Recently, Meredith and I spent a few beautiful days in Bali, Indonesia. I did have all intention to write a mini travelogue and publish it here, but in the weeks we’ve been back, it’s been crazily busy at work and in life.

We arrived late Monday evening, sans children (who had Meredith’s mother staying with them). My brother Charlie happened to be in town, so along with his friend, Rani, they were kind enough to pick us up from Ngurah Rai Airport, and in the middle of the night, we made our way to Nyuh Kuning, a small and quiet village just south of Ubud town center.

Our chosen hotel, Saren Indah, is tucked away on the southern end of the Monkey Forest, near the top end of Jalan Nyuh Bulan.

Replete with beautiful gardens, an inviting swimming pool, outdoor Bale style restaurant (open 7.30am – 10.30pm), and two story buildings housing the sixteen rooms, the place was fantastic. Either side of the property were rice fields, and although we stayed in one of the Garden rooms (lower floor), we’re assuming the views from upstairs would be great.

We ate and shopped, practised our Bahasa, and rode our two hired motorbikes, for the next four days, before sadly heading back to the airport early Saturday morning for the trip home. If you are considering a few days of downtime, you couldn’t go wrong with booking one of the many cheap flights to Bali, and relaxing in Ubud for a few days.

I’ve uploaded two videos that I took from the handlebars of the bike, using a loaned GoPro camera, designed for the purpose. This video shows a quick ride around Nyuh Kuning, and this video shows our ride from Jalan Hanoman in Ubud, over to Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave).

Terima kasih (thank you) for reading this post; I trust you’ll enjoy the videos!

Image: Photo of the reception Bale at Saren Indah Hotel, Ubud.

It’s true that I’m passionate about Port80 events; I’ve seen so many great things come out of Port80 Perth, I really want to see them established in other Australian capital cities.

Well, the Australian Web Industry Association are hitting the road again – this time, we’re bringing Port80 to Sydney and Melbourne, with aspirations that these cities then take the baton and grow their events locally.

Gary Barber (AWIA Treasurer) and I will be promoting the Port80 Melbourne concept on May 26th, along with fellow AWIA committee member, Harriet Wakelam, who recently moved to Melbourne from Perth.

We’re putting on some free nibbles, free entry and a cash bar at the funky Softbelly Bar. The full details are:

Port80 Melbourne
Tuesday 26th May, starting at 7.00pm, at:

The Lounge @ Softbelly Bar
367 Little Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC 3000

You can see a Google Map here.

Then, Gary and I are also joining fellow AWIA committee member and Sydney local, Marc Lehmann, at Port80 Sydney. Once again, free nibbles, free entry and even a few free drinks (thanks to sponsor, Saasu!) on May 27th, at the Saasu offices in Sydney CBD.

The full details for this one are:

Port80 Sydney
Wednesday 27th May, starting at 7.00pm, at:

Saasu Offices
Level One, 111 Elizabeth St
Sydney NSW 2000

You can view a Google Map here.

If you’re going to be in either city on these days, I’d encourage you to attend. We promise no long boring speeches, this is a casual social affair. Port80 events are a chance for you to meet other web designers, developers, project managers and others in the web industry in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere.

Mark these dates in your diary, and please feel free to invite your colleagues and co-workers in the industry. I hope to see you there!

After last nights shenanigans at the Southern Cross pub, Cuba St, we woke to an early start, getting to the beautiful, 105 year old, Wellington Town Hall to be greeted by plenty of ushers and volunteers, feeding the masses barista-made coffee and raising the anticipation of the day ahead.

Door open of 8.50am comes around quickly, and we’re being shepherded inside for unique-to-a-conference banquet style seating, around tables of ten for the opening of Webstock 2009.

The first speaker of the day, Jane McGonigal, took us on the road of a gamer, with her talk explaining how gaming can improve your life.

Next up, the 500 strong audience listened to Nat Torkington, who expounded his wisdom about the lessons of better, stronger, faster failures. The big takeaway was fail small, and the only bad thing about failure is if you don’t learn from it.

Well known speaker, Derek Powazek (previous gigs include time at HotWired, Blogger, and Technorati) was up next, where he spoke about the wisdom of communities

Prior to lunch, we then broke into three streams (Matt Biddulph and Fiona Romeo spoke in two other rooms), where I stayed in the main auditorium to listen to Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience for guardian.co.uk, speak about content, communities and collaboration.

After lunch, three streams continued (with Cameron Adams & Pamela Fox being in the smaller rooms), and I sat as young (23 years) and very smart David Recordon gave a presentation on the open social web, expounding the virtues and explaining the history of the open data movement, comparing Facebook, MySpace and other social networks.

With everyone back in the main auditorium, our next speaker, Adrian Holovaty, went through the design and development decisions and lessons he has learnt in building well known US-based mash-up, everyblock.com. His experience began in developing one of the first Google Map mash-ups, chigacocrime.org.

Heather Champ spoke about passionate communities, from her personal experiences gained as one of the original Flickr team members. She discussed the growing pains, the trials and the tribulations of user management and their filtering and copyright strategies.

Author and software designer, Michael Lopp then took us on a light-hearted look at the differences between Geek, Nerd and Dork. As he alliterated a number of times, he thinks of himself as a nerd, maybe a geek but definitely not a dork.

Well known web identity, Ze Frank, was the closing speaker of day one with a fun look at his experiences since his first animated dancing clip, many years ago.

Afterwards, the Webstock team invited everyone to stay for a champagne and nibble, whilst browsing the wares of Craftstock, an Etsy style collection of artists selling unique handmade geek craft items.

All in all, a fantastic day, with the only downside being the arctic conditions inside the main auditorium – the first we’ve felt of the cold since arriving in Wellington on Tuesday. Mental note; I’ll remember my jacket for tomorrow.