Bloggy Hell

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Well, the finalists for 2008 WA Web Awards have been announced and my silly little Super Mario Brothers JavaScript experiment is in the running in the Web Innovation category.

If you think that Mario Brothers is the awse, go and vote for it in the people’s choice award (You need OpenID). Apparently this blog got a highly commended too, which is kind of cool.

The Edge on the Web and the WA Web Awards are only one month away, which is rather exciting - you are going aren’t you?

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We are now three months out from Perth’s first ever Edge of the Web Conference, so what better time is there is announce the speaker program and workshops! There is come awesome topics there, and I’m really excited about the whole thing! Get the skinny here.

There is also now only a week and a half before entries for the WA Web Awards close, so if you are thinking of entering, hurry the hell up!

Did I mention I’m excited?

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Just a quick public service announcment - if you have been waiting to purchase your tickets to the Edge of the Web and WA Web Awards (November 6-7 at University Club in Crawley) then wait no longer! You can now head over and register online.

Ticket prices are a reasonable:

Non Member: $495 (Early bird before Sept 1: $450)
Member: $450 (Early bird before Sept 1: $395)
Student: $299

Workshops (to be announced soon):

Non Member: $225
Member: $200

WA Web Awards dinner:

Non Member: $145
Member: $125

You really should be and register now. Really.

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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.

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After over 8 months of organsing and meetings, the WA Web Awards for 2007 have been and gone - and once again, the WA web industry hasn’t disappointed. 154 entries, whittled down to 36 finalists over 12 categories - 182 attendees at a black tie event, and as I’m sure you can imagine, the wine and food flowed through out the night. As did the crazy dancing at the Amplifier afterwards. As such, I’m sure there was more than a few sore heads on Saturday!

Congratulations to all the winners, the official announcement will be made on the WAWA website in the next few days, but for the impatient, you can go through the WAWA twitter feed to find out who got up on the night.

I would personally like to thank the rest of the committee - Kay Smoljak and Helen Burgess for their hard work, it might have been a smaller committee this year, but they worked just as hard to make the night as successful as it was. Thankyou to Jan and Rebecca at Red Horizon Events - it would have been absolutely impossible without their tireless work - there was a reason Kay, Helen and myself were so calm during the course of the day - Jan and Beck had everything well and truly under control. And thank you to Ken Drake for his brilliant work behind the camera - the photos should be up on Flickr soon.

Another big thank you to the judges - judging such an event is no mean feat, especially when you are volunteering your services. To Matt Voerman, Maxine Sherrin, Donna Maurer, Tim Lucas, Duncan Riley, James Bull and James Beaird - you did I brilliant job and I hope those of you that attended the night enjoyed yourselves. I will also thank Megyn Carpenter for the amazing job she did as the Judging Co-ordinator. Because the committee is still able to enter the awards night, we have always had a neutral chair that manages the judges on our behalf. Megyn is stepping down from the roll for 2008 and she will be sorely missed. Thank you Megs for you help!

And finally a big thank you to the sponsors - Fasthit.net, ECU, the Broth, Microsoft, Central TAFE, New Lease, Crumpler and PerthNow, for with out them we could not have put on such a huge night!

Well I think that is more than enough thank yous for one day - there are a few photos linked below (thanks Simone!), so you can have a brief look at how it all un-furled.