Pat’s Point of View

[8:15am] Web Directions South is here again for another year. And I have to reiterate my comments from last year, this is the best conference in Australia—in the web industry anyway. John, Maxine and the other organisers must be congratulated on yet another fine performance. And the first speaker hasn’t even taken to the stage yet.

The level of professionalism and attention to detail impresses me, as does the excellent swag. You may well call me a cheap date and accuse me of being distracted by the bells and whistles, but I think this stuff matters. I think the atmosphere created for this conference makes not only for an enjoyable time for attendees, but also makes us as a community look and feel legitimate and professional. Nothing could be better for shaking off the last scraps of that image of our industry as being a bunch of nerds and cowboys flying by the seat of their pants, cowering over a computer monitor in some garage come office.

Of course you have to have great content too, and only time will tell if they have nailed that also.

[1:30pm] This morning was a great start to the conference. I must admit I wasn’t blown away by the opening keynote by Lynne D Johnson. The future of print and online media, where they might converge and where they won’t, is fairly interesting but I don’t know if I left that session with any greater understanding of any of the debate. That aside, I found it interesting how people equate user contributions and the “wisdom of crowds” with a more “pure” truth, and that big bad media organisations can’t be trusted to report the truth. Having seen the comments made by ‘the average Joe’ on news articles and other types of content, I’m not really convinced that’s the answer. There are lots of idiots out there. I think there’s still a big role for good journalism and the authoritative voice of established media organisations. How they continue to deliver that to their audience may change, but I’d rather listen to that than any fool with a keyboard.

Next I listened to Accessibility Beyond Compliance by Derek Featherstone. This was a great session, Derek is always very knowledgeable and entertaining, and I was pleased that a presentation such as this was included in the conference. All too often accessibility is seen (by those who don’t just dismiss it entirely) as either something that the code takes care of or an all of nothing proposition, but neither of these are true. Derek showed excellent examples of how true accessibility requires special attention in terms of how and where we provides users with feedback as well as showing that accessibility can be delivered within the one site—no text-only or special accessible versions here.

Next up was From Disordered to Managed Usability in an Agile Environment presented by Teale Shapcott. I was pleasantly surprised by this enlightened and practical discussion of user experience practice within an agile web application development methodology. Teale gave us good insight into how SunCorp operate as well as some good tips for those trying to sort out their own project methodologies, but one thing that seemed to be missing was user research. She mentioned using personas to get the team to think about the needs of users when writing, prioritising and estimating “story cards” but where do these personas come from? Are there parallel processes in place to research user needs and maintain these personas?

[8:05pm] After a very nice lunch it was off to Context in Mobile Design by Gabriel White. The thing that sparked my interest was how social context—such as knowing where your friends or colleagues are and what their status is—effects how we might choose to communication or interact with them, be it via IM, SMS, twitter or a phone call.

I stuck around for Elegant Web Typography presented by Jeff Croft. I must admit I already knew about a lot of what Jeff discussed, but it was an entertaining and informative session nonetheless. Some of his comments were a little at odds with modern views on accessibility, for example the use of absolute font sizes as opposed to relative, but overall there were plenty of good tips on creating better web design through elegant use of typography.

After a coffee break, we all regrouped for Predicting the Past by August de Los Reyes. I must admit this lightning paced presentation lost me a few times (I guess it was the trailing end of three-thirty-itis) and some of the videos really weren’t much more than Microsoft marketing. Or perhaps I’m just not much for this future gazing stuff…although I did prefer the Nokia design concept that Steve Baty showed us at OZ-IA. But, people that I hold in high regard have a lot of respect for August, so I’m quite willing to assume he was talking good stuff and that I just wasn’t that receptive this afternoon.

I decided not to hang around for drinks but rather to take advantage of this rare glimpse of the sun on the way home, and head off to spend a bit of time with Jenn and Grace. All in all it was a great first day, although I was a little put off by not being able to get an internet connection to work. Probably for the best anyway :)

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