Heralding a new age of awful, awful navigational puns on web sites and blogs across Australia and indeed the world, the Web Directions conference has been announced. Well, kinda pre-announced.

Web Directions is the replacement for Web Essentials, which sadly is no more. Without giving much away, Maxine and John from westciv have hinted that it will be an event in much the same style and spirit. I guess we’ll have to wait until May for more announcements!

Time to start looking out for Virgin Blue sales.

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looking for a web direction?

And like the old parable about the fax machine, the more people you know who use it, the cooler it becomes.

Pre WE05, I had a handful of photos online and two or three contacts – I created an account to try it out, thought it was pretty cool, and didn’t get much further than that.

Post Web Essentials, I have a pro account, 14 contacts – not many I know, but I go for quality not quantity! – and 40 photos online – again, not many but that’s a lot for me in such a short time. Plus, based on the success of the WebEssentials “official” account, we’ve signed up Port80 for its own pro account and uploaded all the photos that were taken at the WA Web Awards and also a few from some old Port80 events.

Speaking of the official Web Essentials flickr account, how about that Amit? 523 photos uploaded in the last week or so – does he sleep? I keep expecting to see them stop, thinking he’s gotta hit that 2GB limit sometime soon – but they just keep coming. They’re awesome photos too – great job dude

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flickry goodness

Peter, Russ, John & Maxine managed it all – a star-studded speaker lineup (more gender-balanced
than most, with a good mix of both international and local talent), comfortable venue, well-catered, great schwag bag. Don’t underestimate the comfort factor – sitting for two days solid on uncomfortable chairs is, umm, a pain in the arse, especially for people with bad backs like me. What is especially amazing is that they did it all without outside corporate sponsorship.

The false alarm evacuation proved that had their been a real emergency, the world would not be down three hundred-odd web developers – a comforting thought. Plus everyone got to flickr and blog it straight away – oh the excitement! The wifi was a bit crap but hey – you can’t have everything.

What was really mind-bending, in a buzzword-twilight-zone kind of way – was hearing about and talking about “Web 2.0″, while simultaneously participating in it. Technorati tags, live blogging, flickr photos, podcasts before the conference was even over – there was more audience participation then you could poke a stick at. Maybe I’m just still basking in the afterglow, but I felt a real sense of community with the other attendees, and I’m not even finished reading through everyone else’s WE05 blog posts.

So a big thank you to all the people who made it happen – I can’t imagine the huge task it must have been. The Webboys I’d met before when they came to Perth to launch our first Web Standards Group event, and also when Russ kindly gave up his time to judge the WA Web Awards, and it was the first time I’d met Maxine (web chicks unite!) and John – but I instantly felt I was among friends. Port80 are hoping to get the Westciver’s over to Perth for a speaking event next year, and Maxine, we have lots of stuff to talk about!

So Peter, Russ, John, Maxine – thank you so much, congratulations, and I keep saying this but I really can’t wait until next year.

Technorati: WE05

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The new way to hold a conference

Yes, that’s right, I’m still working through my notes on Day 1. After Molly’s keynote and Tantek’s session on meaningful XHTML, I got my 30 seconds of fame, introducing Jeff Veen. He’s a great speaker and I’d say that many WE05 attendees would consider Jeff’s two sessions highlights of the conference. Lots of people I spoke to who went to his workshop the day before gave glowing reports. Engaging? Check. Dynamic? Check. Funny? Hell Yes. Tall? Very!

So what did I take away from Jeff’s presentations? Lots really, and I’ll have to read the presentations while listening to the podcasts because so many of the slides were punctuated with great stories. One thing that really stuck: the Need Hay/Have Hay web site. I’ve definitely seen that site mentioned before, although I can’t remember where, but it was a timely reminder that sometimes you need to pare everything down to the most basic elements. (Also something about learning to roll in a sea kayak. Just listen to the podcast, ok?).

Another thing was that Jeff considers himself a designer. I wish all designers I came across cared about user experience (beyond the eyeball experience) in the same way.

Oh, and like everyone else I got to meet at Web Essentials, Jeff was very approachable and signed my copy of his book The Art & Science of Web Design even after I told him that I’d bought it in a bargain bin for AUD $5 and hadn’t actually read it until he started giving away the PDF (and yes, I made the awful joke “could you sign my PDF”, possibly several times). Seriously, it is a good book and I recommend that you check it out (even if you just download it) because even though it’s 5 years old, techniques may change but principles don’t. But you should buy it because PDFs don’t look good on the bookshelf.

Technorati: WE05

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Beyond Usability with Jeffrey Veen

Appropriate actually, because I wore my new Technorati t-shirt to work today. Picture it now:

Coworker: cool t-shirt, where’d you get it?
Me (casually): Oh, we were at the pub discussing American politics on Friday and Tantek gave it to me.

Heh heh. Name dropping aside, Tantek and his girlfriend DJ Amber are really nice people and very interesting to chat with, as several of us Perthites found out. The question time at the end of Tantek’s first day session was cut short by an (extensively-blogged) evacuation, just before I was certain someone was going to ask his opinion on the XHTML mimetype serving issue. The second day breakfast with Tantek was interesting for me, as one of the few non-Apple toting WE05 attendees (I love my TabletPC, as documented elsewhere) – it was refreshing to hear a balanced view on both Apple and Microsoft as companies. But Tantek’s session on the second day on microformats was really motivating and one of my WE05 highlights – I was sitting next to Adrian and Miles from Port80 and we could almost see the wheels turning in each other’s heads during demonstrations on the hCalendar, hContact and hReview microformats. Look for them on the Port80 site sometime soon!

So anyway, download the podcasts and be prepared to be inspired. You won’t be disappointed.

Technorati: WE05

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Learning from Tantek