Last year AWIA ran the inaugural Edge of the Web conference, a one day affair in November. It was a huge success and so this year we’re doing it all again, this time in a two day format, from 4–5 November 2009. Once more EOTW will be held at the UWA Club at the University of Western Australia, Perth.

The full speaker line up has been released and it looks awesome. Blogging pioneer Anil Dash, community design dude Derek Powazek and Alex Payne — from Twitter, no less — are our international guests, and we have a great line up of national and local speakers too. You can see the full program here.

Notable for the Adobe geeks is the addition of Justin Mclean, who will be talking about web-enabling hardware.

There’s also a day of workshops on Friday 6 November, where you can spend half a day with Alex Payne or Derek Powazek in the morning, and with Lachlan Hardy or Dmitry Baranovskiy in the afternoon – or if search engine optimisation is more your thing, you can spend a full day with Scott and Cheryl Gledhill exploring the topic. Friday the 6th is also the Australian Web Awards presentation night, a crazy black tie dinner done only the way the web industry can.

Oh, and did I mention fringe events? There’s a ton of those too…

So if you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard any of this, I can also tell you that the early bird pricing ends on September 30, which does not leave very long. So hop to it!

Posted from kay lives here

Coming to the Edge?

AWIA has run a number of “Ideas” seminars in Perth over the past few years – well, four others to be exact. Each time we’ve brought speakers from interstate and overseas to share their wisdom on various topics deserving of some deep thinking.

This time around – April 22 -  Roger Hudson and Andrew Downie, two noted Australian accessibility experts, will be giving their insights on the impact of version 2 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Just exactly what do they mean to the average (or not so average) web developer?

Ideas5 is an evening seminar to help the web community understand WCAG 2.0 and prepare websites with improved accessibility.

Where?

The Melbourne Hotel
942 Hay Street
PERTH WA 6000

View Map

When?

Wed. 22 April 2009
7:00pm +

How Much?

AWIA Members: $40
Non-Members: $55

Tickets are available online now. If you’re in Perth, I hope to see you there.

Posted from kay lives here

Get an Idea(s) about Accessibility

So, after lots of bitching, speculation, and god knows what else, the podcamp Australia people have announced that the first event will be held in Perth, in October 2007. Apparently, Perth got more votes than the rest of Australia combined.

Go Perth! Our local web industry has been going a bit nuts lately.
Seems we’re standing up and refusing to play second fiddle to the East coast. We’ve had BarCamp Perth, and a WebJam, and then the third WA Web Awards, and now Podcamp.

Should be great, see you there!

Posted from kay lives here

The first podcamp Australia will be in Perth

It was shortly after the hugely successful Perth BarCamp that someone noticed podcamp.info. This appeared to be an attempt to start a similar style of unconference event in Australia.

Being the happy and enthusiastic crowd we are here in Perth – and still hyped up from recent BarCamp - Perth peeps got behind the vote to send BarCamp to Perth, sending our fair city rocketing into the lead.

There are some things about the site that are a bit odd, however - information on the people behind the event is a bit hard to find. Gary Barber did some research and has some suspicions as to whether the location poll was genuine or just a publicity stunt because it was assumed that Sydney would win.

I’m open-minded, and probably optimistic to a fault, so I’m waiting to hear something from the organisers. The home page lists “Other Upcoming Newmedia Events” and of the five that are currently listed, four are based in Perth!

What do you guys think? Is Podcamp Australia for real?

Posted from kay lives here

Podcamp Australia?

When: Wednesday August 15, 2007 from 6pm
Where: The Velvet Lounge, Mt Lawley
Cost: nothing, nada, zip

So what is a WebJam? It’s your chance to get up and show what you’ve been working on. You get 3 minutes and at the end of the night, the presentation that is voted as the coolest wins some prizes.

Video from previous WebJams is up on Viddler and it looks like a barrel of laughs. More information is coming soon so check out the AWIA web site.

Coincidentally, WebJam Perth will be held in the same week as the WA Web Awards. We’re calling it WA Web Week!

Posted from kay lives here

WebJam Perth