@madpilot makes

After a number of late nights and long hours, the volunteers on the AWIA committee have flick the big red switch on the brand-spanking new AWIA website.

{.imagelink}Thanks to Adrian Lynch for the design and Alex Graham for the HTML/CSS trickery – the site looks great!

My contribution was the Ruby on Rails powered membership system and podcast section (As a added benefit, you get to hear my dulcet tones on the first set of Port80 Mini-talk podcasts). The membership system now allows members greater control of their accounts and uses a secure credit card facility, rather than a third party payment site. If you are an existing member, you should have received a email with your password.

This is the next step in promoting the new AWIA brand. The year looks very exciting for AWIA, with plans for another Ideas event, the WA Web Awards and perhaps some other events. It also looks like the Brisbane and Adelaide chapters will be starting up this year as well. If you aren’t a member and you in the Australian Web Industry, maybe it is time to join up?

So what do you think?

A couple of days ago, the regular ol’ Port80 meet up was on. However, this one was a little different. Firstly, we tried out our new venue – the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. We booked a room so we didn’t have weather and other punters to contend with. It just so happens that the room has a stage. And it was on this stage that the first set of Port80 mini talks took place.

The idea behind the Port80 mini-talk is simple: Two local gurus get up and talk on a (web-related) topic for 10 minutes. It is a great way to share knowledge between the tightly knit web industry and a great opportunity of Perth designers and developers to show their wares. Because of our small population and isolation from the rest of the country attending conferences is both expensive and difficult, so these mini talks are a great way to build community.

Brian Madsen started off the proceeding with a talk about the new expressions suite from Microsoft. Since most in the room would have written off Microsoft products for anything web related, it was great to see that Microsoft are now taking standards a little more seriously.

Then it was my turn with a little talk entitled “Out of my way JSON! If CSS can be unobtrusive, so can JavaScript” where I go on to explain the benefits and techniques involved in un-obtrusive JavaScript.

You can view the slides (S5 format) for those of you who weren’t there on the night (Brian said he will upload his soon) and I’m busy doing some post-production on the audio in preparation for some podcasty goodness. That will include transcribing too for those that want to skim read the talks.

I think the night was really successful – and we are currently looking for some more speakers! So if you are in Perth or going to be in Perth on March 8, 2007 and you have a topic you can babble on about for 10 minutes, drop me a line! Even if you don’t want to talk just yet, I hope we can see you there next month. It’ll kick off about 6 o’clock.

Photos by Kay Smoljak.

Ok, ok, I know I should be publishing part II of my fantastic “Three development tools you simply must have…” series, but I just got news of the following article about the WAWAs: http://www.onvoiceover.com/articles/wawa/. Not a bad write up if I do say so my self :)

A big thanks to John Lampard for the article.