Umamiblog

Registration went smoothly, heaps of goodies including tshirt, bag, and even chit-chats…

It appears that the organisers wanted to start at 8:30 but didn’t ask people to register before then. So we are running a little behind already.

The Clean’s Anything Could Happen is blaring in the background. Hopefully that means we’re about to get started.

Mmmmm, the porridge was good – so was the coffee. A little early for most of the team but the fuel will be needed for the day ahead.

This Thursday and Friday Wellington sees the inaugural Webstock Web Conference. The workshops are running over the Tuesday and Wednesday before the conference and include some big names of the web world. The stated aim of the conference is: “to improve how websites are built through inspiration, education, insightful analysis and practical application.” Personally I think I’m looking forward to Kathy Sierra and Doug Bowman the most.

It has been interesting listening to comments friends and contacts have made about the conference. I’ve felt that Wellington is very lucky to be the first city in NZ to host a major web conference. I pushed work early to support the conference and was really happy to see that happen. A programmer I used to work with in Dunedin was very excited about the conference and was sharing half the costs with his employer just to make it up. That contrasts with another person I know whose employer decided it was just too expensive to send anyone along. That’s definitely their decision to make but I can’t help but feel that its somewhat short-sighted. The real cost is probably in time lost (well, time that could’ve been spent on billable work :D) rather than the cash cost of the conference (which can be expensed anyway…).

Work is sending me along as well as almost all of my team. Nice. Be sure to check out our stall at the conference in the Ilott Theatre foyer. We’re going to be running a little competition that includes these cool little remote controlled fork lifts, you’ll have to maneuver it through a course with the fastest 2 times picking up a rugby ball signed by the NZ Rugby 7′s team. We were one of the first companies to jump on board and sponsor Webstock and we’re helping bring out Joel Spolsky for breakfast (really!).

I’m using the conference as a chance to experiment with semi-live publishing. Wifi access at the town hall is being kindly provided by Signify so my plan is to bring the laptop and camera along and see what I can accomplish or post in that time. Mind you, home is only about 300 metres away from the conference center so it’s not really an issue if the place has internet access or not.

I do have to question the choice of slogan; “Code for freedom”. Really? I guess they’re webbies rather than marketers but it doesn’t scream lovemark to me. Registrations are still open if anyone still wants to come along. That does say to me that they haven’t been able to get near selling-out but I hope it’s close. This year is definitely the test case, if it is successful then this should become a permanent fixture. Knowing the fickle nature of New Zealand and the support of new ideas and events, we won’t know until just after the conference starts as to whether or not it will fly or sink.

There is a blog and a flickr feed for the conference.

Q: How do you know Google when has jumped the shark?

A: When you need a cheat sheet to get the most from it…

Google Cheat Sheet

An absolutely brilliant quote on systems/process:

If process makes you nervous, it’s probably because it threatens your reliance on intuition. Get over it. The best processes leverage your intuition and give it room to thrive.

– Why are you afraid of process? Seth Godin

Today Vodafone announced that they would be releasing a mobile data plan on their 3G network that gave you 1GB for $49+GST. That’s probably enough for me to lose my landline which I only have to get DSL.

Vodafone page.

And yet we still have clients who are afraid their logo is going to get stolen from their website and think that a script which allows you to disable right clicking is an effective means to stop that from happening.

There are so many things wrong with that sentence (the least of which is it’s grammar).

*sigh*

Update: And clients asking for images to be sized to the 35mm film aspect ratio.

Today I purchased 37signals’ new book ‘Getting Real‘.

I’ve been reading Signal Vs. Noise for a while now and I really appreciate the approach these guys have to a number of areas; application design, development, running a biz, project management, and so on. We do have their first book, Defensive Design for the Web, in the studio at work but I haven’t spent more than 5 minutes glancing at it so that wasn’t really a factor in deciding whether or not to fork out the USD$19 for the e-book.

It looks like an interesting book and stealing from their sales pitch: “This is not a technical book or a design tutorial, it’s a book of ideas.”

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve finished.

Theives make off with an estimated £25 million and what can really only be described as one very calculated and well executed plan (read: financed).

Check it out at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas_depot_robbery

Basically, they kidnapped the branch manager by impersonating police officers while simultaneously kidnapping his family, again by impersonating police officers. Then with the right amount of motivation applied (ie. do what we say or say goodbye to your family) about 6 people got in and tied up 15 guards then made off with £25 million in bank notes. Surely that would weigh more than a few tonnes…

UPDATE: Looks like teh revised estimate for the cash they made off with is now somewhere in the £25-50 million range…

This is just a test to see if i can post and publish an entry from my wee under powered cellphone

Excellent, another one into the mix. As of today, James Story has started blogging. Check out Cache Dump. His first post is on a whole lot of geeky shit I don’t understand

James and I work at the same company but in different offices. Otherwise known as the “Silver Bullet” in our touch team…

And Mike Davidson brings us an excellent article on Camino reaching 1.0.

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