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The Australian Web Industry Association chose this weekend’s Barcamp 2.0 event to announce Western Australia’s first web conference, Edge of the Web.

The 2-day event in early November will feature 2 streams; business and technology culminating in the 2008 WA Web Awards ceremony. A lineup of international, national and local speakers have been confirmed and will be announced in the coming weeks.

To keep up to date and help us choose a logo for the event, head over to edgeoftheweb.org.au and sign up for the newsletter.

I can’t wait, never having been to a web conference before, it will be great to have one right on our doorstep!

Late last year Net Registry launched a new magazine called Nett - Take Your Business Further Online. I received the first issue and thought it had potential so subscribed to keep track of where they were heading. From the beginning I kept wondering how long before they sell out and the magazine is full of How to Make Your Own Website Cheap articles, but I needn’t have worried.

The May 2008 edition, currently on sale, includes a tutorial entitled How to Brief a Web Developer which appears to be the first in a series to educate clients in dealing with web professionals. The article is well-written and accurate and I’m looking forward to reading the future instalments to see if they continue in the same vein. Continue Reading »

As my business expands to a point where I may need to consider taking on an extra pair of hands to keep up with the workload, I have been thinking a lot about the next generation of web designers and developers and how prepared they are for the real world of web design on completion of their studies.

When I became interested in working in the web industry I wasn’t even 100% sure there was one! I was 16 and remember trailing into town with the family to get some books on this HTML thing that meant I could make a website of my own and that’s where it started, with books. I taught myself, often neglecting my traditional studies and ended up studying multimedia at TAFE after high-school. Continue Reading »

I’m not talking the “Wild West” kind, more the kind that give the web industry a bad name. I have been lucky in the last 6 years in that I haven’t come across any of these so called cowboys and as a result I was beginning to think they were a myth. A project I have recently become involved in, however, has changed my viewpoint entirely. Yes, cowboys in the web industry do exist and they are giving us a very bad name.

Everybody hears the horror stories that people have apparently experienced but until now I had never been so close to any such activity. You know the kind; project misses its deadline, design work isn’t up to scratch, no reporting on deliverables is made, there is no firm plan, money is demanded, team members are sacked, clients are held to ransom with no functioning product, each party blaming the other for the project’s failings - the list goes on.

I don’t know about anybody else but this sort of thing makes my blood boil. Continue Reading »