August 10, 2007
Web Directions South 2007
This blog appeared as a result of attending Web Essentials 2005 in September 2005 in Sydney. Since then, the conference has evolved into Web Directions South, with a few of my posts from WDS 2006 hitting this blog, and now a ‘warm up’ post for Web Directions South 2007.
Why a warm up post? Well, it’s not for another six weeks, and although the speakers and topics have (mostly) been announced, there’s still no actual schedule as yet, so there could be conflicts in timings for some of the following.
Here’s a short list of some of the presentations that I am hoping to attend (in no particular order);
Andy Clarke presenting The October Revolution. Andy presented last year, and not only was a smooth public speaker, he made Keynote shine, and he hung out more than once with the Perth crew.
Pushing beyond design sounds like a great topic, by RedBubble team member, Justin French. I visited the offices of RedBubble back in 2006, and they certainly have some cool stuff rolling out.
Being interested in SEO, Scott Gledhill talking on Is SEO Evil? should be an enjoyable presentation.
George Oates, an Australian working on that little photo sharing site, Flickr, will be presenting Human Traffic.
Mark Pesce did a fantastic closing keynote for last year, and he is back this year with Mob Rules. We’ll be expecting another motivating close to the conference no doubt.
A big part of the national trip to attend Web Directions on the other side of Australia is the chance to socialise with your peers in a licensed venue. This year, we’ve gone one better and hired most of a pub for our accommodation. I’m looking forward to the networking that’s for sure.
Speaking of team building, I am looking forward to hearing local Googler Carl Sjogreen speaking on the topic of Building and managing great development teams.
WDS 2006 drinking partner, Ben Winter-Giles, is joining the line up with a talk entitled Managing agile projects in large organisations. Ben is a fluent and passionate person, so I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us (No red wine, OK Ben?).
So there’s seven of the presentations, however they all look to be worth attending - the challenge is trying to get to as many as possible, and at least absorb some of it.
All in all, I’m glad they’ve managed to add another stream, so now we have Design, Development and Management & Strategy streams. Here’s looking forward to late September!
Image: Seats at Web Directions South 06 (prior to the doors opening).
August 11th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Thanks Miles,
that’s a great photo too.
The programme should be available any day now.
One little disappointment - Carl Sjogreen unfortunately had to cancel very recently, as meetings have called him away to the US in late september.
But we do have some really exciting news about a final keynote speaker who has, and continues to, help shape the web, both as an implementor, and cusodian of web standards.
Thanks again, and see you in September!
john
August 12th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Thanks Miles,
no red wine till at least 20 minutes into the presentation, I promise.
Look forward to catching you this year. I’ll not wear white.
Ben
August 13th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Looks great - may have to try to get to Sydney for it.
August 19th, 2007 at 10:08 am
hi i enjoyed the read
August 26th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
I can also attribute the birth of my blog to WE05!