I have been waxing on a little about Edge of the Web, the Perth web conference and workshops (3 weeks to go), but there is another event on the evening of Edge of the Web – WebJam.

Webjam is a fun contest where 18-20 people step up and show of what they have been working on, all in a 3 minute presentation per person.

Now the main front man for Webjam is Lachlan Hardy. He is one of those people in the Web Industry that just seem to have boundless energy and motivation.  He has just come off the biggest WebJam ever, being Webjam8. But this isn’t enough the Webjam crew are looking to do in all again in Perth for Webjam9 on November 6, 7:30pm at the UWA Tavern (as I said earlier).

Last time Webjam came to Perth, was last year,  it was a run away success. This time let’s make it even bigger. Step it up and take it to the next level. No excuses, even if it is a Thursday night, this is the one major FREE event of the year. But remember you have to register.

Also if you want to get your name in front of a few hundred web geeks, this is great opportunity for sponsorship.

The other day I caught up with Lachlan and we chatted a little about things webjammy:

MWNB:

This is the second Webjam you have brought to Perth.   So what really is WebJam beyond 18 crazy geeks trying to win the audience’s love via their 3 minute presentations.

LH:

I’m probably the worst person to define it!

What is it to the people who pour into a bar for a big geeky party on the night? What is to the speakers who sweat and labour over a 3 minute presentation? What is it to you?

For me, Webjam is long weeks of stress and organisation (do we have speakers? a venue? equipment? can we pay for any of this?), followed by a short week of panic and organisation (what do you mean that isn’t ready?), followed by one big burst of awesomeness and energy. And the latter is what I hope others get from it.

I want people to walk out the door thinking about what they can build or design or create. I want Webjam highs that carry you out to make more cool stuff!

MWNB:

Talking of highs, now this is WebJam 9.   It just seems to be getting bigger and bigger.  What are the future plans for Webjam, world domination!?

LH:

I don’t want the individual nights to get any bigger. I want to keep the conversational, open mic, beat poet feel to it. We originally started it to provide a platform for the Australian web community to promote their innovations and inspire each other. That’s still our goal, but I feel like Webjam has grown beyond that in some ways.

I’m still surprised by the passion so many people have for Webjam. Anson Parker and I thought the first one in 2006 would be he and I tapdancing on stage by ourselves while a couple of our friends got drunk and booed, but we had 19 presenters rocking out in front of 194 attendees. It was amazing! Anson is no longer involved, but not much else has changed. We’re still working to put on a fun and inspiring night of hot webby goodness that shows off all the incredible talent we have here.

World domination is definitely on the cards (after all, the rest of world probably has some cool web stuff too!), we just have to work out how to fund that…

Sponsorship is hard. We’ve had some amazing offers, but we want to stay true to why we started this and that excludes us from many traditional sponsorship arrangements. If you know anybody who’s interested in something more unorthodox (but far more cool), send them my way!

MWNB:

I know personally the vibe and buzz from Webjam is just electric even more so when you are presenting.  Kay has given us Nick Cowie’s magical tips for presenters, but are there any from yourself?

LH:

It should be electric. It should be a gig, a party, a crazy night of inspirational adventure! It should be a rush!

One of the key features is that it’s fast fast fast. Presentations should come on and off in seconds. Speakers should dash onto stage like they’re already out of time. 3 minutes is longer than you think (especially if you practice), but it doesn’t feel very long at all when you’re up there. So, practice. A lot.

You can always pick the speakers who’ve practiced, they’re the ones having more fun. If you’re panicked and rushed, then that *can* be funny for us, but really it just means that we’re more likely to miss your message. You’re on stage to show us something you’ve done, something you’re proud of. Give us the best chance to recognise it, and you.

The other big thing is that nobody wants a 3 minute Powerpoint. Slideshows can work – Diana Mounter came second at Webjam8 with a hilarious fast-paced message with a slideshow – but demos rule supreme. That doesn’t mean you have to be a coder, but show us something. Run us through a site, or a feature, or a concept. Code something live (always risky!). Get audience participation (even riskier!).

Sales pitches don’t work and nobody likes them, but show everybody something cool in your site or product and that’s better than any sales pitch your marketing guy can come up with.

The last tip I always give the speakers before we let the crowds in the door is this: have fun, that’s what works!

MWNB:

Also someone tells me it maybe someone’s birthday on the day of Webjam 9, 6 November.

LH:

I should have known better than to trust Lisa with the mic at Webjam8! She dobbed me in before 350 folks who are unlikely to forget it. There’s an odd symmetry to it, though. Earlier this year, Lisa was in Perth on her birthday to speak at Ideas 4. And now I’ll be in Perth on my birthday for Edge of the Web and Webjam9. I’m turning 30, so I’ll tell you what, we’ll make sure it’s one hell of a party!

MWNB:

I’m sure Perth can arrange it’s usually kick arse party.

Day One – Sept 25

For another year the web industry from across Australia came together at the Sydney Convention Centre for Web Directions South 2008. Expectations where high could John and Maxine pull together another outstanding conference in the epic Web Directions series.

After a successful AWIA Port80 on the evening before where Clever Starfish, radharc, Free Wireless Australia,  and Saasu sponsored drinks, It was in a bleary eye state that we descended upon the Sydney Convention Centre. This year I had a mind to attend topics that I didn’t know about, and stretch myself.

Lynne G Johnson – Keynote

The keynote that starts a conference can often set the tone for the entire conference. I have been to conferences in the past where the first keynote basically blows you mind with amazing concepts and ideas. This allows the rest of the conference to build upon this talk. Now I didn’t know who Lynne G Johnson was will this conference, but still I trusted the organisers judgment and assumed it would be good.

It’s not that the talk wasn’t good, it was. I was just left with the feeling that maybe I was at the wrong conference as it seemed to be pitched a print media, corporate sector crowd, not the uber elite of the web industry. Considering the person ROI I have to make from each session, this one left me very worried.

A few suggests to Lynne, research your audience, If you are going to reference culture icons then try and find the equivalent of the country you’re speaking in. To assume we are “just like US” is a very arrogant move that just makes you appear a little silly. It’s easy to do you just have to chat with the conference organisers.

Dimitry Baranovskly – Web Vector Graphics

Now this session slot was a problem. To go see Dimitry, support my friend Kay Smoljak, or Derek Featherstone. Having attended Derek’s workshop earlier in the week (which was outstanding, hat tip to Derek) the decision was really between Dimitry and Kay. Dimitry won.

Dimitry gave us and introduction to vector graphics on the web moving onto the problems and compatibility of VML,  canvas and SVG. As always Dimitry was extremely knowledgeable on this topic and rounded the presentation off with an introduction to his framework Raphaël, The examples and implementation of Raphaël that he demonstrated had the audience wanting to see more and more. If you have not checked out this framework yet I suggest you do.

Tim Lucas and Pete Ottery – Developing for the iPhone

This dynamic duo of Tim and Pete made it very clear from the out set that we should be developing for the mobile phone in general and not specifically the iPhone. The talk discussed the problems of phone detection to a separate sites, opposed to a mobile optimised CSS. Overall it was really the presentation of several case studies, but it was very interesting to hear the problems they had an how they overcame them.  Well worth looking to.

Javascript Libraries

This panel on Javascript was presented as a shoot out of the major Javascript libraries, jQuery, YUI, prototype of pure Javascript. It was very interesting to see the different ways that people approached the same task and the resultant number of lines of code and total file footprint for each library.

The underlying message was that you have to pick your library for the task. However you have to bee aware that there will be trade offs with each project you do. And at times it maybe better to infact just use pure Javascript for the solution as Cameron Adams demonstrated time and time again.

Jeff Croft – Elegent Web Typography

Now I cut the Javascript Libraries session short to go see Jeff Croft.

I’m always a sucker for the good use of typography. Jeff started the session well, giving a traditional overview of typography from a print perspective.

Now I ‘m not really in agreement with Jeff’s approach to the subject. For instance so what that bullets and quotes should ride outside the paragraph margins. That was for the print industry, this is now the web, its a different media and hence shouldn’t some new rules apply.

The points he went trough where really just basic use of fonts on the web, grid layout and determination, paragraph rhythm, colour and contrast, limitation of typefaces, line heights, kerning, justification and font replacement .

For me personally there was nothing new in this talk, plus I found Jeff’s machine gun rapid fire delivery a little annoying.

But the real icing on the cake was Jeff’s suggestion that maybe we should be sticking with absolute sized fonts. I can tell you this was a red rag to a bull for most of the crowd, including myself as my twitter stream contests. We will see what Jeff has to say about absolute sized fonts when he is over 40 and his sight is starting to fade.

(Edit 29 Sept 20:00) to be fair to Jeff this was not his intent, as I discovered on reading other people’s reviews of the day. Guess this is the down side of a closed twitter feed.

August de los Reyes – Predicting the Past

This closing keynote for day one was a good overview of surface computing and the progression of interface development from today into the future.  It was a mixture of psychology, interface design and cognitive recognition, over all very slick.

There where several almost SciFi type presentations of new interfaces with lots of glowing line and Utopian environments.   And several Microsoft adverts, that frankly where a little hard to take.  August came to the edge of being a sell-out speaker slot and stepped back.  This one factor marred a good presentation.   If Microsoft allow the podcast/slidedeck to be published look out for it.

Day Two – Sept 26

After an average day on Thursday and three social events that night, Web Directions Reception, the ever rockin’ WebJam 8 and the AussieTUB meetup it was as expected a very slow start.  Much needed Cafe Stories bacon and egg with extra pepper roll was required to kick start it all!

I was hoping that this day would pick up a little in terms of speaker content.

Jeffrey Veen – Designing out way Through Data

I have been wanting to see Jeffrey Veen speak for a while, and he didn’t disappoint at all.  Taking the movement of the static into the dynamic, from the flat to the visualised. Jeff point out we need to get back to giving the users the tools to build the data into information and tell their story. To leverage the visualisation of the data. To take it beyond the static into the visual.

It comes down to remembering to enforce the core function, and bring the story together, without the story the data is just data.

This presentation was inspirational, I feel it should have opened day one.  Go find the slides and podcast if you missed it.

Jina Bolton – Creating Sexy Style Sheets

Jina stepped up and presented well.  This was a hard call as she can’t talk about her work at Apple, and was basically restricted to her own personal work or generalist topics on CSS.  That said she did present a good grounding in CSS method and techniques with a few glances into CSS3, with some very sexy design visualisation of the output.

From a personal view there was very little in this presentation that I didn’t already know.    Was it a refresher, well no it wasn’t even that.  Good presentation, just not for me at all.

Michael ™ Smith – HTML5

Michael ™ Smith  ran us through why HTML5 is taking so long, but did point out some of the nicer improvement and streamlining of the proposed spec.   There were a lot of things hinted at and not said in this presentation on the politics of the HTML5 working group.  Overall it was a good journey through the jungle of the HTML5 specification.  Even had a few bits I had forgotten.

Douglas Crockford – Ajax Security

This was another conflict session for me as I also wanted to see Ruth Ellison on Integrated Accessibility into Design. But as I was trying to stretch my knowledge and not just confirm it Douglas won out.

Okay this was a dry discussion, but I expect that, it’s not really a sexy topic is it.   If you where really listening to this it as a very scary presentation.  We have a Javascript standard in place that is buggy and insecure at best.  And it has been that way off and on for years.   The only real way forward that Douglas suggested was another browser war to bring on the innovation.

Mark Pesce – This, that and the other Thing

Mark Pesce returns for another awesome closing keynote.  It’s a hard think this one, Mark has presented some amazng keynotes at Web Directions in the past.  And this one was no exception. It did review the others a little, and then step up with some good visualisation and the use of the mob in the room out doing Mark mid speech via the back channel.  This was classic.   Mark build upon his previous messages we now have the mob but the mob needs now to organise into a community and take charge, lead our destiny.  Sadly this will be Mark’s last keynote for Web Directions South for a while.

Overall

Venue, Food and the lot

This very good, in fact the food this year was outstanding, lots of choices with a very well thought out menu.

The coffee was a little better than previous years, it was drinkable. There were various soft drinks available as well at lunch, however not much of a sugarless range, point to note for next year.  One minor point the water jugs where all taken away to be refilled after the major breaks leaving attendees with no water.

The Sydney Convention Centre suffers from being a bunker of steel and concrete and hence blocks most wifi and 3G signals. But this wasn’t overall too bad as the wifi in the breakout areas was outstanding with the Meraki mesh network, thanks to Free Wireless Australia.

Final Word

Now I don’t consider myself to really be an uber web geek. Sure I’m competent in some areas, but overall I feel I still have a way to go, and would expect that many of the sessions at Web Directions would have made me think and stretched me.

This year it just didn’t happen. In fact I found just under half the sessions to be lack lust. This has made me question if attending Web Directions every year is really worth while. Maybe I have reached the stage that I’m approaching the knowledge of the people on the stage, and Web Directions South is no longer catering for me as an audience.

Or maybe what is needed is a simple indicator on the program as to the level of knowledge required by the audience for any given presentation.  So I know if the presentation is pitched at a basic level not to attend.

Overall what did I think of the conference.  Some of it was outstanding, with the usual Web Directions flare of pointing us to the new directions on the web.  It just seemed a few speakers let the mix down.

Still hat tip to John and Maxine for bringing the web tribe together for another year.

So ends ten days of web geekery.  Next stop, five weeks from now we do it all again for Edge of the Web.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that it is now conference season here in Australia. Over the next two weeks or so you are going to be getting nothing but posts on conference related activities. Sorry if this isn’t not what you were expecting.

Presently I’m in the belly of a 737-700 just crossing the eastern side of the Great Australian Bight on my way to Sydney for Oz-IA 2008 and Web Directions South 2008. This year there is yet again another special event, besides the traditional Port80 meetup on the eve before Web Directions South (proper). Yes its WebJam time again, that crazy time when 18 or so web peeps take to the stage and delivery what can only be described as a roller coaster of information in 3 minutes or less.

The WebJam crew (Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod and Tim Lucas) have yet again puled out all the stops. This year its on Thursday 25th Sept, starting at around 7:30pm to late, upstairs in the Bar Broadway, Corner of Regent Street and Broadway, Opposite UTS tower .

But remember you have to RSVP to attend. I would be sitting around about RSVPing either, there is a limit to how many people the venue can handle. So go on get over there and register.

What makes it very cooler, is AWIA and the conference Edge of the Web are sponsoring WebJam as well. So this means we that Edge of the Web supporting peeps demonstrating the Edge of the Web. Awesome.

So if you are at any of these events come up and say hi. I don’t bite.

Last Sunday I was sitting in the belly of a 737 at 12km’s up, hurtling across the Nullarbor Plain at 748 kmph from Sydney to Perth, with part of the Perth Posse. Hundreds of people in web community from around Australasia were then returning back to their respective towns and cities to family and loved ones. The compressed web geek week of OzIA, Web Directions South and WebJam is now over for another year. This year was enjoyable, but less intense from the previous years, which was good.

Okay this post is a little late, but still should be told. First off, a big thankyou must go to the organisers of the these events. You guys rock our worlds in ways that you just can’t comprehend. Eric Scheid for OzIA, Max Sherrin and John Allsopp for Web Directions and Lachlan Hardy and Lisa Herrod for Webjam. Over all this week of events has been a rollercoaster of gathering of the web industry tribes.

It was good to catch up with old friends again this year, it was also good to find new friends from around Australia and New Zealand. This years has been the year of the SNS. The intense use of various SNS within the web industry this years has made it such that we all in someway felt as it we had been in constant contact all year round, it was a strange feeling having a distinct point of reference with a people you had not seen for a year or so.

Now that a week near has passed and I can reflect clearly on the events of this mad week, let’s review the events in the cold light of day when all the emotional rollercoaster has been stripped away.

OZIA

This conference is in its second year. It’s primarily aimed at Information Architects. It tends to attract freelancers to corporate, government people, with around 120 attendees. This year OzIA stepped up a level in it’s degree of professionalism. In general the speakers where of a reasonable standard. Some could have done with a bit of the quiet word about the level of new material and fluff of their presentations. But others where really value for money. Overall its was good technical conference with a great deal of information that I could personally take away from this conference and use immediately.

Things just worked well at this conference, the wifi was good and usable, this helped enhance the social aspect of the conference as well.

Personal highlights where:

• Analysing Quantitative Data – Steve Baty
• Semantic analysis in IA – Matthew Hodgson
• Get out your pinking shears, it’s time to cut a few patterns – Sharon Varley
• Fast, cheap & somewhat in control – 10 lessons from the design of SlideShare – Rashmi Sinha

Web Directions South

Web Directions is now in its fifth year in various guises having morphed from the Web Essentials series. Web Directions is focused on new directions in the web. This year Web Directions stepped up a level as well, into the larger corporate area with around 600 attendees.

With a new venue and a corporate focused stream. Did this weaken or change the Web Directions I have been raving about. Yes and no. There was the expected core of the web industry, but this year as well the conference attracted the Nine to Fivers. These are the people that don’t have the passion for the web. They don’t live and breath the web. From them the web is just a job. For the most part these people where there because their employer paid for them to go, and it was a few days off work. That said a lot of these people I talked to where totally surprised by the quality of the presentations and the general passion, it was as if we where converting them into the passionate core of the web industry, it was a joy to observe.

The expo for some was not a welcome addition, for me personally it was okay, I was exposed to a few new products and services I would not have normally encountered, so it was all good. I wouldn’t have expanded it anymore than a few stands in the breakout area as it was, it’s about quality not quantity in this area.

Some things didn’t work for me. The lack of free wifi in the conference rooms, whilst a blessing in one way, in that you are forced to concentrate on the speaker. It was also socially a downer, the conference social application Meet Weaver just didn’t take off this year, there was just no interaction between people on this application. However at OzIA there has an explosive use of Twitter, FaceBook and the like as a group of social interaction tools. These did enhance the OzIA conference as it was like you where chatting amongst your friends as the conference was presented. The live presentation in-jokes of the previous year at Web Directions where just not possible. If there was one thing I would change it would be that.

Could I take a lot away from this conference, yes. But in the main it was not about technical knowledge but about being inspired by the speakers. In the large part I didn’t learn anything major, more confirmation. But I did find overall a new way or direction to look at the way I work on the web. Will I be back next year, yes one hundred percent. This is still the premier web event for the year.

Personal highlights where:

• Andy Clarke – Think like a Mountain
• John Allsopp – Trends and predictions in web technology
• Lisa Herrod – Usability: more than skin deep
• Mark Pesce – Mob rules

WebJam

In comparison to the two conferences WebJam was just a small one evening event. But it was really the final emotional after party. As usual it rocked, Lachlan and Lisa again maintained the high level of organisation and coordinated the madness of the 18 people in a jam with an air of uncanny ease. I didn’t present this time, but just got to take in the Webjam madness, and maybe get a little bit of camera envy at the lens set Ruth Ellison used on the night. Congradulations to the winners Dmitry Baranovskiy for his kick arse microformats tool – Optimus – the Microformats Transformer, Myles Eftos with his amazing browser based ruby debugger and third place to Digital Eskimo.

Overall this week was for me personally a turning point in the way I work and operate radharc. There will be some major changes in the way we do business in the following months.

Now we have all the events out the way we can return to our regular program, eh.

Technorati Tags: OZIA07, webjam, wds07, conference, sydney, web+directions

With a little under a week to go till Webjam I decided to step up (thanks Kay Smoljak for the prompt). Not expecting to win anything, just hoping my presentation would raise a smile on a few faces. Well I managed somehow to snag third place. I can tell you that blew me away.

A note about the presentation “Western Web3.0“, it is not meant to be serious at all, it will not mean much without the audio. Anyway, it works by clicking on the numbers on the left of the screen. If it doesn’t work in your browser, tough, it was only made to present on the night and that was it. It maybe a tad slow to load, like I said it was a quick and dirty production.

Richard Giles and Simon Wittber from Scouta stepped up after major issues with the screen projector and gave us ICCARUS and won. Nick Cowie web-sledged us all and made us race off and make our sites work on the mobile web, and took out the second post.

Big hat tip to Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod and Tim Lucas for bringing webjam to Perth, you guys rock! Thanks also to Nick Hodge from Microsoft for trekking across to Perth.

Rumor tells me there will be a webjam next in Perth at the Byte Me! festival, rock on!

Tonight is the Western Australia Web Awards (WAWAs) presentation. Yeah you know I’m a finalist. I should be excited and pumped. Instead I’m just plain exhausted, it has been an extremely busy week. You can follow the twitter feed on the WAWA site too if you aren’t at the WAWAs.

Update: and curiosity of Stewart Greenhill here is the video of the presentation:

Technorati Tags: wawa, webjam, awia, perth, webjam4

It’s been making a noise in Sydney, and Melbourne. Now it’s time for Perth to take it up a notch. Turn the amps up to eleven, it’s time for a WebJam. In association with the Australian Web Industry Association, Mr Super “Events” Man Myles Eftos has managed to talk Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod and Tim Lucas into bringing WebJam to Perth.

Where: The Velvet Lounge (Rear of the Flying Scotsman), Mt Lawley
When: Wednesday, 15th August 2007 at 6pm
Cost: FREE (yeap that’s right)

What’s a WebJam. It’s where a heap (technical term) of presenters have three minutes to scream through a presentation or demo. The presentation can be anything, a demo, an idea, you’re latest project, anything. The presentations are then voted on and a winner receives the expected fame and fortune, err.. some prizes.

You don’t have to present, just come along to heckle, check out the talent, or just the general web geekiness. Need more info, go look at the videos of previous WebJams. So now go and register to attend.

Don’t forget that this is the same week as the WA Web Awards (WAWA), you do have your ticket for the WAWAs, I would hurry they have a habit of selling out. So that’s two events in one week. That’s a WA Web Week.

Let’s take this WebJam, Perth and really show people what we can do.

Technorati Tags: AWIA, WAWA, WebJam, Perth, WA+Web+Week, WA+Web+Awards