Whoa, it’s the annual event season for the Australian web industry, with plenty of exciting events coming up in a city near you! As in previous years, I’ve penned a summary of what’s on; please visit the links, and support these organisations by attending and showing your support (you never know; they may just hold more events in your neck of the woods!).

Here goes, there are a whopping 13 events between now and Christmas 2010, in date order…

Oz-IA/2010
8/9 October 2010
Sydney NSW
http://www.oz-ia.org/2010/

Australian Web Awards Sydney
11 October 2010
Sydney NSW
http://www.webawards.com.au/award-events/sydney/

Web Directions South 2010
12-16 October 2010
Sydney NSW
http://south10.webdirections.org/

AIMIA Digital Summit
13-14 October 2010
Sydney NSW
http://www.aimiadigitalsummit.com.au/

Amped 2010
16 October 2010
Sydney NSW
http://ampedweb.org/

Australian Web Awards Brisbane
26 October 2010
Brisbane QLD
http://www.webawards.com.au/award-events/brisbane/

Australian Web Awards Perth
6 November 2010
Perth WA
http://www.webawards.com.au/award-events/perth/

SMX Melbourne 2010
16/17 November 2010
Melbourne VIC
http://www.searchmarketingexpo.com.au/

The A Team: ARIA & HTML5
23 November 2010
Sydney NSW
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

The A Team: ARIA & HTML5
24 November 2010
Canberra ACT
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

The A Team: ARIA & HTML5
25 November 2010
Melbourne VIC
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

The A Team: ARIA & HTML5
29 November 2010
Perth WA
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

The A Team: ARIA & HTML5
1 December 2010
Brisbane QLD
http://wipa.org.au/html5/

I encourage you to get to as many of these as you can! Attending events is always educational, not to mention the great networking opportunities that come with hanging out with a building full of geeks! If you know of an event that I haven’t covered, please let me know in the comments below…

No sooner had I returned from Bali, back into the office, than I was off again, this time to Sydney, NSW to attend CeBIT 2010, where I had the honour of being involved in the judging of the Appciety awards, for the best Australian mobile and web start-up, as well as being involved in a panel for the WebForward conference.

Having never been before, I was unsure what to expect, however I was pleasantly surprised at how well put together this series of events were. I say series, because to call CeBIT just an exhibition would be a large understatement.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre, on the picturesque Darling Harbour, played host to Australia’s (and probably the southern hemispheres) largest trade show event, with hundreds of stands in the CeBIT exhibition. The highlight of this exhibition for me was the Webciety area, with a number of web start-ups on display (including a few that I had just judged for the Appciety awards), along with an intimate lecture theatre where they demonstrated their products and services.

I arrived in time to attend the Welcome Reception / Innovation Nation event, hosted at the NSW Art Gallery, on Monday evening which was a great way to kick off the next few days.

Then on Tuesday, I attended the Enterprise conference, featuring speakers such as Simone Brunozzi from Amazon, Scott Chasin from McAfee and Stephen Beacham from DB Schenker Australia. The most prolific theme was the adoption and future of cloud computing.

Tuesday night was the popular ICT Celebration dinner, with over 750 guests enjoying the food, flowing drinks and networking whilst watching the CeBIT.AU Business Awards and e-Government Awards happening on stage, before kicking back with a live band and dancing.

On Wednesday, I attended WebForward, the web specific conference brought to you by CeBIT. Speakers included Stuart Bartram from LinkedIn, John Batistich from Westfield Group, Nick Love from MySpace and Bernie Sheehan from national broadcaster, ABC. The topics discussed definitely had a leaning towards the current topics of social media and the real-time web.

Nearing the end of the conference program, I joined fellow expert panelists, Marc Lehmann, Kim Heras, Brad Howarth, Mark Parker and Jeremy Woolf on a panel discussion, entitled ‘The Web Changing Landscape; And What the Future Holds for it’. Chaired by long time friend, Justin Davies, the panel was a great success.

There were plenty of other events and conferences that were also happening over those few days, such as an e-health conference, a number of web and ICT workshops, and the like, but there was no way I could even attempt to see it all. For such a huge combined event, the organisers, Hannover Fairs, did a great job of delivering it all; even the lunches provided for conference attendees were great.

If you are in business within the web or ICT industries, I’d strongly recommend that you consider attending a future CeBIT Australia. I hope to get the chance to attend a future one too!