Webstock Mini, March 2007

Cameron Adams

Javascript and AJAX Workshop

Cameron lives in Australia, where he fills in his time by occupying the niche where both design and code intersect. This means he can often be found tinkering with unique JavaScript interfaces. While running his own business he's consulted and worked for government departments, non-profit organisations, large corporations and tiny startups.

As well as helping his list of clients, Cameron has taught numerous workshops around Australia and spoken at conferences worldwide, such as @media and Web Directions. In 2006 he released his first book -- The JavaScript Anthology -- which is one of the most complete question and answer resources on modern JavaScript techniques. He is soon to release the first JavaScript book prequel, whereby he'll go back and fill in all the gaps which beginners might have fallen through.

What the workshop involved

With the resurgence in dynamic user interaction on the Web it has become more important than ever to understand the language which powers it all: JavaScript.

Cameron taught the fundamentals of client-side scripting, giving you the tools to create your own dynamic interfaces using dropdown menus, form validation, auto-complete fields, inline-editing, and much more. The course used a combination of theoretical explanation and case studies to give you a solid grounding in real-world programming.

The entire workshop covered:

• Unobtrusive scripting
• The Document Object Model (DOM)
• Event handling
• Combining CSS with JavaScript
• Dropdown menus
• Expanding and collapsing
• Form validation
• Dynamic page layout
• Auto-completion
• Inline editing
• Ajax updating
• Object-oriented programming
• Working with JavaScript libraries

Who was it for?

The workshop was aimed at beginners (those with limited knowledge of programming, not necessarily in JavaScript) to intermediates (anyone who wants to improve their JavaScript techniques).

Rod Drury

Interaction Design for Competitive Advantage

A discussion on the benefits of a Design Led approach. Rod will including walkthroughs of the Interaction Design process using a number of approaches from his perspective of developing software products.

NZ Hitech Entrepreneur of the Year in 2006, Rod is founder and CEO of Accounting SaaS provider Xero having sold his last business AfterMail to US Public Company Quest Software in January 2006. Rod co-founded Boston based Context Connect holding several patents in the Mobile Directory space. Rod developed one of NZ's first Microsoft Development companies which was acquired by Advantage Group in 1999.

In the late 80s to early 90s Rod worked primarily for Ernst & Young/Arthur Young, as well as spending several years working on telecommunication billing systems both in New Zealand and the USA.

Through his career Rod has maintained a close relationship with Microsoft and was selected as New Zealand's first representative on the Microsoft MSDN Regional Director program, holding the role from 1997 to 2000. Rod achieved Microsoft MVP status for his work in the early days of Active Server Pages.

Rod was an Independent Director of TradeMe and SQL Services at the time of their acquisitions and continues on the TradeMe Advisory Board. Rod is also on the NZTE Beachhead Advisory Board.

Hear Rod's presentation

Peter Gutmann

The Copyright Amendment Bill

Parliament is currently considering changes to New Zealand's copyright legislation. Unfortunately some of these changes appear to be heavily influenced by content providers, with the result that the act may end up becoming New Zealand's DMCA.

This talk will look at two technology-related changes to the act which cover format-shifting and DRM, the impact that this will have on consumers, and potential fixes for the problems created by the proposed changes.

Peter Gutmann is a researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, working on the design and analysis of cryptographic security architectures.

He helped write the popular PGP encryption package, has authored a number of papers and RFC's on security and encryption including the X.509 Style Guide for certificates, and is the author of "Cryptographic Security Architecture: Design and Verification" (published by Springer-Verlag) and the open source cryptlib security toolkit.

In his spare time he pokes holes in whatever security systems and mechanisms catch his attention and grumbles about PKIs and the (un-)usability of security applications.

Hear Peter's presentation

10 x 2

How the internet changed my life!

Ten people each talking for two minutes on "How the internet changed my life!". It'll be fun, it'll be fast and it may even be frivolous. You will be entertained.

And the speakers, in no particular order, are:

Alexandra Lutyens

Director Strategy at Origin Design
Alex spent 15 years learning to communicate in the real world. Then along came the internet. Was it to be a career bad hair day, or just the right style?

Mark Cubey

Radio New Zealand
Mark has been cutting his teeth on bleeding edge technology for most of his life and is about to vacate the producer's chair at Saturday Morning with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand National.

Josephine Hall

Signify
Josephine is 18, almost natural blonde, likes shoes and clothes and other teenage-girl-things. She's also an ex-Tech Angel Leader and likes to think that she breaks the geek stereotype. In reality she just sticks out in her computer science lectures.

Tim Norton

PlanHQ

Lalita Rajasingham

Associate Professor of Communications, Victoria University of Wellington
Dr Lalita Rajasingham's research concerns the future of education as we know it, and explores the possibilities that in future the new academics could be JITAITS (just in time artificially intelligent tutors) and the person sitting next to you, may be an avatar made of bits, rather than flesh and bones made of atoms. And, it will be hard to tell the difference.

Cameron Adams

The Man in blue

Martha Craig

Babylicious, Wanda Harland, the Wellingtonista
Martha is increasingly leading life online. Martha has written Wanda Harland for 2 years, contributes to the Wellingtonista, and has her own Babylicious website selling cool children's gear. Her latest fun project is the ultra hip Craft2.0.

Peter Gutmann

Professional paranoid

Michael Gregg

Clemenger BBDO
Was the ad industry ready for the digital democracy? Were any of us? Michael Gregg, Interactive Director at Clemenger BBDO ponders his relevance in the user-generated generation.

Jan Bieringa

Jan has always been active in creative digital development and is particularly interested in New Zealand's capability for participation, capability and confidence in the use of ICT for all New Zealanders. Fascinated too by the way forward for NZ once we get over the commodity based trading that has been our mainstay in the past ... this is where the internet comes in!

Hear the 10x2s