Webstock is about more than kick-ass speakers and learning lots of new, interesting stuff. It’s also a chance to meet up with friends and new folks, to mingle, network and gossip, and to sample fine drink and food. As much as we’d love to run our big conference every month, we kinda think that might, just, be overkill. So we bring Webstock to you in mini-goodness form.
We’re branching out from Wellington, and over the next couple months will also be running Webstock Minis in Auckland and Christchurch. We’re totally excited about being able to take Webstock on the road, and just really looking forward to meeting up with lots of you again. Next week we’ll be putting up more details about the Minis – speakers, locations and even a form to sign up and come along. But as a teaser, here’s the dates and a little something about each.
At Webstock in February, we recorded interviews with three of our speakers, following on from their presentations. Vikram Kumar, who blogs about identity, privacy, and online authentication, talked with Simon Willison, and Roger Hudson, of Web Usability, talked with Shawn Henry and Molly Holzschlag.
These conversations are now available. Our thanks to Simon, Molly, Shawn, Vikram and Roger.
As part of the Webstock autumn series, we’re delighted to announce that Andy Budd and Tantek Çelik will be here for a series of workshops in early May. Neither has been to New Zealand before, so they’re looking forward to it as much as we’re looking forward to having them.
The workshops will be in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and we’ve arranged things so they’ll be on adjacent days – 5 and 6 May in Auckland, 8 and 9 May in Wellington and 12 and 13 May in Christchurch. We’ll also be running a Webstock Mini in Christchurch on 13 May.
We’ll be posting details on the workshops and Mini very soon, but we can say Andy’s workshop will be on Guerrilla Usability Testing and Tantek’s on Microformats. We think they’ll be great!
Recordings from Webstock 08 are now online. If you weren’t able to attend, you can see what all the fuss was about. If you were, you can catch up on the streamed sessions you may have missed and relive the whole experience. We know there’s going to be a lot of interest in these recordings.
There’s a couple of sessions that weren’t recorded, and this was the decision of the speaker, which we fully respect. And we’re hoping to have slides from a number of the sessions available next week.
Over the course of May and June, we’ll be taking Webstock on the road. To Christchurch and Auckland. It’s time to share the love around! We’ll be holding a series of workshops and Webstock Minis and, prosaically, we’re calling them the “Webstock autumn series”.
To kick things off, announcement-wise though not chronologically, we’re delighted to say that Garr Reynolds will be coming over in late June to conduct some workshops. Garr is best known for his blog, Presentation Zen and his recently published (and wonderful!) book of the same name. Garr is on a crusade against bad presentations, and writes lucidly, engaging and evocatively about how to make them better. His workshops will help you make your presentations better, and he’ll be speaking at Webstock Minis, so you’ll be able to see him in action.
Garr has worked at Apple, he’s consulted for Duarte Design, who put together Al Gore’s Keynote presentation on global warming, and his book carries recommendations from Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin, among others. We’re really looking forward to having Garr here in June!
