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After a hard night of very little sleep, I struggled awake at 6am this morning so I could check out of my hotel, check in to the new hotel, and register for day one of the OzIA conference. The lack of sleep wasn’t due to a hard night of partying. I actually left the Web Directions South 06 party early so I could get a good night sleep. Instead, a faint stream of music being pipped non stop into my room kept me dropping in and out of sleep. I called reception at 3am in the morning, asking for help as I couldn’t sleep. Options presented weren’t good - I choose to attempt sleep with a pillow over my head. Not a good option.

But back to the OzIA conference. It was the inaugural OzIA conference with a good turnout of IAs, and other related professions.

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It’s day two of Web Directions 06 and most people have managed to make it to the opening speech by Andy Clarke. And for those that could manage it, there was Molly’s breakfast at 7.15am.

Andy Clarke

Andy Clarke’s presentation was just like him - stylish. Stylish slides, stylish dressing, and a stylish accent (ok, I’m partial to UK accents….). He took us through his experiences and advice of creating inspired design. Key thoughts include evoking emotion; it’s more than just the technology; get your inspiration from around you (newspapers, magazines, architecture).

Favourite quotes from Andy:

Absolutely positioning is the new DOM scripting

And the number one quote:

The web is not a power drill

Cheryl Lead & Ben Buchanan

Cheryl and Ben took us on a journey of moving your organisation to web standards. We heard about how Virgin Money did it, as well as Griffith University. Key points from the two: use lots of analogies, stay sane, and try Ben’s Coffee Theory.

Favourite quote:

Oh my God, we don’t want to be acid wash jeans!

Cameron Adams & Kevin Yank

The Man in Blue and Kevin Yank took us through an interesting and funny journey through JavaScript APIs and mash-ups. Lots of interesting examples, and even a good example of how fast the web can be….. (in response to this).

Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith gave a quick run down on progressive enhancement with hijax. He took us through the steps of the XMLHttpRequest, the hijax approach, and some examples. Great session - but not for the non-code-heads!
Favourite quote (ok, the only one I managed to get down):

The browser is no place for business logic

Kelly Goto

Kelly took us through an overview of the iterative application development process. Key points: keep iterating and iterating until you reach the goal of lifestyle driven behaviour; incorporate user research and usability; and scrum, an iterative process methodology.

Mark Pesce

Mark talked to us about social networks - the evolution, reasoning and the humanness of it. Love it!

And in other news, I was pleasantly (and excitedly) surprised to win one of the door prizes - a seat in the upcoming How We Built Flickr workshop, behing held around various places in Australia.
Next on the list….on to the Pumphouse for the closing party!

For those going to Web Directions 06, check out the very slick Web Connections 06 tool. This social networking app is written by The Man in Blue and Tim Lucas but we warned…adding connections is addictive!

Ahoy there me hearties.

For all ye Salty sea dogs and loose lipped wenches out there who didn’t know and those that may have forgotten, today be “International Talk Like A Pirate Day” so catch up on your pirate lingo. Arrr.

Tis be the official site - The Original Talk Like a Priate Day Site

And here be another site for ye scurvy dogs. Arrrr.

Shiver me timbers!

Kevin Cornell writes about Text-Resize Detection at A List Apart. It’s a cool idea.  Just beware that this technique doesn’t work properly in Opera and IE7 and that this isn’t an excuse for not designing properly.

The GNOME Project has released Orca - a screen reader with other cool sounding features - as part of the release of version 2.16 of their popular Unix desktop environment. This piece of assistive technology is not just a screen reader. It also makes use of braille and screen magnification.
I need to find some time to have a play and report back about it.

Today marks the day that Aussie icon, Steve Irwin, died due to a fatal accident with a stingray. Steve Irwin was a larger-than-life character, who is best known for his telly show, The Crocodile Hunter, his exuberant presenting style, khakis and the catch-phrase “Crikey!”. He was the owner of The Australian Zoo and was an extremely big supporter of environmentalism, as evidenced by the founding of Wildlife Warriors Worldwide.

When I first heard the news, I thought it was a joke. To my mind, Steve Irwin was nearly invincible. It was utterly bizarre to get the news about his death. I never met the man, but I was still slightly in shock.

My condolences to his friends and family.