As I have previous discussed this was my first WebDU. I was hoping that it was not going to be a “boys own web geeks club”. And thinking back on it now that I am sitting back here at home among those I hold dear, I think it was. I approximated while at WebDU that the percentage of female attendees was well below 5%. The room was just a male testosterone fest at some points.
As Katrina discusses there was a lot of sexist comments from the audience and speakers on the podium. Personally I didn’t find the Nectarine adverts (case in point the Coldfusion one) offensive. As I took it in context of the 1950′s extreme stereotype that it projected.
Yes the previous evenings entertainment at WebDU was “interesting”, in general all had a good time. As normal things ended all too quickly. I have no idea what the people from the US would have made of the “Kath and Kim” stage show. If you know, post away below. With some of speakers having a session at today, reality bites and things didn’t kick on that much into the small hours of the morning.
Day Two
- The keynote, Ted Patrick showed off the next generation of Flex and its CS3 integration, seeing this I think I’m finally getting it as to where I can use Flex. Tim Buntel ran through some more Scorpio (Coldfusion 8.0) goodness.
In case you are wondering the mystery program turned up as a daily flyer, so all is forgiven Geoff. Mind you, you’re still not getting of the hook, the program book was okay, nicely done, but would it have killed you to have a cross referencing index. Okay it’s not SxSWi, but with two days, four streams, it really does help to have the information listed in more than just major topic groups of Flash, Coldfusion, Web Techniques and RIA Development.
The Day
- All credit to the guys at Nectarine for the Flash based adverts, they where totally awesome.
It’s 4.50am in the morning, I was going to save this blog entry till the respectable hours of the morning, but the effects of too much alcohol, MSG on my system has left me totally wired. Better to burn out the sucker, than lying in bed tossing the turning.
First up after a stroll up towards the Bridge end of Sydney, there was a solid day of having Flex downloaded into my head, you know the drill, unscrew top of your head, pour in Flex, mix, re-screw on top of your head, thankyou James Talbot (from Adobe) for the massive headlong push into the world of Flex. I’ll be looking into Flex some more.
