What follows is Web Directions South 2008, as seen on my flickr and twitter streams. With some annotations where I felt it was appropriate. I kind of like the picture that emerges :)

Day Zero

this year's badge

Day One

Opening Keynote - Lynne D Johnson: New Media...New Rules

Two notable toy trends: iPhones and little laptops/"netbooks" (Eee PC, Aspire One). In previous years, the trend was "mac laptops as far as the eye can see".

The whole Esquire cover thing... it just blinks, which is annoying. I don't want my magazines to blink at me (I don't want any media to blink at me). I don't particularly want magazines to "update over 30 days" either - if I want that I'll go look at your website.

I forget the precise wording of the question, but it was something about Google's potential dominance of media meaning that Brin and Page's politics would "become our politics". That's just too simplistic - all publications have bias, whether people adopt that bias comes down to how much they think and how much they just absorb.

Derek Featherstone - Accessibility beyond compliance

I should mention that I refer to anyone doing any form of door duty as "doorbitch". It's not a derogatory term and I've done doorbitch duties myself.

But seriously, who denies geeks caffeine? :)

webpage rescue derek featherstone a new meaning for bed and BReakfast markup

This is true. When I describe how users give commands to Dragon Naturally Speaking, I probably do a slight Derek impression.

Grant Young – social media

JS libraries

Jeff Croft

big brother

Jeff made a comment that came across as wanting to ignore accessibility concerns (although he said later that wasn't his intention). It didn't go down so well on the back channel...

Later on, there was some discussion about how many typography rules have been or should be rewritten for the web. Croft did mention the issues around the choice of serif vs. sans-serif, where the rules were essentially reversed online.

August de los Reyes

(I have a degree in Journalism and Philosophy, but work in IT. So... yeah :))

Day One drinks

darling harbour dusk discussion invisible deck hiYAH! badger flasher

Webjam 8

olpc huddle chaals olpc

Day two

Jeff Veen – Designing through data

Yes, it was my 30th on day two. Not a bad way to spend your birthday, really.

jeff veen jeff veen

Link: veen.com/wds08.pdf

Note - connectivity issues ensued.

Jina Bolton – sexy stylesheets

Michael(tm) - HTML5

Miles Eftos – openid, oauth

I should mention the wifi was great given all the restrictions. At some points I strongly suspect there were a few people abusing the network with high-bandwidth stuff (probably photo/video uploads).

Daniel Burka

Surface and afternoon tea

fingertip computing geeks love gelati

Mark Pesce

Before the speech
behind you, mark, behind you! mark turns around

after party

cam likes code. and tunes. excalistraw e. me'n'john standardzilla attacks! you like code? I like code!
chaals gets ready Go Chaals! dancing to rick astley dancing to rick astley me, derek and chaals IMG_0937 arm out photo time thinking michael 99 chaals is a hit with the ladies chaals is a hit with the ladies chaals is a hit with the ladies aree strikes a pose martin me furry ears and a straw

The day after...

Sunday

See also: WDS08 - the notes.