@madpilot makes

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?

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? :)

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.

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.

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.

I’m still a little blurry-eyed from last night (as are most of the beachhouse) – but I can safely say, that WebJam Perth cranked. Estimates of the number of attendees are varied, but there was definitely between 80 and 100 people there was awesome. There was also 15 presenters, and the quality was top-notch!

After picking up the WebJam crew from the airport, and hanging out with them for the day, we prepped the Velvet Lounge and the crowd started flowing in. There was a lot of new faces there too, which is an indicator of how crazy the industry is going at the moment.

Gary Barber presented a rather tongue-in-cheek look at Web3.0 whilst managing to demonstrate some pretty cool drag-and-drop functionality. This got him third place. Nick Cowie launched a scathing attack on a number of locals for producing websites that don’t work on mobiles – which got him second prize. Richard and Simon did a kick-arse visualisation system for Scouta which can only be described, well, visually – luckily there is a video already online. Unsurprisingly, this got them first place and the grand prize of Adobe CS3.

Unfortunately, my presentation Canvas Text Replacement, which is a alternative to sIFR didn’t make the top three, but with the quality of the top three, I don’t mind one little bit.

All in all, it went off – big ups to the WebJam crew: Lachlan, Lisa and Tim, for flying over from Sydney – they have been fantastic.

So one half of WA Web Week is done, roll on the WAWAs tomorrow! For those of you that can’t attend, you can view the live twitter feed on the website.

Is it August already? Our crazy, self-proclaimed WA Web Week starts next week, which means there isn’t much time to sort our your WebJam presentation and to get your frocks ready for the WA Web Awards.

Even though you can just turn up to WebJam, which will be at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley on Wednesday 15 August we would love to get an estimate of how many people we will see on the night. Head over to the WebJam website and register. Want to do a presentation? They are only 3 minutes, so it won’t take much prepare for it – you just need to tell us what you are up to and why it is cool.

And of course the biggest event in the WA Web Industry calendar – the WA Web Awards are on two days later at the Duxton hotel. The WA Web Industry is absolutely pumping at the moment, and the Web Awards are our chance to acknowledge the amazing work that our industry does. The last two have been brilliant nights, and this one is going to be even better!

So go and support your industry – the more you support us, they more cool stuff we can put on!

The WA Web Awards finalists for 2007 have just been announced and both 88 Miles and Bloggy Hell made the grade! 88 Miles is nominated for the “Best online application” category and [Bloggy Hell][2] is nominated for “Best personal or blog site”. The quality of the sites this year was awesome, so it is a great privilege to included in the group of finalists.

Go and [check out the list][3] for all of the finalists.

[2]: “Bloggy Hell” [3]: http://wawebawards.com.au/previous-winners/wawa-2007-finalists/

The past few weeks can safely be described as insane – even when compared to a regular working week for Perth-based web developer.

As hinted in my previous half-arsed blog post, BarCamp Perth has come and gone. The event was amazing. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how smoothly and inspiring the day was. To all the people that put there hand up to help out thank you – I would not have been able to mask my usual lack of organisation with out you. Thanks to Simone and Pascal for sorting out the food, thanks to Jordon for keeping everyone caffeinated, thanks to Gary for all the artwork and the t-shirts and thanks to the helpers that turned up early and setup. The day would have run a lot less smoothly if it wasn’t for you all.

Unfortunately, I forgot to record one of my presentations – luckily it was the one that I spent some time preparing, so you can download the slides if your fancy is tickled. The (impromptu) Intro to Rails talk that myself and Matt Didcoe did was videoed so as soon as I get the link, I’ll post it.

The synopsis of the day is available on the offiicial BarCamp Perth wiki – go and check it out and click through on the notes that have been posted. We had over 55 attendees which was amazing – and there was a great cross-section of people there from many different fields. We had web developers, designers, librarians, educators, podcasters and bloggers which meant that there were lots of new people to meet. We even had a Microsoft evangelist – Scott Barnes, fly over from Queensland to see what the west coast had been up to. The event has really created a buzz around those communities, which is evident in the number of times I’ve been asked “When is the next one?”. To answer, AWIA there will be organising definitely early next year, but there are plenty of events between now and then to keep you appetite whet.

One final BIG thankyou goes to each of the sponsors: Eduka, Itomic, Millstream, River Designs, Central TAFE, Five Senses Coffee and Microsoft Australia because without them, we wouldn’t have been able to put on the food. A great day had by all.

This week I started work at Norg Media with Bronwen in our new shard office space in the city! We are sharing with Nick and Dave from Softteq and there is still desk space available if your are a start up of small company that needs a desk or two. You can view the guided tour on YouTube.

If you are interested, drop me an email – we can show you around! Our address is 90 King St.

What’s coming up

The WAWA‘s are in full swing, so don’t forget to buy your tickets! Only a month-and-a-half to go. The AWIA AGM is coming up in August too, so if you want to support the industry association that supports you, it might be a good idea to head along and maybe put your hand up for committee. It will be on August 1 at the Velvet Lounge in Mt Lawley. As a result we aren’t having any mini-talks next month.

As you can see, busy, busy, busy!

Later.

Do you know someone that would want to sponsor the WA Web Awards? We still have all one gold level, of the silver sponsorship levels available as well as six category sponsorships that we would like to see filled.

The WAWA sub-committee has had some success in securing a number of sponsors but we have exhausted our networks trying to fill the final positions, so now it is your turn.

We need your help to make this happen!

As a little extra incentive, if it is your lead that puts pen to paper, we will pay you a finders fee depending on the level you can get us:

Gold: $250

Silver: $100

Categrory: $20

Note: that it has to be a decent lead – I don’t want people listing companies where they don’t have a good contact. At the least, we need a name and a direct phone. If you can give them the heads up even better. If you can convince them to contact us, we will love you forever!

I have copies of the sponsorship proposal available if you want to get hold of it. Email me: myles@wawebawards.com.au if you think you can help out.

Your finders fee will be payed if we secure a sponsor from the lead you provide us.

Offer end the end of this month or until all positions are filled – which ever comes first.