Wednesday, 20th February 2008, 3 Comments »
And that was Webstock 08
Since everyone else was doing it, I may as well write a wrap up to.
Highlights
The quality of the speakers this year was outstanding, even the speakers who were a little less ‘polished’, totally made up for it in content of their presentation. I really enjoyed every speaker in one shape or another. However, I’ve come to the conclusion out of all that awesomeness, Damian Conway’s should be required watching everywhere, anytime design, development, advertising and/or communications people come together to do anything involving a website until we all get it right.
This year’s presentation cliches consisted of twitter being the new iceberg and the iPhone being the new iPod, and it was clear early on everyone loves the LOLCATZ (and those 2 that don’t will be exiled!). Even the powerpoint karaoke wasn’t anywhere near as lame as I expected it would be.
Lowlights
Personally, one of the main premises of Kathy Serria’s talk really put me off - that humans (and other animals) don’t like to look directly at each because our primitive brains think it’s a predator, and Humans are predators because we have binocular vision. I really hope she was generalizing, because it’s a not really as simple as that and discounts other factors like how we communicate through facial expression (which was a major component of her talk) and challenge social dominance hierarchy, Steropsis being a must have when swinging from branch to brand, and most Primates eat fruit. Also most predators are ambushers, which means they mainly attack from the rear, not the front.
The nametags/programme thing is brilliant and once again incredibly well executed along with all the visual design. My only gripe is with the size of people’s names and that they are on only one side. It was a challenge to sneak a peek at someone’s name tag after 5 minutes into a conversation because you still couldn’t remember their name (sorry about that) and find it was round the wrong way.
One regret I have, other than wolf-whistling at MiramarMike in his suit before the 8×5 session, was opting for Luke W’s stream session over Michael Lopp’s. I figured Michael’s would be easier to grasp as an mp3, while Lukes would be more visual, only to discover via someone elses commentary (who was it? It was Philip) that Michael’s wasn’t recorded. So some pre-warning on that front would have been great.
Also, the wifi or lack thereof - but hey, at least they tried which is better than some other conferences do.
What’s next webstock?
From what people were telling me on the days, Mike and the team were cagey about any future Webstock details. Which given the fact they were in the middle of the chaos is more than far enough, one thing I will suggest along with a huge pat on the back and a ‘well done’ is swanky awards night.
3 Comments to “And that was Webstock 08”
Pete - nice writeup, thanks.
Re not recording all sessions - yes, we should have said which ones weren’t being recorded. Just one of those small things that got missed in the rush.
Re wi-fi - yup. It’s fair to say it performed less well than it we expected or were assured.
Re swanky awards night - I’d forgotten about that! Food for thought :)
Hi Pete, thanks for this fab write up. As Mike said we’re extremely disappointed about the wifi (or lack thereof). What we were told and what we got were very, very different which caused excessive premature aging and all-round stressiness. Regarding the nametags, thanks for this brill feedback. It’s gold like this that means we can try to make Webstock that much better next time. Thanks for coming along and hope to see you at the next Webstock. :-)
As far as I’m concerned, the Wifi was an added bonus, well above and beyond getting all the other far more important things right like you guys did. The people I spoke to weren’t that precious about it anyway, infact on Friday I had people saying they thought having net access was distracting from the speakers.
Anyway, another huge well done goes to you guys and the rest of the team.
Now this swanky awards night, will a tux be mandatory….