OK, so Friday afternoon at Web Directions consisted of me introducing Thomas Vander Wal, who did an interesting talk, titled ‘Information Architecture for the Come to Me Web’

I then introduced Derek Featherstone, who followed Thursday’s talk with Designing for accessibility: More simple techniques that make a difference.

Finally, Mark Pesce did a fantastic closing keynote, full of optimism and future thinking, with his talk, You-biquity.

Afterwards, thanks to Sitepoint, it was off to the Pumphouse Bar for the closing party, then more drinks at Star Bar, dinner for some at a Chinatown restaurant, and back to the hotel around 2.30am.

It’s now late Saturday afternoon, and I am relaxing at the airport lounge, before catching a flight home in a few hours.

Image: Spanish Quarter, Sydney.

Well, after yesterdays post, we rounded the day up with Derek Featherstone’s inspiring presentation, titled ‘Accessibility 2.0′. After a full on day of education, we headed to the Thursday evening reception, held at the venue. Free beer and food is not to be missed.

The optional breakfast, hosted by Molly Holzschlag, was titled ‘Defining the new professionalism’. A great round table debate and discussion around the concept of creating codes of ethics and standard position titles.

This morning featured a number of prizes for Flickr photos and blogs, and I was pleased to be chosen as one of the conferences great blog posts for day one. I’ve now got a new T shirt and AJAX book to be proud of.

Easily the most inspiring design talks (and best presentation slide designs!) was new found mate, Andy Clarke, speaking on ‘Creating inspired design’. As a print designer from many years ago, it was refreshing to hear of grid design and working with standards in a way that allows greater freedom in design than many people expect or know.

Laurel Papworth has just presented on ‘The business of online communities. It was an interesting talk, and even featured Chuck Norris.

After lunch, I’ll be introducing Thomas Vander Wal and Derek Featherstone.

More from the Web Directions frontline shortly.

Image: Andy Clarke talk, Web Directions South.

Well, Tuesday was the start of my web directions week, but today is the official start of the conference element. I can’t believe it’s Thursday already, time has just been flying by.

I arrived with zero sleep on the red eye from Perth on Tuesday at 6.30am. Dropping bags off at the hotel, I then went out for lunch with Russ Weakley, and then hit the pub near the hotel for a $5 dinner, many beers and a trivia game until 10.30pm or so.

Wednesday consisted of working for Web Directions at the Kelly Goto workshop, The Iterative App.

Hanging out with Kelly for a day was great – I met her last year, and only spent a short time with her – this year, we got to speak lots, and being the process geek I am, I enjoyed it immensely.

Last night was the Port80 meeting in Sydney. We had about 30 people in total wander past, many of which came from everywhere but Sydney, so we’ve got lots of contacts for future chapters in other cities.

I didn’t get back until after midnight, and was back at the venue at 7.10am to help with registrations.

Now it is 3.20pm, and I’ve been listening to inspiration and education all day. Ben Barren from gnoos.com.au is talking, and we’re about to head for afternoon tea.

Image: Building near venue, Ultimo.