Bloggy Hell

TwitThis || StumbleUpon || Digg it || del.icio.us || Reddit

I got asked to talk at Web Directions South 08 a couple of months ago, but it was one of those “I won’t believe it until I see it in HTML” kind of moments. Well, John and Maxine just announced the speaker list for this year, and guess what - I’m on it!

I’ll be speaking about web service APIs, OpenID and OAuth in a presentation imaginately entitled “Web APIs, Oauth and OpenID: A developer’s guide”.

Online web applications are big business, with many people relying on the cloud for data storage and workflow. These days, an API is an essential part of any online system, but this presents authentication and authorisation issues for the humble web developer. Learn how to create Web APIs, how OpenID and Oauth works and what you need to do to implement them.

I am REALLY excited by this. The line up this year is huge and it is a great privilege to be speaking on the same bill with people like Derek Featherstone and Jeffery Veen as well as some of the fantastic local talent, including fellow sandgroper - Kay Smoljak.

This years conference adds another stream (total 3: Design, development and business), has 10 international speakers and some a good number of local up-and-comers,who get their first chance to speak at an international conference (Yours truly included).

Web directions is always heaps of fun - this will be my third one. Not only do you get to hear really smart people talk about really cool stuff, you then get the chance to hang out with said really cool people and chat with them.

So, if you are thinking of going, let me sweeten the deal a little. If you use the discount code: WDS08-ME when you sign up, you’ll get $50 off the price of your ticket! It should be three types of awesome, so hurry up and ticket yourself up.

When: 23-26 September 2008
Where: Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Darling Harbour, Sydney

TwitThis || StumbleUpon || Digg it || del.icio.us || Reddit

Put 80-odd  geeks in a room and magic happens, which is what happened on Saturday at BarCamp 2.0, Perth. It was a fantastic turn out - we even got a couple of east coasters (Thanks @marclehmann and @liako) to enjoy the frivolities. Although, due to me running around like a blowfly with it’s head cut off, I still manged to get a couple of great presentations, which could lead to some seriously cool ideas which is all you can ask from a BarCamp.

But the biggest announcement for the day was WA’s very own Web conference - Edge of the Web.  After three awesome Web Awards over the last three years, it was a natural progression for us to push the envelope a little. Keep November 6 and 7 free - it’s going to be three types of awesome. We have international and national speakers, and we are fairly good at throwing parties over this side of the Nullabor. Oh, and we are running a poll, were you can put your 3c worth in picking our logo.

Having said that. I do have one gripe about our fair city. After the PTUB that followed BarCamp at the Royal, we moved on to @richardgiles‘ place for a cuppa tea and a scone. We realised we were out of Brandy, so we went out to find a friendly establishment to purchase a night-cap or two. It was 10pm in the evening AND EVERYTHING WAS CLOSED. I seriously caught a cab out to South Perth to go through a drive through. WTF. Anyway. Enough bitching - it was a top day and night and I’m not going to let our draconian liquor licensing laws spoil that.

Anyhoo, I’m off to nurse this cold that I and half of the Perth twitterati seem to have contracted.

TwitThis || StumbleUpon || Digg it || del.icio.us || Reddit

On Saturday I posted that 88 Miles was profiled on the Startups Carnival run by VS Consulting. Well, the results are out now, and 88 Miles came a extremely respectable 4th from 28 entries!

A big congratulations to Richard at Scouta for taking out the first prize and to GoodBarry and Suburb View for rounding out the top three.

Also hats off to OurWishingWell, who shared fourth place with 88 Miles.

TwitThis || StumbleUpon || Digg it || del.icio.us || Reddit

VS Consulting Group has been running an online startups carnival over the past two-weeks, profiling 28 up and coming Australian startups.

Today, 88 Miles is profiled.

It is well worth checking out some of the other entrants, including fellow West Australian Scouta.

A big thanks to Vishal for putting on such an “event” — it really goes to show that the SaaS-o-sphere is alive and well over here in Australia!

TwitThis || StumbleUpon || Digg it || del.icio.us || Reddit

… and it rocked.

Just to test our sanity, AWIA decided to pull together Ideas4 in two weeks, (minus a couple of days because of public holidays) and not only did we do it, we managed to hit our attendance target and managed to have the show run smoothly!

We had 84 attendees (one all the way from America!), and two lovely presenters who did a terrific job.

A big, huge thanks to Rachel Cook, who despite being 8 months pregnant, told us about her time in Silicon Valley as an Angel Investor, and to Lisa Herrod who flew all the way from Sydney (on her birthday no less) to remind us that standards-based code and semantic markup aren’t enough to make a site accessible.

Jordan recorded both talks, and has uploaded them to Vimeo, and there is an Ideas 4 Flickr set. If you took photos, remember to tag them as ideas4.

Ideas 4 - Rachel Cook at Ideas4 on Vimeo.

Ideas 4 - Lisa Herrod at Ideas4 on Vimeo.

I was an awesome night - can’t wait for the next one!