram for all the examples of hand lettering she finds on the streets of Melbourne. For another example of how hand lettering might be used check out her intro to this Catherine Deveny interview.
Joji Mori was next, talking us through his fascinating PhD project, which is all about how we can commemorate online. Here is the work he has done for Black Saturday.
Then there was another change of course as Brad Barrow told us about Front-end testing, and introduced us to the startup he is part of, earl.io
Leading into the break we had Harriet Wakelam, who showed us How to Design Without P**ing People Off — harder than you think! Her slides are here.
After a quick refreshment break we jumped straight back into the deepend, as Alex Mackey demoed RX.js in a rush. You can download his full presentation here, and read his Intro to RX.js here.
Donna Benjamin was next, giving us a Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Drupalverse. If your curiosity is piqued, get along to the Drupal Melbourne meetup some time, or check out the IRC Channel (not for the fainthearted :).
Chris Chinchilla showed us how easy it is to use PhoneGap to create mobile apps using our HTML, JS and CSS skills. To connect with Chris, get along to Mobile Monday Melbourne.
Michael Mifsud showed us an interesting experiment he has done whereby he outsourced his holiday via GitHub.
And then to end the night Leni Mayo told us all about The Innovator’s Dilemna, using NoSQL vs MySQL as an example. Check out The Innovator’s Dilemna book here.
And that about wrapped it all up for the first What Do You Know season for 2013. We’ll be back round August/September — see you then!
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-melbourne-wrap-up/feed/ 1 What Do You Know Brisbane wrap-uphttp://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-brisbane-wrap-up/ http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-brisbane-wrap-up/#comments Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:18:31 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4542 Last Wednesday night John and I headed up to the warmer climes of Brisbane for another What Do You Know night. There was a big turnout, so thanks so much to everyone who made it along.All the presenters did a fantastic job, even in “The Bermuda Triangle of AV” which is The Exchange Hotel, and they’ve all been kind enough to share some resources from their presentations.
First up was Carolyn King, who showed us how most presentations suck, and how to stop ours from doing so. Carolyn’s written her presentation up in a blog post so check it out.
Brandon Sheppard was on next, with an amusing and instructive presentation called “Rebuilding the Flanders House”, which used a great analogy for poor design of “putting the toilet in the kitchen”. You had to be there! He recommends checking out Retinart for great articles about serious design theory.
Before the break Anthony vander Hoorn showed us Glimpse, an open source diagnostics platform he is the creator of — well worth checking it out! And for a bit of fun, take a look at I Drink Lead Paint, this is where Anthony sourced all those images he used in his presentation (hint, you can too :)
Simon Elvery wowed us all with his choose your own adventure approach to responsive images. This really is cool. Instead of slides he built a mini-site that takes you through a series of decisions about responsive images, then presents you with some options at the end. Of course, it’s not comprehensive, but Simon’s Choose Your Own Adventure approach to selecting a responsive images technique is certainly a great place to start if you are trying to get your head around responsive images. There’s some more resources in his Responding to the Unknown blog post as well.
Closing out the night we had Luke Brooker, with more on responsive design with Inconsistent Consistencies.
Thanks again Brisbane and see you again soon!
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-brisbane-wrap-up/feed/ 0 What Do You Know Sydney wrap-uphttp://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-sydney-wrap-up/ http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-sydney-wrap-up/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 03:51:00 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4531 The Easter weekend got off to a fine start for all the Sydneysiders who made it along to What Do You Know last Thursday night.Thanks for coming along if you were there, and if you weren’t, make sure you are following @webdirections, or receiving our newsletter, to be the first to know about upcoming events. For now we’re focussing on Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 2 and 3, but later in the year there will be definitely be another What Do You Know series around the country.
I’ve pulled together some handy resources that came out of the presentations, so see below for everything from functional JavaScript to better web typography.
We kicked off the evening with a word from our awesome sponsors, as Shane Weddell showed us how to use SilverStripe CMS and framework to create the web.
Next up rookie presenter Fiona Chan did an outstanding job of her first presentation ever by showing us how to create a living style guide. To refresh your memory, Fiona’s slides are here, and here are some useful resources for taking it further
- a collection of front end style guides and pattern libraries
- Anna Debenham’s 24 Ways article on front end style guides
- Making front end development a team sport
Then David Rennie from Reactive demonstrated presented on responsive design, and in particular how pen and paper are the most powerful web design tools. To follow up on this check out David’s awesomely good value workshop — Jedi responsive design workflow — on this Thursday here in Sydney.
Patrick Catanzariti, always entertaining, showed us some <video> and <canvas> element experiments.
Dhanji Prassana dived into functional programming as applied to JavaScript, which was always bound to be controversial, but to their credit the polite Sydney audience kept heckling to a minimum. To find out more, start with the Wikipedia article on Functional Programming. Got that? Then check out Underscore.js, a light and easy functional programming framework for JavaScript, whose creator, Jeremy Ashkenas, will be speaking at Web Directions Code. And then when you’re ready, Functional JavaScript.
Elle Meredith showed us Better Web Typography with Modular Scale. Her slides are here, and she also sent through a very useful collection of resources to follow up with
- Tim Brown — More Perfect Typography (video)
- More Meaningful Typography
- Type-inspired interfaces
- R(a|ela)tional Design
- The Secret Law of Page Harmony
- Page Proportions (PDF)
- Composing the new canon
- The Typographic Scale
David Lewis showed us how to build an HTML5 game in 5 minutes, using Construct 2. Here’s the game — keep Ned Stark’s head off the ground! — plus David has also done a write up of another game he built using the same tech.
And then finally to close out the show Elijah Glover showed us some HTML5 Mobile Apps tips and tricks. He also shared an ultimate guide to mobile emulators and simulators, as well as a table for HTML5 compatibility on mobile and tablet browsers.
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/blog/what-do-you-know-sydney-wrap-up/feed/ 2 Geek Girl Dinner — tips and resources for aspiring presentershttp://www.webdirections.org/blog/geek-girl-dinner-tips-and-resources-for-aspiring-presenters/ http://www.webdirections.org/blog/geek-girl-dinner-tips-and-resources-for-aspiring-presenters/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:39:35 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4496 How to get the opportunity to speak at an event- don’t be afraid to put your hand up!
- research previous events and come up with something appropriate for the event
How to endear yourself to the event organiser
- be an awesome correspondent!
- read all the info you receive about your role in the event carefully — and ask questions if they haven’t been answered (where do I have to be? when do I have to be there? who do I report to? what resolution will the projector be? how long should I speak for? See the resources in the final section below for a couple of great blog posts that will give you countless questions like this).
- be reliable (be where you are meant to be at the time you are meant to be there; get there early; get an emergency contact number before the event; have some contingency plans for getting to the venue — again see the links in the resources section below for much more practical advice like this)
After the presentation
Do as much as is feasible to maximise the chance of ongoing engagement after the presentation.
- at the very least, upload your slides to Slideshare or Speakerdeck
- write a blog post
- create a whole minisite — check out this one created by Charlie Gleason for his presentation at Web Directions South last year
- tweet out links to whatever you do using the hashtag from the event, and let the organiser know about it as well
Events to approach about presenting
Meetup groups
These are a fantastic way of getting your foot in the door and your name out there. Go along to a few first, get to know the organiser, and then propose a session.
- Melbourne Web Developers
- MelbJS
- Melbourne Geek Night
- Melbourne Joomla!
- Rails Nights
- Melbourne Mobile
And then something Web Directions has coming up on April 4 is What Do You Know — we’ll definitely be looking for presenters!
Technology specific events
- OSDC: late November/early December, this year maybe Auckland
- linux.conf.au: January, Perth
- SAGE-AU: around August
- Pycon: July, Hobart
- Drupal Downunder: mid-February, Sydney
- JSConf Downunder: November, Sydney
- Ruby Conf AU: February, Melbourne
- OZeWAI: October, Melbourne
Professional industry events
- Web Directions Code: May, Melbourne
- Web Directions South: October, Sydney
- UX Australia — Melbourne
- TechED
More resources
- Scott Berkun blogs frequently about public speaking, and wrote this excellent checklist that will get you there on time and ready to go on the day
- Joe Clarke has an even more belt and braces approach
- Aaron Weyenberg spoke (brilliantly!) for the first time for us in Seattle a couple of years back and wrote this really useful and inspirational blog post afterwards: Confessions of a Rookie Speaker
- “there’s too much choice”
- “I find it hard to decide which session to go to”
I’ll admit, we always found this feedback a little hard to take in, because what we try to do with Web Directions South is make it a massive festival and meeting of the web tribes, and a one track conference obviously just can’t achieve this. We love our program of thought provoking and inspirational keynotes at the beginning and end of each day, sandwiching split session throughout the day covering off design, development, the big picture, and this year for the first time, startups. There’s something for the whole web family. But the unusual thing about the web family is that it’s pretty omnivorous. The developer could well be just as interested in a session about JavaScript performance as one on bootstrapping your startup. The designer might be just as happy hearing about interaction design as big data.
So last year we did a couple of things to ease the pain of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
Part of this pain is just the stress of having to make a high opportunity cost decision under time pressure on the day as to what to see, so we made sure our schedule was finalised well before the event, and also made a nice PDF version of it available before the day, so if you wanted to take the time to plan in advance, this was there to help you. Pretty easy and inexpensive to do.
But a big part of it is also just not actually being able to be in two places at once. We’d provided audio recordings and made the slides available for years but we all know, it’s just not the same. Situations like this are pretty much why god invented video really. But good video requires a good team to capture on the day, and is expensive to produce. The other thing we have always struggled with is the fear we have that if we video everything and just put it out there for free on the web after the event, will people continue to come to the actual event itself?
That’s why this year at Web Directions South we produced all this video, but have only made it available to people who were actually at the event for the time being — please get in touch if you were there and haven’t received your username and password and we’ll get that to your straight away.
There is also a free sample video available to everyone: Douglas Crockford’s awesome developer track session “Programming Style and your Brain”.
What’s been interesting though is looking at the stats of which videos have been the most popular. Bearing in mind that attendees said they wanted video so they could catch up on sessions they weren’t able to see on the day because they chose to go and see another presentation, I’m still pondering the fact that the most popular video by far is Ben Hammersley’s keynote, The Flower, the Field and the Stack — which everyone must have seen on the day. Humans, hey? They’re a weird mob :). In fairness, it was an amazing presentation and well worth reliving.
How do I get to see these amazing videos?
And if you weren’t there? Well there is still a way to see it. Anyone who buys a ticket to Web Directions Code — our awesome developer focussed event this May in Melbourne — will also get a free pass to all those Web Directions South videos. So get in there now while early bird pricing lasts for the bargain of the month!
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/blog/web-directions-south-2012-videos/feed/ 0 Getting all touchy feely with the mobile web — Andrew Fisherhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/getting-all-touchy-feely-with-the-mobile-web-andrew-fisher/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/getting-all-touchy-feely-with-the-mobile-web-andrew-fisher/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2012 00:21:14 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4395 As the majority of web users shift to touch devices, the expectation is becoming that everything becomes touchable — including the mobile web. This session will provide a practical and pragmatic view of where touch is at from a web standards perspective and how you can start weaving touch interactions into your mobile web applications.]]> Andrew Fisher gets all touchy feely with the mobile web. See below for full session description and more resources.Got a taste for it? Be there for the dev track at Web Directions South 2012.
This presentation was recorded at Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 23 2012.
Session description
As the majority of web users shift to touch devices, the expectation is becoming that everything becomes touchable — including the mobile web. This session will provide a practical and pragmatic view of where touch is at from a web standards perspective and how you can start weaving touch interactions into your mobile web applications.
Resources from this presentation
- Presentation slides
- W3C spec
- HTML Rocks Touch
- Big list of touch stuff
- Demo code
- Touch patent issues
- Touch Events Patent Advisory Group Charter
- Code sample
About Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher is deeply passionate about technology and is constantly tinkering with and breaking something — whether it’s a new application for mobile computing, building a robot, deploying a cloud or just playing around with web tech. Sometimes he does some real work too and has been involved in developing digital solutions for businesses since the dawn of the web in Australia and Europe for brands like Nintendo, peoplesound, Sony, Mitsubishi, Sportsgirl and the Melbourne Cup.
Andrew is the CTO for JBA Digital, a data agency in Melbourne Australia, where he focuses on creating meaning out of large, changing data sets for clients. Andrew is also the founder of Rocket Melbourne, a startup technology lab exploring physical computing and the Web of Things.
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/getting-all-touchy-feely-with-the-mobile-web-andrew-fisher/feed/ 0 HTML5 technologies and game development — Rob Hawkeshttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/html5-technologies-and-game-development/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/html5-technologies-and-game-development/#comments Thu, 12 Jul 2012 06:11:36 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4376 With Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and other blockbuster games now working in modern web browsers, it’s fair to say native, browser based gaming has arrived for real. But how do they do it? In this session, Mozilla Technical Evangelist Rob Hawkes looks at the features now in your browsers to help develop games (and other interactive web based experiences) including the Canvas and WebGL, HTML5 Audio API, Mouselock and the Joystick API.]]> Rob Hawkes uses HTML5 technologies for game development. See below for full session description and more resources.Got a taste for it? Be there for the dev track at Web Directions South 2012.
This presentation was recorded at Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 24 2012.
Session description
With Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and other blockbuster games now working in modern web browsers, it’s fair to say native, browser based gaming has arrived for real. But how do they do it? In this session, Mozilla Technical Evangelist Rob Hawkes looks at the features now in your browsers to help develop games (and other interactive web based experiences) including the Canvas and WebGL, HTML5 Audio API, Mouselock and the Joystick API.
Resources from this presentation
- Slides from this presentation
- Foundation HTML5 Canvas
- HTML5 Games Most Wanted
- Rawkets — built with HTML5 and Websockets
About Rob Hawkes
Rob thrives on solving problems through code. He has an addiction to visual programming and can’t get enough of HTML5 and JavaScript. He’s the author of Foundation HTML5 Canvas and is a Technical Evangelist at Mozilla. He leads the gaming side of Mozilla’s work within the developer community.
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/html5-technologies-and-game-development/feed/ 0 Designing in the browser — Divya Manianhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/designing-in-the-browser-divya-manian/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/designing-in-the-browser-divya-manian/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:14:40 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4368 Each website is a product used daily by people to take actions, not just read the content on it. Your product is amorphous, it takes the shape of whatever container it fills: a mobile browser, a touch enabled desktop browser, or a 30″ iMac that is connected to the Internet via tethering. Photoshop is just one of the means to an end in this new age of utilitarian web sites. The new technologies available in HTML5 already allow you to create prototypes quickly in the browser. Learn how to create a prototype from start to finish using these new technologies while taking advantage of quick prototyping tools.]]> Divya Manian designs in the browser. See below for full session description and more resources.Got a taste for it? Be there for the dev track at Web Directions South 2012.
This presentation was recorded at Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 24 2012.
Session description
Each website is a product used daily by people to take actions, not just read the content on it. Your product is amorphous, it takes the shape of whatever container it fills: a mobile browser, a touch enabled desktop browser, or a 30″ iMac that is connected to the Internet via tethering. Photoshop is just one of the means to an end in this new age of utilitarian web sites. The new technologies available in HTML5 already allow you to create prototypes quickly in the browser. Learn how to create a prototype from start to finish using these new technologies while taking advantage of quick prototyping tools.
Resources from this presentation
- Slides from this presentation
- A related presentation from Stephen Hay
- Docpad
- Jekyll
- HTML5 Boilerplate
- Sass
- LESS
- Stylus
- BEM: Block, Element, Modifier
- Mustache
- Eco
- HAML
- Faker.js
- Bootstrap
- Codekit
- LiveReload
- Docco
- Style Docco
- Lorem Pixel
About Divya Manian
Divya Manian works for the Adobe Web Platform Team in San Francisco. She made the jump from developing device drivers for Motorola phones to designing websites and has not looked back since. She takes her duties as an Open Web vigilante seriously which has resulted in collaborative projects such as HTML5 Readiness and HTML5 Boilerplate.
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/designing-in-the-browser-divya-manian/feed/ 2 The Web’s Third Decade — Faruk Ateşhttp://www.webdirections.org/resources/the-webs-third-decade-faruk-ates/ http://www.webdirections.org/resources/the-webs-third-decade-faruk-ates/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:13:00 +0000 Maxine http://www.webdirections.org/?p=4364 Our medium has entered its third decade of existence, and is ready for some growing up. Our definitions and understanding of the web are rapidly getting out of date, as, too, are our practices for building on it. It is time to re-evaluate where things are and, more importantly, where they are going.]]> Faruk Ateş on The Web's Third Decade. See below for full session description.Got a taste for it? Be there for the dev track at Web Directions South 2012.
This presentation was recorded at Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 23 2012.
Session description
Our medium has entered its third decade of existence, and is ready for some growing up. Our definitions and understanding of the web are rapidly getting out of date, as, too, are our practices for building on it. It is time to re-evaluate where things are and, more importantly, where they are going.
About Faruk Ateş
Faruk is a designer, developer and web standards educator with a strong passion for accessible techniques and progressive enhancement. Now busy with a new startup of his own, Faruk previously worked as Lead Designer at Apture, User Interface Engineer at Apple, and before that he built and designed Content Management Systems at a startup in The Netherlands.
Whenever time permits him, Faruk works on open source tools like Modernizr and jQuery Runloop, aiming to help people make better websites and applications. He also frequently writes for publications both online and print, and speaks at conferences and events all around the world. He now lives in San Francisco.
Got a taste for it? Be there for the dev track at Web Directions South 2012.
This presentation was recorded at Web Directions Code in Melbourne on May 24 2012.
Session description
Some time ago now JavaScript stopped being a toy language and became a serious player. Yet when you browse through the plethora of code and different discussions you get the sense that a lot of people, even those who use it every day, are still quite confused about the language — its great power, and your great responsibility toward it as a developer. Demystifying this is the purpose of the entire second day of Web Directions Code, which Dmitry will introduce in a keynote you won’t forget for a long time.
Resources from this presentation
- Baby steps: The JavaScript Garden
- As the man says, read the bloody spec!
- A number of the other presentations on the JavaScript day of Web Directions Code went into detail of the kind of thing Dmitry speaks about here:
- Write JavaScript like it’s 2012 — Tony Milne
- Truthiness, falsiness and other JavaScript gotchas — Anette Bergo
- Getting closure in JavaScript — Mark Dalgleish
About Dmitry Baranovskiy
Dmitry started his journey over a decade ago as a backend developer, then a designer and has now finally settled and accepted his fate as a frontend developer. Despite his deep knowledge of CSS and HTML, he mainly specializes in JavaScript and is well known as the creator of Raphaël as well as other JavaScript libraries.
]]> http://www.webdirections.org/resources/javascript-enter-the-dragon-dmitry-baranovskiy/feed/ 2Images:
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