If you’ve been to one before then you’ll understand my excitement. If not then here’s why you should go:

• You’ll meet a whole new load of awesome, talented, creative, web peeps
• You will here some great presentations on the mad stuff people are doing
• You won’t get bored by long droll presentations cos each presenter only has 3 minutes to wow you with their cool shiz
• If you’ve been secretly working on something the world (or at least a room full) should know about then this is your chance to get up and “Jam” about what you’ve been working on
• It’s at a bar so you can have a beer (which might be nice if you feel like relaxing after a day at Web Directions)

Thanks to misswired for the photo.

Be part of the local web community and come to Webjam 8 on 25 September and watch and learn or present, and have fun (and tell your webby friends about it).

I’ll be there, hope to see you there too.

If that sounds like a challenge facing you and your organisation, then perhaps the upcoming Web 2.0 Bootcamp, to be held in conjunction with this year’s Web Directions South conference may help you address that.

http://south08.webdirections.org/?cat=3#post-89

Rather than looking at the technologies and their implementation, this workshop, delivered by renowned corporate trainer Jeff Kelly (already thousands around the world have taken the workshop) leads you through a deep exploration of the latest ideas, business models, trends, and techniques behind Web 2.0 with a special emphasis on proven, actionable methods for creating new online products and services – or transforming existing ones – using a Web 2.0 model.

Topics include the 7 major patterns of Web 2.0 applications, the structure and business models of Web 2.0, and how Web 2.0 concepts are applied directly to the design and development of online products and services.

Discount for you!

Web Directions is happy to offer members of the Local Government Web Network $100 off the price of the Web 2.0 Workshop. To take advantage of the offer, just register using the promotional code W2U08LG.

Event Details

Date: Tuesday 19 August
Time: 6:30pm for 7:00pm start
Where: Australian Museum - 6 College Street Sydney
Cost: $10 per head (pay at the door)
RSVP: http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=156

Presentation 1: “Findability: going beyond SEO”

Presenter: Radica Raeves

Search engine optimisation is usually the first subject that comes to mind when thinking about ways to improve the visibility of your organisation online. But it’s only a piece of the puzzle. In order to help the intended audience find, use and reuse your information, we need to look beyond SEO. Findability could help complete the puzzle. It’s a much broader concept, touching on almost every aspect of the web design and development process, where specialist fields intersect and overlap. We need to try and identify these elements of findability and “plug” them into the user-centred design workflow. It’s a big challenge… Can we connect the dots and bridge the gaps?”

Presentation 2: “One Web, No Go”

Presenter: Oliver Weidlich

With the improvements in mobile browsers and in the overall mobile user experience, what do we expect will change for mobile web users? Will we see a ‘one web’ approach? Oliver will talk about why the mobile and PC web experiences will increase in similarity, but still remain very different.

Presentation 3: “Building web apps for iPhones”

Presenters: Tim Lucas & Pete Ottery

Where to start when making a website targetted at iPhone users, including “Should you be?”. Frameworks…Javascript…Dev environments… and more. Tim Lucas & Pete Ottery share some experiences about creating iphone.news.com.au.

RSVP for this event.

Register now so you don’t miss out!

We Believe In Community: 21 - 22 August 2008

2 full days on web technologies, strategies, creativity, and standards. 12 sessions in 2 streams and 6 plenary sessions from some of the leading experts in the field from Industry and Government.

If you haven’t registered for tickets yet then now might be a good time! We’ve extended registrations for you late comers so that you’ll be able to get tickets (at a slightly increased rate) until Friday, 8 August 2008.

So get your skates on and don’t miss out on seeing our awesome list of speakers, here’s some you might not have seen that we’ve added to the list…

• Ben Buchanan a Frontend Architect for News Digital Media with experience in both the public and private sector, is our opening keynote speaker for day 2 of the conference. Ben will be talking about how one person can have an impact on an organisation.
• Russ Weakley chair of Web Standards Group and an expert in standards based
  development will be presenting on Efficient, maintainable, modular CSS. Russ will also be leading our panel discussion on Web Standards.
• Brian Hardy an experienced trainer from Vision Australia, is now running two sessions for us (thanks Brian!), one on Writing for the Web and a new session we’ve just added to the list on Making the Web Accessible - this session will focus on accessible solutions for forms and multimedia.
• Lachlan Hardy a Design Engineer at Atlassian, team lead behind Webjam events, and well known web standards expert. Lachlan will be our closing keynote speaker and will be well worth the wait!

But don’t take my word for it, come and see for yourselves and register now. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to meet with your peers and professionals, participate in discussion and debate, and come away inspired feeling a part of our new web community.

The prize, which was started in 2006 in memory of Australian web and open source pioneer Nigel McFarlane is open to any Australian web developers or development teams, for a site completed between August 1st 2007 and August 31st this year.

Entry is free, and very simple. Just visit:
http://mcfarlaneprize.com/nominationform.html
and fill in the form. You may nominate your own site, or any site that meets the simple criteria listed there.

Last year the award was won by Michael Koukoullis for http://andrewsmustresign.com

Michael was also one of the developers who worked on the LGSA 2008 Cultural Awards website, along with Tim Lucas, and Cameron Adams (who are speaking at the “We Believe in Community” conference in August).

This prize is set apart from other website awards as it rewards the quality of the design and development of websites, giving web developers and companies an incentive to strive to improve the underlying quality of their sites.

Nominations close 31 August 2008.