At Web Directions Kevin Yank from SitePoint spoke with some of our speakers, and there are now a couple of these audio interviews online. First up, there’s an interview with Andy Clarke, and Cameron Adams, two of our most popular speakers (people were standing in the hallway outside the room to listen to Cam – […]
Matt Magain from SitePoint got in touch to let me know the winner of the iPod Touch in their recent “Why do you love the Web” competition . Congratulations to Teresa Ko, and I know you’ll love you iPod too – I sure do!
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 them, and to get […]
Great supporters of Web Directions, and strong proponents of standards based design, Glass Onion, are looking for a Web Designer/Developer. Web Designer Excellent written and communications skills Able to work Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash Knowledge of standards-based HTML and CSS coding Glass Onion is a Sydney based web design, development, intranet, extranet, search and email […]
SitePoint, excellent Australian based web design and development publishing company and community have an iPod touch to give away. Just head over to their site and tell them why you love the web by Friday, and you could win one of these fantastic devices (I got one last week. My wife refers to it as […]
Fans sabotaging scalpers’ auctions Pace Mark Pesce WDS07 Closing Keynote.
Apologies for the slightly belated announcement of the winners of this years prize. As announced last week, the shortlist for this year’s prize were EQASRM by Angela Bonfato Creative and Spoon Media Occupational Psychiatry by August Andrews Must Resign by Michael Koukoullis SitePoint Design Contests by SitePoint Solution Central by Propeller Graphic Design & Marketing […]
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve been admiring the Web Directions events for years, and was honored to be part… What a fantastic event!
Ethan Marcotte Inventor of 'Responsive Web Design'
