Last week I was at an inaugural user experience conference in Canberra, UX Australia. Despite some personal issues, over all this was one kick arse conference. It really showed that in Australia we have lots of highly educated and very intelligent UX professionals in terms of speakers and attendees.
You know it is a good conference when you glance over the program and you can see that you have conflicts all over the shop as to what you want to see. Even when you apply the old rule to go see the sessions that are outside your comfort zone.
You would expect with the economy in the toilet and the outlook in some quarters looking a little bleak, that there wouldn’t be a lot of education events like conferences going on around the country. Usually one of the first things to go on the old corporate (and freelancers) budget is those expensive junkets *cough* conferences. With people falling back on the more traditional media such as books and free online resources for their professional education requirements.
I love getting parcels in the post, you know they rock up with the postal courier, often weeks to months after you have ordered them, sometimes after they have slipped your mind. So it’s a bit of a nice surprise when they do arrive.
Well the other day a free book, Dan Saffer’s Designing Gestural Interfaces arrived from the Web Directions crew, John and Maxine. Seems they are giving away books for a limited time until March 13th. All you have to do is go register for the Web Directions Roadshow. Easy, eh.
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.
