Webstock 2010 conference

Ben Yuan, web publisher from digital publishing team attended the "Webstock 2010" conference at the Town Hall, Wellington 18-19 February 2010.

Webstock is a premier web conference in NZ. In 2010, this two-day conference featured 24 internationally recognised key speakers. Topics were across today's web industry, focusing on web design, mobile application, web usability and open data. Attendees included web developers, user interface (UI) designers, user experience (UX) experts and project managers. Each presentation was about 40 minutes.

A number of presentation were worthwhile and beneficial undertaking for me. The following highlights a few:


Web design that grabs people - Scott Thomas
The first day started with Scott Thomas, Design Director of Obama Presidential campaign 2008. He emphasised the importance of simplified design to improve user experience and showcased the methodology for building website informaiton structure based on mission's architecture. Scott talked about creating designs that deliver clear and consistent messaging and elements between web and print channels. After Obama's success, Newsweek said "Obama is the first presendential candidate to be marketed like a high-end consumer brand"


Brian does the Andrew Sisters - Brian Fling
Brian Fling, mobile design expert, talked about mobile web development. The presentaiton gave some useful indications of the future web applicaiton on mobile devices. Brian listed that 56% generation Y (people born 1976 to 2000) own iPOD in US and mobile is atrillion dollar industry which equals the grocery industry. His talk also painted a bright picture for mobile web applications that looik great on iPhone/iPod and other devices. Follow Brian Fling on Twitter.


Security-centered design: exploring the impact of human behaviour
Chris Shiflett, a founding member of Analog, gave a fresh view of creating secure online user experience. IN this presentation, security was not just referring ot programming security, it's really about to understand how people think, so the production won't let people feel unsafe. Chris showed some real world examples to demonstrate meeting expectations is a fundamental of good security. Also this is an interesting example to show off the social media security issues. Follow Chris Shiflett on Twitter or take a look at his blog.


Continuous refinement and data driven dynamic personas - Sebastian Chan
Sebastian Chan, the head of digital at the Powerhouse Museum, presented how Poerhouse Museum tweaked content production on the fly based on web analytics and custom metrics. This presentation is my personal favourite and a number of tips could be applied to ACL website. Seb walked through a real cultural website and demonstrated how Google Analytics data was used to identify main target audience. The segmentation of visitors data then became the driver to continuous refine the content of the website. Follow Sebastian Chan on Twitter or follow his Powerhouse Museum blog.

More information about the conference is on the official website

Amazingly, instead of showing email contacts at the end of their presentation, all key speakers are having Twitter accounts. So, we can see how widely social media is being used in today's life.