It was an absolutely phenomenal experience! Everything from the workshops\r\n\tand presentations to the people, and the after parties were just fantastic!<\/p>\r\n
On Wednesday, 2006-09-27<\/span>, I went to Derek\r\n\t\tFeatherstone\u2019s<\/a> workshop\r\n\t\ton accessibility. It was very informative and interesting to see many\r\n\t\tof the issues demonstrated. Throughout the day, he demonstrated the use of\r\n\t\tvarious assistive technologies, including a screen reader and voice recognition,\r\n\t\tshowing just how badly common mistakes can affect the usability and accessibility\r\n\t\tof a site. Although I had previously read about several of the issues discussed,\r\n\t\tsome were new to me and it was great to see the practical demonstrations.<\/p>\r\n Thursday, 2006-09-28<\/span>, was day 1 of the conference. \r\n\tThe most enjoyable presentations for me were Jeremy\r\n\tKeith\u2019s<\/a> Explaining\r\n\tAjax<\/a> (featuring a sexy, and rather hairy, topless\r\n\tphoto of Cameron Adams<\/a>) and John\r\n\tAllsopp\u2019s<\/a> Microformats<\/a>. Derek also presented\r\n\ton accessibility<\/a>, which was\r\n\talso good, but it was almost a subset of the topics addressed in his workshop,\r\n\twith only a few new points.<\/p>\r\n Friday, 2006-09-29<\/span>, was the second and final\r\n\tday of the conference. At the beginning of the day, John Allsopp awarded prizes\r\n\tfor cool and\/or funny photos\r\n\tposted to flickr<\/a> and blog\r\n\tposts about the conference<\/a>. I was lucky enough to receive some\r\n\tprizes<\/a> for my photo of Ben\r\n\tBuchanan in is Web 2.0MFG shirt<\/a>. I won a SitePoint shirt that reads \u201cEat,\r\n\tSleep, Code\u201d and two books: The CSS Anthology and Deliver First Class Websites.<\/p>\r\n Andy Clarke\u2019s<\/a> presentation,\r\n\tCreating\r\n\tInspired Design<\/a>, was extremely interesting. As I\u2019m a coder, not a\r\n\tdesigner, it was good to learn about web design from a designer\u2019s perspective. \r\n\tWithout showing any code at all, he illustrated ways to think about design and\r\n\thow to look for inspiration in the real world. He showed how, with just a little\r\n\tcreativity, we can start to break out of the common 2 or 3 column layouts and\r\n\tinto more interesting concepts.<\/p>\r\n However, the highlight of the day was Cameron\r\n\t\tAdams<\/a> getting his revenge with a\r\n\t\ttopless photo of Jeremy<\/a>. But, according to Jeremy, that photo was actually\r\n\t\tphotoshopped.<\/p>\r\n Despite all the great presentations and workshops, the most exciting part\r\n\tof the conference was getting to meet so many wonderful people. It was an absolute\r\n\tpleasure to meet the likes of Molly Holzschlag<\/a>, Derek\r\n\tFeatherstone<\/a>, Jeremy Keith<\/a> and James\r\n\tEdwards<\/a> (Brother Cake), as well as catching up with people I\u2019d met before\r\n\tlike Russ Weakley<\/a>, Cameron\r\n\tAdams<\/a>, John Allsopp<\/a> and\r\n\tmany others<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n I got plenty of great photos over the 3 days I was there. In particular,\r\n\tthe Lachlan\u00b3<\/a> photo\r\n\tfeaturing myself, Lachlan Hardy and Lachlan Donald, and myself with a bunch<\/a> of fairly\r\n\thot<\/a> chicks<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n Finally, the\r\n\t\tt-shirt slogan competition<\/a> to come up with a Web 2.0 slogan is yet to be\r\n\t\tannounced, but I\u2019m hoping to win for my\r\n\t\t\u201cWake Me for Web 3.14\u201d shirt<\/a>. Of all the shirts I saw at the conference\r\n\t\tand those on Flickr, I\u2019m predicting the major prize of a Sony\r\n\t\tMYLO<\/a> will be awarded to either myself or Anson Parker for \u201cWallet\r\n\t\tInspectr Nigerian Division<\/a>\u201d. John told me it would be announced on the Web\r\n\t\tDirections blog<\/a> some time this week.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overview of my time at Web Directions 2006","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,18,16,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lachy.id.au\/log\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Conference Day 1<\/h3>\r\n
Conference Day 2<\/h3>\r\n
The People<\/h3>\r\n