WebDU 2009

Once more, it’s over. It will probably be another 12 months before there is another opportunity to have so many talented people gathered in Sydney to talk about Web Technology. There are plenty of other conferences around but for me, this is the one essential one.
The problem, made even worse this year, is that there are only two days with 5 strands of talks (up from 4 last year) running in parallel. Each day, after the keynote session, you are forced to make a choice and it means missing out on four other presentations at each of the five sessions.
It is very much a “Web Technology” conference, rather than a “Web Developers” conference and one of the five traks is now called “Team and User Experience” and it covers topics such as Information Architecture, Usability, Design and Team Building. There is still plenty of more technical talk happening in some of the other tracks (Web I, Web II, Flex/Flash, ColdFusion) in sessions labeled from “Fundamental” to “Experienced” with more raw code being exposed in the latter ones.

There were speakers from Microsoft, Google, Adobe and Yahoo as well as plenty of experts implementing solutions on the ground without being beholden to any particular vendor or technology.

Apart from the keynote sessions, here are some of the sessions that I attended:

Web Services – Revisited

I found it very useful to get an overview of how Web Services fit in the big picture of loosely coupled architectures right now.
Kai Koenig recommended vthe best blog post on the topic: “SOA is dead, Long Live Web Services“:

Making a distinction between enterprise-wide critical services and single use applications, Kai pointed out that most Web 2.0 applications these days use some form of API without resorting to pure Web Services.
I was happy to learn that good old WDDX was more alive then ever in this context, taking pride of place next to JSON and XML over HTTP.

It would be great if the we could adopt some kind of loosely coupled architecture to get various systems based around the University to make their data available for other systems: central systems like FlexSis making public data easily available to all Faculties, or even Faculty-based systems offering an API for other Faculties to leverage their data.

Geography and the Database

Now that nearly everybody with a mobile phone will soon be carrying a GPS around, spatial data is easier than ever to record. We all know Google Maps but sometimes we don’t realize the wealth of data available through GIS. David Whiterod gave a great talk on how databases are now supporting geographical data and functions, what to look out for in Coordinate Reference Systems. I have always been interested in GIS so this was great to catch up with all the latest developments in this field, including all the SQL spatial functions.

UNSWTV: Video Portal War Stories

I was particularly looking forward to this presentation, knowing the guys at UNSW as well as the speaker from Daemon and of course the techology behind it all: ColdFusion, and its Far Cry framework. It was great to hear all those “war stories” and getting to know what happened behind the scene. It sounds like Apple’s Podcast Producer is not quite ready yet and is one generation behind tools such as FFMPG. Let’s wait for Snow Leopard as the interface promises to be better but what about the engine itself? Interesting to see all the flowcharts that Geoff and his team drew during the planning stage. I’ve been looking for the slides handouts but it doesn’t seem to be available yet. During the breaks, I also talked at length about this project with the actual UNSW guys who were the clients for this.
At least now I don’t feel too bad about not having developed my own podcast system to a point where it could rival this one… We are just not playing in the same league!

Catalyst: Designing the RIA Experience

This was quite impressive. Ok, it was an Adobe guy, Steven Heintz, spruiking the latest whiz bang product, but it was worth it. A lot of the Flex product line is being rebranded with the word “Flash” instead. This is a RIA design tool and it puts a lot of power in the hands of designers. They should still get a Flex programmer to fine tune the code but it’s impressive already on its own. I want it! In a later session, I was surprised to see that Microsoft has also come up with a similar tool, ready to launch shortly

Take control! How to own your identity online

This was interesting because I’m always interested in making authentication easier in various applications. It was also interesting just as a mere consumer of multiple web applications. It’s all about OpenID. I had looked at that a while ago and was wondering if it would ever take off. It looks like it has and it is establishing itself as the equivalent of “PayPal” for establishing your identity around the Web.

A practical guide to connecting hardware to Flex

Controlling hardware from a web interface, or controlling a web page with a piece of wireless hardware… It all looked like a lot of fun, and the latest development in hardware and software have made this a LOT easier than it used to be. No need to learn Assembler, you can do a lot with Flex now. Hey, I also want to connect some piece of hardware with a web interface so that the next time someone rings the front door bell, a new message appears in Twitter. Maybe it should also post a picture of the person ringing the door bell. Hmm, on second thoughts, maybe I should do some real work instead.

Is Google really the best way to search?

Excellent presentation on Faceted search, by Elizabeth Pek, Head of User Experience at Fairfax Digital. I had already enjoyed the new interface of Domain.com.au so it all started to make sense when Elizabeth took us through the redesign process for Drive.com.au, the motoring website.
I already have a keyword search function on my Unit of Study Outline system but I can see that a Faceted search would be a cool way of creating a better second step to the search process. It would be even better if it was used at the level of the whole university, to provide an insight into the way the information is organized.

Building iPhone Web Applications

Greg Rohan gave us a great overview of a number of tools that you can use to create applications or the IPhone, as well as giving a number of tips and tricks. It was all really just a starting point and it’s up to those who attended to follow up and start creating their own little applications.

Website to Webapp – Designing for Workflow

This was part of the “User Experience” track and Shane Morris, User Experience Evangelist at Microsoft took us through the ways a web application is different from a website, how to use activity scenarios (ii?) and workflow diagrams to plan a great Webapp… and then he showed us a very impressive tool that Microsoft hasn’t yet launched “SketchFlow” which should become part of the Expression Studio. I had earlier been impressed by Adobe’s Catalyst but this looked even better, except that it’s going to be restricted to Microsoft technology of course. At least it might entice some developers to take a second look at Microsoft development. And if that is not enough, there were some free Tshirts of Internet Explorer Eight. That has become my new pyjama top as I’m not game to wear that in the open, yet.

Overall, the good thing was that, for every single session, I was happy with my choice and I was in no hurry to leave to go and check out another session running at the same time. They were all interesting in their own way and I learned something each time.
I could easily have spent a third or a fourth day at that conference to catch up with all the sessions that I missed!