Umamiblog

Mike Brown from Web Standards NZ opened the conference stating that the web is at a crossroads now and we have the opportunity to exact real and positive change. That the key of this conference is to come away inspired.

Tim Berners-Lee has been asked to attend but couldn’t make it. Instead he sent a video message. Nice.

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.