This is a guest blog post, written by Kalpesh Bhula. Kalpesh was one of the scholarship winners for Webstock.

I am thrilled to have been involved with Webstock this year. It was a first event that I have been to. Everything was related to what I have studied and also my passion for emerging technologies.

I have just recently graduated from Wellington Institute of Technology (WelTec) completing a Bachelor of Information Technology degree. I have had a passion for IT since when I was young and took this path through school and WelTec. Since then I’ve been teaching myself web design and development. I thoroughly love developing web applications and I love to code.

Webstock was a real eye opener for me. I never realised there are so much more technologies out there since I finished at WelTec. There were even talks about new technologies I never thought existed! One thing I was amazed at was Open ID.

Simon Willison talked about Open ID and it will soon solve all my problems. He explained very well about what Open ID was and also how it works. Here it is in a nut shell. You may have so many login credentials which gain you access to many sites (like I have). There are a few sites I cannot even remember! Open ID allows you to only have one main username and password. With this you can then login to those sites without remembering the credentials you used when you signed up! Amazing! This will be something I
will look into in the near future.

Accessibility is relatively new topic for me in terms of applying techniques to websites and all the issues people face. It was a good experience to attend Shawn Henry’s workshop as that is where I took in a lot of information. She really made us aware of what is really necessary to help those that find it difficult to browse websites. It certainly put thoughts into my head which I will remember when I am designing or developing a website.

I’ve been working for AccEase for a while now. They’re a company that is strong about accessibility towards websites. I want to personally thank them for giving me this opportunity to be involved with Webstock. I now understand a lot more about accessibility and I hope I can help (using knowledge from Webstock) as much as I can to ensure websites are accessible.

I just want to finish up here and say thanks to all the speakers who came. You all did a wonderful job and I am glad I was there to experience this wonderful event. I want to thank the organisers for everything they have done to make my attendance be as smooth as possible. Also, I hope there will more Webstock events in the future as I really had a BLAST!