Yesterday, hubby and I (along with a car-load of family & friends) made the very early morning drive over to Sydney for the very first Skepticamp Sydney 2011. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, with lots of interesting things learned.

“SkeptiCamps are informal, community-organized conferences borne from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. Everyone from casual skeptics to the experienced participate, give talks and get to know each other. Diverging from the traditional lecture events which have dominated skepticism for decades, these ‘open events’ tear down the barriers to organizing substantive (and fun) events by building on the wildly-successful Barcamp conference model from the tech community.”

Source: Skepticamp.org

I’ve always been an advocate for the barcamp conference model (having helped out with organising Barcamp Canberra for the past few years) as I like facilitating an environment where people can get up in a relatively ‘safe’ environment and share something of interest. It was great to see this applied to Skepticisim and critical thinking, with the result being a day filled with interesting presentations, good food and a chance to meet lots of diverse and interesting people. The two rooms filled up with a range of speakers (of which a number of them were first time presenters). There were a broad range of topics including Genetically modified food, the application of Star Wars to the bible, dealing with the media, religious education and more.

While most of the sessions were done in the presentation style, there were a number of discussions based sessions, including two run by @lozz on Introducing women to skepticism and teaching critical thinking through entertainment. I love the discussion based format as it encourages audience participation (of which there was a lot).

I was helping out for most of the day, so I didn’t get to catch too many talks end-to-end but some of my favourite things were:

• CampCakeCamp – my offering was Chocolate Bailey’s Mini Cupcakes
• I got the end of @frozensummers’ The Gospel According to George Lucas – it was pretty funny
• Mingling and interesting chats in between all of the sessions and the post-event pub drinks
• Smooth running of the entire day – everything was fairly seemless

A big thank you to @drunkenmadman, @tinydalek, @happysinger and the other unorganisers for a fantastic and smoothly run day. Thanks to the presenters for their interesting presentations, thanks to the audience for participating and thanks to the sponsors who help make it all happen.

Hubby and I have taken a few photos, which are available at my flickr account.

Great work all and all the best to Skepticamp Melbourne 2011!

The highly anticipated BarCampCanberra event happened yesterday, with a large gathering of smart and passionate folks from around Canberra, Yass, Wollongong and Sydney discussing interesting topics such as Government 2.0, social innovation, collaboration, typography, hackerspaces and more.

For those unfamiliar with the BarCamp concept:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about – either something interesting they’ve been working on, an idea they’d like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people

We had over 150 people registered for the event, 46 pizzas consumed, 72 bottles of water drunk (plus the additional cups and water containers) and 39 sessions including a series of 5 minute lighting talks (I love the 5 minute lighting talk format).

The event was tweeted, flickred, livestreamed and Googled waved. We were even covered in the Canberra Times (page 8 of the Sunday 7th February newspaper).

Some of my favourite quotes about BarCampCanberra comes from @dekrazee1:

Brain is still abuzz from #bcc2010. BarCamp is the techy equivalent of a day spa. Energising and invigorating. #I<3BarCamp

@ozdj:

@RazChorev Yep. Sound ROI. That $50 of fuel (and ~8hrs of travel time) got me about $500 worth of education today. #bcc2010

Key themes

The key themes from BarCampCanberra #3 were social innovation (particularly around the grass roots level), government engagement and activity (engagement and activity is not the same thing) and taking action after conversation.

My presentation

I was too busy running between rooms to actually sit down and listen to the presentations in full, particularly for the first half of the day. I manage to present in the afternoon on a number of topics that’s important to me: critical thinking, skepticism and quirkology.

I also manage to catch the Make Hack Void presentation (@evildeece, @__dev_dsp, @_xmd_), @evildeece ACT solar tariff, Bob Edward’s I have no Friends on Facebook presentation and all of the lightning talks in the afternoon. @sabman’s Mapping of Haiti presentation was a particular stand out.

Thanks

Many thanks to all the wonderful presenters who took the time and effort to share their knowledge. I know that it takes a lot to get up there and talk or run a discussion group, even in this type of informal setting. It was my husband’s first time getting up and talking in front of such a crowd and I’m pleased that first time presenters are able to present in a non-threatening environment.

Thanks to our wonderful sponsors: Powerhouse Museum, Microsoft, Crystal Approach, Schmooze, SassySEO.com and TheRohans.com.

Thanks to my co-unorganisers: @NathanaelB, @RohanM, @CraigThomler, @lozz, @RaeBuerckner, @Klepas and @Caronne (who couldn’t make it, but had her partner drive all the way to the venue with much needed powerboards and extension cables!). Thanks also to the wonderful Gavin (@wingedmonkeyboy) who was busy running between all three rooms to get photos of the crowds and the presenters.

Thanks to the ANU and Bob Edwards for providing the venue and wireless.

Clever and useful stuff

• Check out the presentations – BarCamp Canberra #3 on slideshare
• Check out the photos tagged #bcc2010 – Barcamp Canberra #3 photos on flickr
• See who registered – BarCamp Canberra #3 on Eventbrite
• Read the twitter stream
• We made it into the Canberra times!
• Check out the tweeting stats for the event
• @laurentlefort’s Twitter list of BCC2010 attendees

Update: Many thanks to Geoff from @SubwayBelconnen who provided the salads and subs at BarCampCanberra!

Here’s a rundown of some of the presentations. Not every session is covered.

The evolution of the agile IA

Matthew Hodgson

Matt gave an entertaining talk about the evolution of IA and about applying agile principles to our IA work. Key takeaways included:

• Agile means breaking the project into smaller pieces
• Prioritise, Iterate, Reuse
• Flexible user-negotiated scope, everything else is fixed
• As IAs we must:

• Continue to evolve
• Steal what makes sense
• Adapt it & make it ours

See his presentation at prezi: The evolution of the agile IA

Guiding the way to living greener – how psychology helped IA for a new government website

Ben Crothers

Ben presented a case study about livinggreener.gov.au. He noted that people do not start and end with one task therefore we should employ motivational psychology where the design should cater for the motivations and situations of people using the site. We should lead people on a journey by capturing them at their point of need and using a ‘concierge’ interaction model.

View his presentation on slideshare: Guiding the way to living greener – how psychology helped IA for a new government website

Bringing them online: using design research to identify online opportunities

Patrick Kennedy and Alun Machin

Patrick and Alun presented a case study on the Super Racing site (soon to be released) and the techniques used on this project as well as the challenges faced. Techniques included secondary research (literature review and competitor review), use of Google trends, user research methods such as interviews and diary studies and more.

See their presentation on slideshare: Bringing them online: Using design research to identify online opportunities

Tears, tantrums and triumphs

Meghan Hayes and Ladan Wise

This was one of my favourite presentations. My work colleague Meghan and Ladan provided an entertaining look at the 18 months journey of consolidating 50 plus websites into one website and 40 plus intranet sites into one intranet. There were a lot of politics to deal with and the site managed to survive through a change in state Government direction. One of the key learnings was about providing visual stories to key decision makers, and having individual meetings prior to big group meetings to understand and address stakeholder concerns.

This presentation also had one of my favourite quotes – “I don’t believe in card sorting. That’s ok, it’s not a religion.”

See their presentation on slideshare: Tears, Tantrums and Triumphs OZIA 2009

Navigation models: efficiency versus user preference

David Humphreys

Dave presented the results of their research into different navigation models including:

• Single level vertical drop down menus
• Multi level horizontal fly-out menus
• Use of landing/index/navigation pages with in-page links
• Mega drop-down navigation menus

Looks like Dave has confirmed that fly-outs causes problems, particularly for older users and those without fine motor skills. Mega drop-downs can work but depends on the situation.

See Dave’s presentation on slideshare: Navigation Models: Efficiency versus user preference

We’re still too fluffy

Anthony Colfelt

Anthony’s key messages included embracing our inner salesperson so we can make a difference to the decision maker. He covered the idea adoption path, where the aim is to lead the business people along the path of Unaware, Aware but inactive, Aware and active, and the Decision (which includes incentives for the business).

Presentation available at slideshare: We’re still too fluffy

Spoilt for choice: which prototyping tool is right for you?

Suze Ingram

My colleague Suze took us on a whirlwind tour of a large number of prototyping tools, looking at factors such as cost, learning curve, ability to share projects etc. The ‘gold stars’ were awarded to Expression blend and Axure.

See her presentation on slideshare: Spoilt for choice. Which prototyping tool is right for you?

IA failures in social networking platforms

Andrew Boyd

Andrew took us on a tour of some of the major social networking platforms and some of the key IA problems. One example that stood out was the Events in Facebook – it’s extremely difficult to locate, particularly once you have created the events. Something I wasn’t aware was the little bar of icons on the bottom left of Facebook – one of the icons will lead you to the events! (When I checked my Facebook page, I couldn’t seem to see this – another indication of the IA failure of Facebook?).

See Andrew’s presentation on slideshare: IA Failures in Social Networking Platforms

The art of skywriting: the demise of the tag cloud

Gary Barber

Gary showed us the history of the tag cloud and its varied usage. He questions whether tag clouds are still worthwhile being included in interface design as there are still many people who don’t understand what they are. Tag clouds should really be about audience determination, navigational aid and to visualise semantic categorisation. He proposes that some of the challenges around tag clouds can be address through the use of index or button clouds and combined with search. He mentioned that there are still accessibility issues to be overcome.

See his presentation on slideshare: The Art of Skywriting – The Demise of the Tag Cloud

It’s not easy being green: challenges faced when designing software for the Army

Matt Fisher

This was one of my favourite presentations from the conference. Matt showed us the reality of designing systems for a military environment which presents a number of challenges and obstacles that we don’t often see in our day to day work. This included no access to the cloud, bandwidth issues, limited or no electricity, environmental factors (inhospitable environment), human fatigue, the trade off between security and usability and more. He provided an interesting discussion on low-cost disruption tolerant networks and their application to third/real-world problems.

Playing games with culture

Matt Moore

Matt ran an interactive session where we were introduced to the Organisational Culture Cards and Knowledge Management Methods Cards from Straits Knowledge.

IA tools for measuring cultural readiness for web 2.0

Matthew Hodgson

Matt presented his really interesting hybrid card sorting tool that he used on a recent project to determine the organisational readiness for incorporating web 2.0 tools as part of an intranet. You can download the cards from Web 2.0 cards (PDF).

See his presentation on slideshare: IA Tools For Measuring Cultural Readiness For Web 2.0 In The Enterprise

Huge data, little screen: using site search on mobile

Melissa Cooper

Melissa presented an interesting case study of ABC’s mobile version of The Big Diary. Key takeaways from her presentation included:

• Make options visible
• Support specific criteria
• Provide refinement
• Search feedback
• Support repeat users
• Major part of mobile design is deciding what to leave out

Check out her presentation on slideshare: Huge Data, Little Screen: Assisting Mobile Users Finding Information Quickly Using Site Search

I don’t know much about the web but I know what I like

Jonathan Cooper from the Art Gallery of NSW

Jonathan gave a very entertaining presentation on how principles and techniques used in art museum education can be applied to the web. Some of my favourite nuggets included:

• Coining of the word meantness – “meant to be”
• “Meantness is about unity. Websites need unity and consistency to allow visitors to build mental model.”
• “A mismatch can be more telling than a match”
• “When you have a certain amount of order, you can have a little bit of disorder and it still looks ok
• The use of framing to define art

He has written an article based on his presentation titled I don’t know much about the web but I know what I like

Not to prime is a crime

Jodie Moule

Jodie covered issues around gathering feedback including whether the setting in which user feedback is received is aligned with user’s mindset and whether usability testing focuses too much on left brain thinking. She discusses ‘priming’, which is about playing to both sides of the brain. Jodie demonstrated a technique that her company employs, which involves asking users to complete creative tasks during recruitment as it assists recruits tap into right-side brain. An example is the creation of collages to create a point of discussion during sessions.

These are a few of my favourite things

Rod Farmer and Oliver Weidlich

Rod’s and Oliver’s presentation really brought home the challenges of designing for mobile devices. There are many factors to consider including the device, platform, browser and the cost to the consumer when every KB counts. Other points included:

• Proliferation of platforms and screen sizes
• 40% of data traffic is iPhone/Smartphones
• We need to understand the ecosystem not just the UI – ecosystem includes manufacturers, devices, OS, networks, carriers, service providers
• Mobile behaviour – 15 mins per session. 1.2 sessions per day. 3-4 sticky products. 15s page loads
• Reduce no of options on page, bubble content to the top, keep IA very simple, define what your product does

Sharing information in an Augmented Reality environment

Rob Manson

Rob took us through a tour of how augmented reality can change our perception of space and collaboration. One of the new tools is the world’s first augmented reality browser layar, which unfortunately is only currently available for Android phones.

His presentation is available on slideshare: Sharing information in an Augmented Reality environment

Thanks!

Thanks to Eric Scheid for putting together an interesting conference, to the volunteers for the smooth running of the conference, and all of the presenters. Stand outs included the barista and fruit cocktail bar, Star City for understanding our geek needs (they ran powerboards to the tables so we could get access to power for our devices throughout the entire conference), the food and to Matt Balara for his excellent sketchnotes. Thanks also to the sponsors Happener, Rosenfeld, Ironclad Networks, Charles Sturt University, WIPA and the Information Architecture Institute.

Check out the twitter stream and the photos on flickr.

Updated 6 October 2009: I updated a few typos and links to presentations. Added a summary of Ben Crothers talk.

Updated 7 October 2009: Added a link to Ladan and Meghan’s presentation on slideshare.

I really enjoyed the strong sense of community spirit among the 70 (I think it was around 70?) participants. People were eager to chat and share experiences of managing their websites and providing services to their constituents. It was interesting to see the diverse range of roles – some of the participants managed the websites as a full time job, while others balanced the website management along with other duties.

There was a great line-up of speakers, including John Allsopp, Cameron Adams, Ben Buchanan, Brian Hardy, Lachlan Hardy, Matthew Hodgson, Tim Lucas, Russ Weakley… the list goes on :)

As the conference was a dual-track conference, here’s my attempt of one sentence summaries of the sessions I attended:

• John Allsopp – Opening Keynote Speaker: The real and the virtual – closing the circle – John gave an inspirational talk about how the web connects people and devices and the importance of context of use when designing services (rather than web pages).
• Robert Beerworth – Social Media and Online Marketing – Robert’s key messages included the importance of search and how it should drive decisions, and that planning/strategy is critical to a successful website.
• James Robertson – Open Source Web Content Management: are we asking the right questions? – James talked about the different types of open sourced and commercial CMS and that commercial or open source isn’t the question – rather it’s about matching a CMS to your specific business needs.
• Cameron Adams – Working with Design – Cam discussed how web design is about the integration of the look, behaviour and emotion, and provided some design tips to take away.
• Russ Weakley – Efficient, maintainable, modular CSS – Russ gave another great talk on writing efficient and maintainable CSS. What was new to me was the idea of the bridging CSS files which helps to create hack free CSS – very clever!
• Web Standards Panel – Russ, Brian and Kate talked about the NSW Style Guide (which seems to be quite the contentious issue among the conference participants, generating lots of discussion around whether they should be a common look and feel across council and shire websites), accessibility and record keeping requirements.
• Ben Buchanan – Steering the glacier: how does one person have an impact? – Ben gave a great talk about focussing on the things that you can change as well as the importance of coffee in building up and maintaining relationships.
• Matthew Crozier – Online Community Engagement – what are the benefits and how to manage the risks – Matthew talked about a case study which showed the benefits and risks of online consultation and some of the strategies used to successfully manage these consultations.
• Local-e Re-Design Project 2008 – Reem Abdelaty and Joanna Lewis took the audience through the user centred design process of redesigning of the Local-e templates.
• Matthew Hodgson – “The Intranet is dead! Long live the Intranet!” – Using a Doctor Who theme, Matt took the audience on a journey through time where we learned that people were the very first intranets, through to the evolution of intranets today and to the future.
• Lachlan Hardy – Closing Keynote Speaker: Local Government on the Open Web – Lachlan discussed various open web concepts, including web standards, open specifications (OpenID, MicroID, EAUT etc), and open architectures (API etc), and how this may be applied to local Government. I was particularly fascinated by the OmniTI URLs example – very cool!

Used with permission from Ben Buchanan

My co-worker (Adrian Newton) and I did a presentation titled Usability for Government: improving service delivery. We talked about usability, why it’s important, some of the user centred design techniques, and tips for people to take away.

I had a great time at the conference! Many thanks to Reem and Diana for putting together a great conference, and for the wonderful speaker’s gift (which now means I’m not an Apple virgin any more).

To check out what happened at the conference, view the twitter stream and flickr photos. Other presentations should be up on Slideshare over the next few days.

There’s a number of interesting Aussie web conferences coming up, which I strongly recommend registering for if you get the chance.

Local Government Web Network Conference 2008: We believe in community

The first is the Local Government Web Network Conference 2008, which will be held in Sydney on the 21st and 22nd of August 2008. The conference is aimed at those working in the public sector, community groups, and non-profits, as well as other tiers of Government. Tickets are priced extremely reasonably.

My co-worker and I will be presenting on Usability for Government: improving service delivery.

Oz-IA 2008

Oz-IA 2008 is Australia’s annual Information Architecture conference. It’s intimate in size in terms of the number of people attending, but lots of great topics! This is a great conference if you’re interested in learning more about the information architecture field or if you’re already an experienced practitioner. Check out the great looking program! I just love the chance to catch up with all my IA friends who understand where we’re all coming from!

It’s happening on the 20th and 21st of September in Sydney.

Web Directions South 2008

How do I even start to describe one of my favourite conferences? Web Directions South has heaps of great presenters, fantastic topics and a chance to mix and mingle with heaps of other cool folks who are also passionate about the web.

It’s happening on 25th and 26th of September in Sydney but there’s also a number of great workshops being run on the 23rd and 24th of September (including Designing Interaction in the Age of Ajax by my friend Donna Spencer, and Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp by my friend Stephen Collins).

I’m also presenting one of the sessions – integrating accessibility into design.

Want a discount off your Web Directions South 2008 conference ticket? Use the promo code WDS08-RE to take $50 off the ticket price. Feel free to share the discount code.

Edge of the web

My hometown of Perth seems to be the happening place this year! The excellent Perth web folks have lined up a fantastic bunch of experts to speak about all things web, at the Edge of the web conference. It’s happening on the 6th and 7th of November in Perth, and tickets are very reasonably priced.

Hopefully I’ll get to see you at these conferences!

Web Directions Government started with a very fresh morning, complete with frost on my car that took ages to defrost! My car told me that it was zero degrees when I left the house… Anyhow, Web Directions Government is the first Web Directions conference to be held in Canberra, targeted specifically at the Government sector. Here’s a quick run down of the day:

• I started the day with Jason Ryan‘s breakfast talk about Government 2.0 – The public challenge. I really enjoyed Jason’s talk about the challenges with Government 2.0 with the key themes of Change, Strategy and Control. Key ideas included encouraging everyone to engage, have a good understanding of your people and of the environment. Key quotes from the session, “most importantly, you have to trust your staff”, “when it comes to engagement, mediocrity is not an option” and “just bloody well do it!”.
• eGovernment by José Manuel Alonso – “removing the e from eGovernment”. He talked about the challenges facing Governments doing business online and the need for participation and transparency. Check out eGovernment at W3C.
• Real world web standards by Scott Gledhill – a case study of the redesign of News.com.au and associated websites. Interesting learnings about the need for clear communications and established rules, even in a team full of people who know their stuff.
• One paper clip, a box of matches, and some JavaScript by Patrick Lee – Patrick covered lots of examples of using JavaScript in the real world. Love the MacGyver references!
• Usability: more than skin deep by Lisa Herrod – I heard this at last year’s Web Directions South but it’s still as enjoyable the second time round. Lisa is always a great speaker to listen to and I love how we have a very similiar holistic approach to our user experience work!
• ABC’s election site: making the most of dry data by Andrew Kesper – Andrew covered a range of design decisions taken for the ABC election site. Very interesting look at the various technologies involved, especially the interactive maps.
• The essential elements of great web applications by Robert Hoekman Jr – a great presentation to finish the conference. Robert covered his seven key principles for great web design, including my favourite, “reduce, reduce, reduce” (minimalist designs appeal to me both online and in the real world).

Thanks to John and Maxine and their team of helpers for putting on a conference in Canberra! I had a great time and will definitely attend next year.

I decided to share my thoughts about whether Gordon Ramsay is a guerrilla user experience (UX) consultant at yesterday’s BarCamp Canberra. BarCamp Canberra is the very first of many, I hope, BarCamps to be held in our capital. For those not familiar with BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:

An international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

The Canberra BarCamp covered a wide range of topics, including design, social networking, open source and future technologies topics.

Defining user experience

In my presentation titled Ruth’s UX Nightmares, we briefly covered the meaning of user experience:

All aspects of an individual’s perception and interaction with a company, its services, and its products

Designing a product (whether it is a website, web application, a service, or a physical product) is not just about the actual product. It’s about the broader meaning of design (which was covered nicely in Darren Menachemson’s talk on Broadening design thinking). This means thinking about all aspects of the product, from the look and feel, interaction design, information design, help services (online and offline), the physical interactions that may exist with the organisation and the customer, as well as the context of use.

In Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, some of the UX elements that Ramsay looks at include:

• Amount of choice on the menu – too many choices that are presented to the customer can cause confusion
• Price of food
• Quality of food – is the food sourced locally? Is it fresh or is it frozen/packet food?
• Quality and timing of service
• Staff attitudes
• Décor (visual elements)
• Layout of restaurant
• Brand perception
• Interaction between the front of house service and kitchen

What this shows is that there are many elements that form the user experience. They all need to be considered together in the context to run a successful business or product.

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method

The Gordon Ramsay Guerrilla UX Method is a tongue-in-cheek look at a simplified UX life cycle of research, design, testing and implementation. Ramsay’s methods align with many UX techniques.

Research

The key idea of research is to gain an understanding of the business and the users that will be using the products that you are designing. Gordon Ramsay achieves this by:

• Conducting expert reviews where he always tries the food of the restaurant that he’s helping.
• Running contextual inquiry where he observes the way the chefs are working in the kitchen, as well as how customers are serviced.
• Conducts user interviews to find out what people are thinking about the food and the restaurant. He often does this by walking about the city/town and asking passer bys about the restaurant.
• Doing a competitor analysis to find out about the other restaurants in the area. He’s then able to recommend whether a new direction is needed with the restaurant, such as the recent US episode where Ramsay recommended a move to healthy food to best service the health spa area that the restaurant was located in.
• Researching the business – for example, where to source the freshest products such as fish from local fisherman rather than importing frozen fish from overseas.

Design

Much of Gordon Ramsay’s design methods are about simplifying the product being presented to the customer, while maximising the quality. In the La Parra de Burriana episode, the owner was offering 72 dishes to customers, including his signature dish – prawns in garlic, with chocolate sauce. After a few choice words from Gordon Ramsay, the new menu was simplified to a few key dishes that could be handled by the staff.

Surprisingly, Gordon Ramsay also looks at navigation and orientation. In the Moore Place episode, customers were confused upon entering the restaurant. It wasn’t clear where they had to go next. After a physical restructure of the layout, customers were guided to the dining room with no chance to get side tracked.

The design of the décor is a big factor in every episode. Gordon Ramsay almost always recommends a simple elegant style to fit with the simpler menus on offer.

Testing

User testing is another key factor with Gordon Ramsay hitting the streets with various products on offer. My favourite is the giblets club sandwich user testing from the La Riviera episode. The key message is to offer products that people want, rather than what you think they want.

5 rules

I finished the presentation with five Gordon Ramsay’s rules applied to UX. These are:

1. Keep it f***ing simple
2. Customers, customers, customers – it’s about knowing your users and thinking about the entire user experience
3. Communication is key
4. Know what you’re doing – do your research and make sure that you understand the context and the constraints
5. Be passionate! Gordon says “cook from the heart!”

I’ll probably expand this in a separate post.

The presentation

| View | Upload your own

Note: I’ve been having issues uploading my presentation to slideshare, so you may notice some funny stuff happening. There are a few slides in there which are appearing with a red background and it shouldn’t look that way! It looks fine in the original presentation. Weird….

The verdict

The very first BarCamp Canberra was a success. I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein and Nathanael Boehm) and to the generous sponsors.

You can catch many of the great presentations on slideshare and photos on flickr. There’s also the twitter stream and video will be available soon.

Edit 22 April 2008: The podcasts from BarCamp Canberra #1 are now available.

Website user experience & CSS workshop

The first is the Website user experience & CSS workshop run by my friends Donna Maurer and Russ Weakley. They are both experienced teachers and trainers – I attended one of Russ’ CSS workshops a few years ago and it was excellent and Donna is one of the most experienced Information Architects in the world.

This is a hands-on workshop where you will will learn to build detailed websites layouts from the ground up – starting with page layout, navigation and form design; and ending with clean markup and elegant styling using XHTML/CSS.

The workshops will be held in four cities:

• Canberra – Monday 31 March and Tuesday 1 April
• Melbourne – Thursday 3 April and Friday 4 April
• Sydney – Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April
• Brisbane – Thursday 1 May and Friday 2 May

More information and registration can be done over at http://www.maxdesign.com.au/workshop2008/

Web Directions South Government

Brought to you by the same folks who run the excellent Web Directions conferences, Web Directions South Government (Gov08) will be held in Canberra on 19 and 20 May. Gov08 will be a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment.

The line-up of speakers look great. If the past Web Directions are anything to go by then this is sure to be yet another great conference.

More information is available at http://gov08.webdirections.org/

Web Directions UX08

Also brought to you the same folks who run the Web Directions conferences, Web Directions UX08 is a full day two track conference, plus an optional extra day of workshops, focussing on concepts, technologies and techniques for building great user experiences on the web.

More information is available at http://ux08.webdirections.org/

BarCamp Canberra

I’ve announced it in an earlier post – BarCamp Canberra is happening 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008 at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.

More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampCanberra

BarCamp Sydney

BarCamp Sydney is happening 9am-5.30pm on Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 April 2008 (the weekend before School Holidays) at the Roundhouse at UNSW, Anzac Parade.

More information and registration can be done at http://barcamp.org/BarCampSydney

Canberra Web Standard Group

Canberra Web Standards Group is happening tomorrow! We have two interesting topics covering GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies, and Wikis at work and it’s FREE.

More information and registration can be done at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=150

IA Cocktail Hour

Another free event for the Information Architects (IA) community and those interested in this space. This will be held tomorrow straight after Web Standards Group meeting.

More information can be found at http://iacanberra.org/2008/03/26/ia-cocktail-hour-27-march-2008/

I’ve always watched the various BarCamps around the world with envy, wishing that I could be part of the exciting unconference environment. So I’m excited that BarCamp Canberra is finally happening! For those new to the concepts of BarCamps, Wikipedia defines it as:

An international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats.

Here are the details of the event:

• Who? Anyone who is interested in technology, the Internet and related topics. We have room for 60ish people, so bring your colleagues.
• What? A good opportunity to share ideas and projects and to work with like-minded individuals.
• When? 1000-1700 on Saturday 19 April 2008
• Where? BarCampCanberra will be held at the CSIT Building, North Road, ANU.
• Website? The BarCampCanberra blog is located at: www.barcampcanberra.org/blog. Updated information about the event will be posted there.

BarCamps are only as good as those that help to be part of the sharing and collaborative knowledge sharing environment. So don’t be shy. It’s free to register for the event and there’s an Upcoming event for it too.

I’m looking at presenting something related to accessibility and/or along the lines of user experience related subjects (thinking about users when designing a product/website/webapp). We’ll see how it goes with timing of our garage sale and house renovations!

With only 12 sleeps until Web Directions South 2007 (or less if you count the cool workshops!), it’s only appropriate that I get into gear and do the flickr meme started by Miles Burke. I was tagged by Gary some time ago but have been way too flat out to find the time to do this interesting meme.

The point of this meme is to find and link to as many pictures of yourself on flickr from previous years of Web Directions South. There’s definitely lots of drinking, funny t-shirts, catching up with friends, early morning breakfasts, watching others do a Ben Stiller and partying!

Gary’s right – there’s seems to be a greater amount of cameras than attendees at the conferences!

I’ll like to tag Ben and Donna but I know she’s really flat out at the moment!