The Webstock team want to improve how websites are built — and not just in New Zealand. While we’re keeping our plans for world domination under wraps just now, we have already made a move into the Pacific, starting with Samoa.
What we wanted to do was to bring several people to Webstock from Samoa, with the idea that when they get home they’ll be able to spread some of the enthusiasm and quality they’ve ‘caught’ from all the other participants and from the speakers.
We gathered our resources, and made a couple of ‘Samoan’ scholarships available, paying most of the costs of travel and registration fees. Scholarship winners still have to pay for their own accommodation and miscellaneous expenses. We’ve already profiled scholarship winner Nynette Sass.
Thanks to InternetNZ
We’ve been able to do this because of support from InternetNZ (The Internet Society of New Zealand Inc), who generously donated funding to bring two people from Samoa.
InternetNZ is a non-profit organisation dedicated to keeping the Internet open and uncaptureable, protecting and promoting the Internet for New Zealand. Their objective is “high performance and unfettered access for all”.
They also manage the .nz domain name system through the Domain Name Commission, and own the .nz domain name registry — .nz Registry Services.
APNIC is the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region, representing 56 economies. It is responsible for allocating Asia Pacific IP addresses, AS (Autonomous System) numbers, and “in-addr.arpa” domain delegations.
The meeting will be held at the Christchurch Convention Centre from August 26 – 29, 2008 and will include a range of technical presentations, tutorials and special interest workshops, finishing with APNIC’s annual member meeting. …
“APNIC meetings focus mainly on policy development issues and information sharing.
We’d like to thank InternetNZ for their generous support. We love being able to spread our wings.
We’re aware that there’s an environmental cost to Webstock. We’re flying a lot of speakers to New Zealand – that’s one of the things about living here in the South Pacific. And there’s going to be over 400 people at the conference, so that’s a lot of domestic travel, and a lot of stuff to provide everyone. So, what to do, what to do?
We didn’t want to not run the conference, of course. And video conferencing with some speakers seemed, well, not quite as good. Webstock is more than seeing people speak – it’s also about the interaction and connection that happens face-to-face.
We wanted to do something, though, to help the environment and to just give something back to the world. So we’ve decided on a couple of options, one close to home and one international. For each ticket sold, we’ll be donating $5 to Project Crimson and $5 to Kiva.
Project Crimson is a charity protecting New Zealand’s native pohutukawa and rata trees. They have been responsible for the planting of hundreds of thousands of new trees, with consideration given to locally source and plant trees native to each area of New Zealand. The money donated by Webstock will be used to help plant and protect native trees throughout New Zealand
Project Crimson Trust Executive Director Bridget Abernethy is very thankful for the support we’ll be giving, noting “The Christmas-time flowering of pohutukawa and rata are icons to all New Zealanders, and thanks to the generosity of Webstock, we can continue our goal of ensuring future generations will experience a country full of fantastic natural heritage”.
Kiva is a site where loans are made to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the developing world. It’s a micro-financing model and a number of separate loans are likely to make up the amount someone is requesting through Kiva. It’s web 2.0 that’s more than fluff!
Once the conference has finished, we’ll set up an account on Kiva and start lending some money. We’ll keep you posted here on how it goes.
So, yeah, we could have done a wiki, but like, who actually knows how to use those things? They’re just weird. And we do have a Facebook account, but you need to be on Facebook to use it.
So we’ve gone low-tech with a blog entry. Here’s how it works.
You want to meet up with others? Connect with people from out-of-the-way places like Auckland and Australia? Arrange that liaison with fellow insect-lovers? Just say hi to other Webstock peeps?
Use the comments below. Tell us you’re coming, who you want to meet, where you’d like to hang out, what your interests are. Let’s see how it goes.
Sigurd recently visited San Francisco and writes in after catching up with Kelly Goto, speaking at Webstock for her second time:
I recently whizzed by Kelly Goto’s infamous and very comfortable apartment offices. There I found a samurai simultaneously meeting the demands of just becoming a mother, working in her office but interrupted by the bureaucracy of sending parcels via Fedex, demonstrating gotomedia’s flash new stationery, and receiving a guest with a great big smile (I suspect that while Japanese culture hasn’t had female samurai previously, in the politeness of their culture they’d find room to award Kelly honorary status.)
Sigurd: You managed to fill 296 pages of a book and continue to provide edifying tutorials and talks on the process of building websites successfully. How do you manage to have an inexhaustible supply of insights and advice?
Kelly: I put the “exhausted” in “inexhaustible” these days. Juggling a new baby who doesn’t seem to need sleep with a workload that doesn’t stop is challenging. The secret here is to have a supportive and incredible team in place to keep everything moving forward. I think the answer to your question lies in two places – to keep on task and on target with work that is in front of us – while maintaining an active eye on the future. I always think two years out. Where do we want to go and where do we see things going and how can we merge the two into projects that are challenging and creative? We’ve moved from building web sites to building (and rebuilding) applications and now into applying content and services to the mobile web. At the same time, companies need to take a look at the future and build towards convergence, convenience and community. We have the luxury of separating ourselves from the companies we work with, and with that distance and insight we’re able to conduct research and offer strategies to help them move to the next level. The advice is all from direct experience – many people who write and lecture do not engage in real-world projects of diverse size and difficulties as much as we do. So we continue to learn and grow as a team through our experiences with every client and project.
Sigurd: Old habits often never die, and I’m sure you find some advice you’ve given on day one keeps rearing its head and needing reiteration time and time again.
Kelly: It’s always the same. Think like your users. Get to know your audience. Understand their needs and desires from the inside out.
Sigurd: Both gotomedia and you personally have done exceedingly well professionally. Companies years more established, and with dozens more staff can only dream of having the same reputation and outward success. What’s your secret?
Kelly: Our company mantra is “exceed expectations and take vacations.” You need to work with individuals who are passionate about what they do. Some projects are fun, riveting and rewarding. Other projects are tedious and sometimes we work with clients who are unreasonable. We try to balance our project load and give team members breaks when they need it.
Sigurd: You’ve had the privilege of working with a number of fantastic organisations. What work are you most happy with?
Kelly: We’ve recently completed a project that was both challenging and rewarding. It is the launch of a data visualization for a site called “Every Baby Has a Story” for the March of Dimes. They came to us last year looking for a forward-thinking “2.0” solution to their new campaign. We provided conceptual design work, information architecture, visual design and branding and flash-based data visualization programming for everybabyhasastory.org. The data visualization is in the form of a dynamic quilt, with the ’tiles’ representing a story for numerous babies – some born premature, most healthy. It was especially timely because I helped to produce this project while in the 3rd trimester of my pregnancy, and of course I had one of the first baby stories published to the site.
Sigurd: What big trend have you been craving for on the web, and any idea on when it will occur?
Kelly: True convergence into lifestyle. We’re seeing the desktop web migrate to the mobile web, with new devices that are ‘sensing’ and interacting with eachother. Apple’s new MacBook Air is a new take on an old segment UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computing) that hopefully will do it right. Eventually a new PC Tablet that is touch-screen enabled and truly user friendly will emerge. Integrating these ‘personal’ devices into a home network or work environment seamlessly will take some time, but it is happening.
Sigurd: Having a child is an amazing experience, as it lets you re-examine your own childhood, life, and the future through a second, edifying perspective. In what ways do you feel the existing frenzied innovation which prevails on the web firstly positively and secondly negatively will act on the generation born in the last year?
Kelly: Something my husband and I have been discussing is the notion of privacy and protection for this next generation. It gets into concepts of identity and is often difficult for many parents to grasp when thinking about today’s web. The way I can best put it is to think about the responsibilities and rules you (as parents) should think about when establishing your child’s online presence. Today, we’re seeing parents post images to Flickr, MySpace and Facebook (I’m guilty of the same). We’re thinking it is OK, taking caution with each step, to post photos and enter information online about our kids. While it is harmless in today’s world, we don’t know how this information may be collected and distributed in tomorrow’s world. I’m not saying people should be paranoid, but we should be aware about the online identity we are creating for our kids, and how the information we start to enter on the web now may form a collective profile of them in the future.
Sigurd: We’re really excited to have you back for another webstock, and thanks for showing me around and fitting us into your preciously hectic schedule!
Kelly: I’m just as excited to be back in New Zealand, my favorite country in the world. You guys do such an amazing job putting this world class event together, it is an honor to be asked back.
We’ve been able to do this because of support from InternetNZ (The Internet Society of New Zealand Inc), who generously donated funding to bring two people from Samoa.
Jayne Wallis is the director of The Lifebox Company Limited, a web storage company in the early stages of development.