maupuia calling

So, finally, we launched!

I love the site. I love the lineup of speakers we have. I love all involved in making Webstock happen. As they say in “The Castle”, it’s all about “the vibe”, and I think we have that for Webstock. People seem genuinely excited about it.

My one regret? I wanted the tagline for Webstock to be - “Webstock. 4th best in New Zealand”, but they wouldn’t let me. And yeah, you either get the reference or you don’t!

Ah, winning. Such an ephemeral concept. So eagerly sought after, so strived for, and yet in the end, so transient. And what does it mean to win? It’s such a relative concept, measured in so many ways. One might, for example, win on some spurious measure, some meaningless numerical counting, and yet lose in other, more important ways.

But I digress.

I’m here to pay tribute to the moral superiority, the intellectual acuity and the all-round web prowess of Philip Fierlinger, Brenda Leeuwenberg and Che Tibby. And the texting ability of Che’s partner - but, again, I digress. In a rollicking debate, the team of Philip, Brenda and Che did extremely well to negate the motion that “Web 2.0 is all fizz and no substance” against the superior charisma, humour and good looks of myself, Sandy Mamoli and Mark Cubey.

What can I say. Web 2.0 was the winner on the day and all credit to the opposing side. And special mention to the even-handed moderation of Rowan. I loved the evolution from “web debate” through “debatr” to “LOLdebate”.

It was a wonderful Webstock Mini. Opening speaker Leigh Blackall introduced us to a word of Second Life beyond that of Orientation island. I can see the appeal of hanging out online with friends, sharing an online space and interacting in real time. There’s potential to do things and develop relationships in different ways than other media. And yet, it seems a tad clunky and to come with a lengthy learning curve. Who has the time? Well, Leigh obviously, in between watching for his bosses to come see what he’s doing! :) I do take his point though, that this is all so very early days. We’re taking such baby steps, in Second life and on the internet, comparable with those early days of cinema. Ways of being are changing with online. Who knows, quite, how we’ll be relating to each other and the world in 10 or 20 years.

Robert O’Callahan is a really interesting guy. He did his PhD at Carnegie-Mellon university, worked in research at IBM, and has now come back to New Zealand inspired by the mission of the Mozilla Foundation. He wants to have more New Zealanders, in New Zealand, paid to be working on developing Firefox. How cool is that! I love talking to geeks (meant in the best sense of the word), and continually find it humbling that someone as untechy as me gets the chance so often.

There seems to be a buzz that’s developing more and more about these events. Seeing so many people from the industry there - private and public sectors, designers, developers, writers - all talking, drinking, networking, making connections and friends makes what we’re trying to do with Webstock worthwhile. The passion we have for Webstock gets fed and nourished.

It was also very cool to see Peter Griffin from the New Zealand Herald write 1, 2, 3 articles about Webstock Mini. Compare and contrast with the Wellington media who seem oblivious to what’s happening on their doorstep. Something that was apparent when we ran Webstock last year and hasn’t improved since.

We’re looking at running one or two more Minis this year. It’ll be fun!

So, Jo, who made us all feel really old at Webstock Mini doesn’t know what life without the internet is. I nearly got up and did an impromptu 2 min speech. It would have gone something like this.

I’m 45 in nearly two weeks.

I was 17 before I used a computer - a mainframe, my first year at University.

I was 25 before I used a PC for the first time. And then only for two days before I got fired from my job!

I was 29 before I owned a PC and used one on a regular basis.

I was 31 before I heard of the internet. Someone showed my a copy of Wired Magazine. I had no idea what the url address meant.

I was 32 before I saw a website. My friend was involved in building one. I couldn’t comprehend what an anchor was.

I was 33 before I sent my first email. 33!!

I was 34 before I built my first website.

I was 43 before I downloaded my first mp3. Having said that, I was not much older than 43 when I downloaded my 6,000th mp3.

I was 44 before I downloaded my first video from YouTube.

My son, Matthew, is 8. He goes to www.wwe.com each day and keeps up to date with the latest wrestling news. He knows all there is to know about wrestling. Although he’s wrong thinking Batista will beat the Undertaker in at Wrestlemania. The Undertaker is a phenom.

My son, Johsua, is 5. His browser of preference is Firefox over Internet Explorer. He can’t read, but can navigate, play games, find his way around.

What amazes me is not so much how the internet has changed my life, but how it won’t change theirs.

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I need to shout-out, as they say, to Jo Eaton whom I met in person for the first time at Webstock Mini. I’ve only known her virtually for 7 or 8 years! She was of the very few New Zealand people who knew of my online journal back in the day.

And it was lovely to meet with Martha also. “Wanda Harland”, it seems, is her “porn name”. The name of your first pet, followed by the street you first lived in. Mine would be Henry Ironside. It has a certain ring.

I thought Webstock Mini last Tuesday was great! More than any other event we’ve run outside of the the main conference, there was a real buzz, a feeling of networking, and, most of all, a sense of shared community. Maybe it’s because people are recognising others from these events. Maybe it was the venue - the Paramount Theatre on a lovely balmy Wellington summer evening. Whatever, it was just plain fun to be wandering around during the breaks, talking and listening to over 110 like-minded people.

First speaker, Rod Drury, talked on “Interaction Design for Competitive Advantage”. I liked the examples, and especially the sneak preview of Xero, which looked stunning. The idea is essentially design-led development and it just makes complete sense to me. A focus on the experience of using a product, where experience is meant in the widest sense, has the potential to break open a market in the way the iPod has. Using MYOB, which Xero is directly targeting, is something I haven’t heard anyone say nice things about.

So it’s not just designing something that looks great. It’s not just making something that’s a delight to use. It’s not just developing something that is technically impressive. And it’s not just bringing something to market that fulfills or creates a need. It’s doing all of those at the same time, and at the right time.

Rod’s central point seemed to be that interaction design, used properly, allowed a lot of the things that needed to be designed, tested, refined, thrown away to be done early on in the development process. So that decisions could be made before it was too costly to change, and that development could start within the proper parameters. Like I said, it makes a lot of sense to me.

Peter Gutmann talked on the Digital Copyright Bill. I wanted to ask him whether the proposed wording of the bill was because of cock-up or conspiracy. It seems probably both. Cock-up because a lot of the issues involved are technical, and quite probably the drafters of the bill haven’t quite understand how some of these things work. Conspiracy because, well, content providers has vested interests and New Zealand’s membership of the World Trade Organisation no doubt carries responsibilities [where’s the HTML tag for “sarcasm” when you need it] as well as privileges. Peter was great. A geek in the best sense of the word - long hair and dressed in jeans and Windows Vista t-shirt. Who said irony is dead!

The final part of the evening was the “10 x 2″ session. Ten speakers for a somewhat loose 2 minutes each on a somewhat loose topic - “How the internet changed my life!” A variety of ages, experiences and presentation styles were all in evidence. And somehow it all worked. I liked Mark Cubey’s a lot. I’ve admired him ever since I arrived at Victoria University in 1980 and he was writing in and editing Salient, pumping out great concert reviews of the Fall.

So I’m already thinking up topics and speakers for the next Webstock Mini. I have no life!

On the subject of Webstock, Hustle for Russell is a great cause for one of our favourite people.

So I’m sitting at my desk at work, earplugs inserted, and tears running down my face. A colleague rushes over, wanting to know if I’m alright.

Am I alright? I don’t know…

I’m watching this video of Majora Carter’s presentation at TED, and thinking… I love this woman!

Guy Kawasaki agrees with me :)

She speaks so passionately and true about the environmental injustice that goes on in ghetto areas that I’m crying right along with her… But don’t listen to me… go listen to her!

Is there any way, Webstockers, we can get her over here? Can’t we find a way to tie her in to “things web”?

She is now in my top five list of speakers I would most want to hear.

Some more lessons from Webstock.

Sponsors. Let me be just straight up and say without sponsors we could not have done Webstock to anywhere near the level we did. I’ll even go further and say that rather than a “necessary evil”, sponsorship was essential to the success of Webstock. (more…)

Webstock has set a benchmark for me that I think few other conferences will meet unless they up their game. Quality speakers, great branding and promotion, extras - I’ll expect more of all these in the future. (more…)

Webstock absolutely rocked. I had a wonderful time at the conference, and it made everything that led up to it worthwhile. Dealing with budgets and committees and egos; worrying about timelines and responsibilities - it all melted away during four magical days. (more…)