Web Directions South, Sydney photos

October 18, 2010 5:53 pm | 4 Comments

I just got back from Web Directions South in Sydney. John Allsopp and team do a great job. I and many others complimented John on pulling together great speakers at an awesome venue. I especially appreciated the smaller things he did to make a great conference – informal talks during lunch, great coffee and afternoon tea, and an incredible hack day called Amped. About a hundred folks were there on a Saturday creating amazing apps. The winning team, which included Tatham Oddie, built a conference app and also started a website dedicated to a conference data API standard – in one day.

The best talk for me was Tom Hughes-​​Croucher (@sh1mmer) talking about Doing Horrible Things to DNS. I’m not sure why he called it “horrible” – it’s actually a great performance gain. He described a technique for returning resolutions for multiple CNAMEs in a single response. This is a typical scenario for any web sites doing domain sharding. I also enjoyed watching a live release mid-session from Ben Schwarz (@BenSchwarz). He developed the W3 specification styles Greasemonkey script. Working with Michael Smith from the W3C, those styles are being incorporated into the specs themselves.

In addition to great speakers, there was an energetic vibe across all the attendees. The breaks were packed with great conversations and Q&A. I saw more of this JS community vibe the night before the conference when I attended SydJS. Over a hundred JavaScript developers packed the downstairs of the Atlassian offices for a panel of experts.

I spent Sunday sightseeing before flying home today. The sights and people were great. I want to share two photos:

On my walk back from Bondi Beach I passed through a neighborhood with this street sign for Sustainability Street with the added tagline “It’s a village out there.” A nice community boost in the middle of Sydney. At the Botanical Gardens this morning I enjoyed this sign at the entrance directing me to “Please walk on the grass.” I was further invited to “smell the roses, hug the trees, talk to the birds, and picnic on the lawns.” In the bottom right it says “Plants=Life”. It was a great final touch of Sydney before heading home.

4 Responses to Web Directions South, Sydney photos

  1. Thanks for the mention Steve, and it was great meeting you.

    The video of our pitch is up at http://go.tath.am/openconfpitch in case you want to relive the moment. :)

  2. Thanks for coming all this way steve.

    Jut wanted to say that Maxine is actually the harder working, smarter, better looking half of Web Directions!

    j

  3. I was invited to Velocity Beijing and googled to see who you were. The first link dropped me off here. Just wanted to tell you that your “Please walk on the grass” photo made my day.

  4. I’m a fan Steve, keep up the good work. And I also share the same opinion, I find Tom’s talk the best one.