Workshops

Web Directions features 8 half day workshops, and a full day symposium, Ed Directions North - Educating the Next Generation of Web Professionals.

Each half day workshop features 4 face to face hours (most full day workshops at conferences are just 6 face to face hours). There’s catered morning and afternoon coffee breaks, and for those attending Ed Directions, or two workshops on the one day, lunch is included as well.

Download this calendar

	Room 1	Room 2	Room 3
Monday February 2nd
8:30 am – 1:00 pm	Practical Web Semantics with RDFa - Manu Sporny	From Photoshop To The Browser: The Successful Design Process - Elliot Jay Stocks
1:00 pm – 1:30 pm	Lunch for those attending two workshops (Foyer)
1:30 pm – 6:00 pm	Performance Bootcamp - Nicole Sullivan	Know Your Users: How to start tomorrow with guerrilla user testing - Juliette Melton and Mark Trammell
Tuesday February 3rd
8:30 am – 1:00 pm	Ed Directions North - Educating the next generation of web professionals	Designing for Touchscreens and Interactive Gestures - Dan Saffer	Real World Accessibility for Ajax and Web Apps - Derek Featherstone
1:00 pm – 1:30 pm	Lunch for those attending two workshops or Ed Directions (Foyer)
1:30 pm – 6:00 pm	Ed Directions North - Educating the next generation of web professionals	Cappuccino Bootcamp - Ross Boucher	Creating Mobile 2.0 Web Applications in less than a day - Brian Fling

Real World Accessibility for Ajax and Web Apps

Description

Your reputation—and the reputation of your agency or company—depends on bulletproof, functionally elegant web apps that will work now and in the future. Using your application shouldn’t frustrate users; their experience, regardless of who they are, should be effortless. Want a truly usable, accessible web app? Learn from a world-class teacher how to harness Ajax, break out of your usual development routines, and build intelligently, using the technologies you really need. We won’t just be covering the basics or theoretical situations. We’ll be examining original research conducted by Derek’s company and real-life test cases. You’ll see assistive technologies and prototypes of new techniques in action. During this intensive workshop we’ll even put a selection of existing web apps through their paces — zeroing in on how well they meet the needs of people with a variety of disabilities.

Who is this workshop for?

To get the most out of this workshop you will have some experience hand-coding (X)HTML AND CSS, and know at least the basics of JavaScript and general web accessibility practices.

What will you learn?

By the end of the workshop you will be able to:

• grasp the difference between accessibility for web apps and for websites
• build intelligently – plan for accessibility from the outset of a project
• understand the significance of Javascript and how to use it wisely
• implement simple HTML techniques that help ensure accessibility success
• recognize the impact of Ajax and dynamically-generated content on people with disabilities – and know what to do about it
• create an effective strategy for building more accessible applications that work with current assistive technology and anticipate future developments
• see how various assistive technologies interact with modern web development techniques such as DOM Scripting and know how to make developmental decisions based on this first-hand experience
• define best practices for testing the accessibility of your own web applications

About Derek Featherstone

Engaging, surprising, and inspiring, Derek Featherstone is an internationally-known authority on accessibility and web development, a respected technical trainer, and author. Creator of in-depth courses on HTML, CSS, DOM Scripting, and Web 2.0 applications, his approach never fails to champion the cause of web standards and universal accessibility. As founder of Further Ahead, he has been an in-demand consultant to government agencies, educational institutions, and private sector companies since 1999. He is the leader of the Accessibility Task Force of the influential Web Standards Project and also serves on their DOM Scripting Task Force.

Creating Mobile 2.0 Web Applications in less than a day

Description

There has been a lot of discussion about how the iPhone will forever change the mobile space (a lot of it instigated by me). Over 2,500 mobile web apps have been created for the iPhone in little over a year, mostly because of adherence of XHTML, CSS and Javascript standards available in WebKit—the core rendering technology in the iPhone, Android and Nokia’s mobile web browsers. But what about all the other 98% of mobile web browsers?

In this workshop I will not only show you how to create a mobile web application in under a day using open-source technologies and web standard techniques, but I will also teach you about some of the must-knows and must-dos of mobile design and the mobile web.

At the end of the workshop we should have a working mobile web app that supports the iPhone, Android, Opera Mobile and older browsers. And you will have all the code to do it yourself before the conference is over.

About Brian Fling

Brian Fling has been a leader in the web and mobile user experience. He has worked with several Fortune 500 companies to help create next generation interactive experiences. Brian is a frequent speaker and author on the issues on mobile design, the mobile web, mobile web applications and the mobile user experience.

Brian is very active member in the mobile community. He co-authored the dotMobi Mobile Web Developers Guide, the first free publication to cover mobile web design and development from start to finish, he co-created a series of iPhone web applications called Leaflets to showcase the concepts of “Mobile 2.0” just a few weeks after the iPhone launched. He also runs one of the largest online communities focused on mobile: Mobile Design.

In 2005 he co-founded the interactive agency Blue Flavor, where he helped companies both big and small develop their interactive strategies. In early 2008 Brian and his wife Cyndi left Blue Flavor to form Fling Media with a more exclusive focus on the iPhone, mobile design services, mobile web applications and next generation interactive products.

Performance Bootcamp

Description

With user’s patience measured in the seconds, as a site’s traffic builds, the need to focus on its performance becomes increasingly important. In this in depth half day wordshop, Yahoo! Performance Engineer Nicole Sullivan leads you through a range of practical tools and techniques for maximizing the performance of your web sites and applications.

Who is this workshop for?

Whether you are a designer, a developer, a project manager, producer, or wear several of these hats, this workshop will address your needs in improving the performance of your online properties.

About Nicole Sullivan

A highly experienced web engineer, Nicole has until recently been responsible for international evangelism in the performance research team, whose role is to quantify and improve the performance of all Yahoo! products worldwide. This was a multifunctional leadership role which was equal parts engineering, research, project management, and evangelism. requiring solid communication with people who have different levels of performance expertise.

As part of these efforts Nicole shares the lessons Yahoo! has learned in improving the performance of their many sites and applications.

From Photoshop To The Browser: The Successful Design Process

Description

In this workshop Elliot will focus on the design process, from the initial stages of briefing and research through to final comps delivered to the client for sign-off, ready to be marked-up. The final part of the workshop will concentrate on the best ways to prepare your designs for markup and CSS: from sensibly organising your Photoshop layers through to cutting up images with CSS techniques in mind.

What will be covered?

• Research (the brief, inspiration, sketching)
• Structure (information architecture, wireframing)
• Interaction (navigation, forms, audio & video)
• Aesthetics (layout, colour, typography, imagery, atmosphere)
• Production (design comps, deliverables, style guides, CSS)

Who is is for?

The fact that the workshop focuses primarily on Photoshop-based design might suggest it will be suited to designers who do not code, but a knowledge of HTML / CSS will help considerably. Likewise, front-end developers will find the workshop to be a valuable insight into the design process, and novice Photoshop users will be able to expand their skillset based on the techniques discussed.

About Elliot Jay Stocks

Always aspiring to create something ‘a bit different’, Elliot’s work is frequently featured in online and offline publications, showcased on various ‘inspiration’ websites, and used as an example of how accessible web design can still look beautiful. His portfolio includes work for Automattic, The Beatles, Blue Flavor, Twiistup, EMI Records, and Carsonified.

On a semi-regular basis, he writes about design trends, issues, and techniques for industry-leading publications such as .Net and Computer Arts Projects, and is currently putting the finishing touches to his first book, which will be published in March ‘09. Elliot is a regular face at design conferences around the globe, taking to the stage as both a speaker and a workshop host. This works out rather nicely, as he’s quite fond of travel and enjoys working from the coffee shops of the world.

Designing for Touchscreens and Interactive Gestures

Description

While they seem like a novelty now, in the next two years, hundreds of millions of touchscreen devices will come onto the market, including laptop and desktop computers. Like it or not, we’re going to have to learn how to design for them. It’s not much of a stretch to suggest that just like there are mobile versions of websites now, so too will there be touchscreen versions of sites, optimized for fingers, not cursors.

In this workshop you will

• Learn the key differences in designing for touch/gesture
• Learn how to design touch targets
• Explore the basics of ergonomics and kinesiology
• Create a paper prototype of a touchscreen/gestural interface
• Communicate presence and instruction
• Learn strategies for documenting a touch application

Taught by Dan Saffer, Principal at Kicker Studio and author of the 2008 O’Reilly book Designing Gestural Interfaces, this workshop is for designers of all levels who want to expand their knowledge of interaction design into the new territory of interactive gestures. Through activities and mini-lectures on relevant topics, Dan will guide you in understanding the benefits and limitations of this new medium.

About Dan Saffer

Dan Saffer, principal designer at Kicker Studio, has designed interactive products since 1995 that are currently used by millions every day. Dan has led projects for large organizations like Nokia and Time Warner to start-ups such as Ning and Foxmarks. An international speaker and author, his acclaimed book Designing for Interaction (New Riders) has been called “a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs” and has been translated into several languages. His new book, Interactive Gestures: Designing Gestural Interfaces (O’Reilly) will be published in November 2008.

Dan is an internationally-recognized thought leader on design who has spoken at conferences and taught workshops on interaction design all over the world. Dan’s writings on design have appeared in BusinessWeek, Vitamin, and Boxes and Arrows. He has a Masters of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Practical Web Semantics with RDFa

Description

Teaching a machine to understand human concepts in web page content has been an elusive goal of Computer Science and Information Technology researchers for many years. While progress has been made with machine learning, no machine-readable, global database for all human knowledge exists. This is changing with the advent of RDFa and Microformats. Structured web content isn’t a new concept, but one that is getting renewed interest with the advent of RDFa, Microformats and technology like Yahoo’s SearchMonkey.

This workshop will demonstrate why Web Semantics is no longer in the realm of researchers, but has very practical implications to those who author web content for a living. The workshop will address how RDFa enables practical advances in user interface design, web browser functionality, search engine accuracy, navigation empowerment, data democratization and data portability.

Who is this workshop for?

Primarily intended for website authors and developers. You should have a good grasp of writing (X)HTML by hand. The workshop is designed for anybody that would like to learn more about how to author semantic web content and explore the next 4-5 years of the semantic web.

What you learn in this workshop

The first session of the workshop will focus on:

• Core Semantic Web concepts
• The Resource Description Framework (RDF)
• Compact URI Expressiosn (CURIEs)
• Basic authoring of RDFa
• Simple RDF vocabularies
• Differences between RDFa and Microformats
• Using semantic web tools to debug content

The second session of the workshop will focus on:

• Advanced Semantic Web Concepts
• Advanced RDFa authoring
• Supporting advanced use cases with mixed RDF vocabularies
• An introduction to SPARQL and triple stores
• Yahoo’s SearchMonkey initiative

The first hour of each session will be fairly structured, with the second hour being fairly unstructured and directed by the participants in the workshop.

About Manu Sporny

President/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.

Born into a family of artists, Manu Sporny spent most of his early life learning about the creative process from his parents - a painter and a writer. Being surrounded by art and music during his formative years would continue to inspire his ambitions to ensure that artists of all walks of life can make a decent living practicing their craft.

He started his career as a serial entrepreneur performing research at Virginia Tech in the late 90s with a focus on information visualization, virtual reality and high-performance graphics technologies.

After graduating from Virginia Tech with a degree in Computer Science, he founded xRhino, a company specializing in software tools and middleware for the Sony PlayStation 2 video game platform. xRhino was the first company to port Debian Linux to the PlayStation 2 and create a MP3 music player based on an open-source Linux core instead of the proprietary Sony development tools. xRhino was successfully sold in late 2003 to Advanced Simulation Technology, Inc.

Sporny later founded and was appointed CEO of Digital Bazaar in 2004. His current efforts are focused on enabling legal distribution of digital content via peer-to-peer networks. Empowering anybody with a web browser to legally buy and sell digital music, film, and print content via the Web, using Internet standards instead of propreitary technology, is the end-goal of his current endeavor.

In addition to his duties at Digital Bazaar, Sporny is a member of the RDFa Task Force, Semantic Web Deployment Workgroup and an Invited Expert to the World Wide Web Consortium. These groups in the W3C are chartered to create semantic web technologies that will enable computers to utilize rich semantic information on websites and eventually learn about their Web-based environment. He is the primary editor of the hAudio Microformat, and the Audio, Video and Commerce RDF Vocabularies which allow one to embed semantic data about audio, video, and sellable items into web pages. He has authored several patents and sits on various technology company advisory boards.

He believes that the best way to ensure a better world for our children is to build organizations that dream big and then live their dreams. He also believes that web communities must have an enduring purpose, rely on open communication and transparency in action if they are to last. An avid cook, gear-head, believer in space colonization, and snowboarder - Manu hopes for a generous snowfall in Breckenridge for the post-Web Directions North 2008 festivities.

More information about Manu can be found on his Linked In profile:

Know Your Users: How to start tomorrow with guerrilla user testing

Description

Right now, someone, somewhere, is using something you’ve built. Who are they? Are they having a good time? It’s not that hard to find out.

User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product development cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product lifecycle and can be done within a stone’s throw of your office using inexpensive tools. At this workshop, Juliette Melton and Mark Trammell will show you how to build an effective user testing program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for those who want to understand how to learn about user experiences, including project/product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

• A structured approach to building a user testing program
• Web analytics basics
• Surveying tips
• How to include coworkers in your research
• How to perform task analysis
• Recruiting testing participants tips
• Best practices when sharing research findings

About Juliette Melton

Juliette Melton spends her days understanding user experiences at Lumos Labs in San Francisco and has been building and researching the web since 2001. She studied networked learning theory through the Technology, Innovation & Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education following a somewhat less useful degree in French literature.

Cappuccino Bootcamp

Description

This workshop will get you started on building applications in Cappuccino and Objective-J.  Attendees will not be expected to have any prior experience with these technologies, but some familiarity with JavaScript and Object Oriented concepts are recommended.  By the end of the workshop you will be comfortable with Objective-J and have worked through the process of building a simple application in Cappuccino. You’ll be introduced to common patterns, the most used classes, and you’ll learn how to find new information as you need it.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for anyone interested in “desktop-class” web applications -full featured applications running from a single page in the browser. A background in programming for the web with JavaScript, or a background in object oriented programming languages like Java, C++, C#, etc. will be very useful. It is not necessary to have both, or to have prior experience with Objective-J, Cappuccino, or Objective-C.

What will be covered?

• javascript, objective-j, and how they work together
• best practices for objective-j programming
• the basic architecture of a Cappuccino application
• building a complete application from start to finish
• the most common classes, and how to use them
• how to get up to speed and discover new things on your own

About Ross Boucher

Ross is a co-founder of 280 North, and one of the core contributors to Cappuccino. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 2007. Afterwards, he worked at Apple as a developer on the iTunes Store, working on music recommendations and discovery. At 280 North, he develops front and back end features for 280 Slides, and manages the Cappuccino open source community.

Ross will be presenting the Cappuccino Bootcamp on February 3rd, and as part of the JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks supersession.

Ed Directions North - Educating the next generation of web professionals

Description

Developing curricula and training for the next generation of web designers and developers often feels like shooting at a moving target. Best practices are constantly evolving, and difficult to keep track of, while standards emerge and are refined.

As a consequence, all too often, education and training does not adequately prepare students for the needs of industry by equipping them with the proper foundational knowledge of current best practices and standards.

Ed Directions, a highly focussed, in depth whole day symposium aims to address this challenge, by helping teachers, trainers, course and curriculum developers, and others in the education field keep abreast with the latest developments in standards and best practice, and to develop and deliver the best possible curricula and courses.
 

Who is the day for?

If you are involved in developing or delivering education for web designers and developers, whether in the secondary, post secondary, vocational or the commercial sector, this day is for you. As this is not a day for learning the technologies and techniques themselves, a general knowledge of technologies such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS, and subject areas such as Accessibility will be assumed.  There will however be no requirement to put this knowledge into practical application on the day.

 

What will you cover?

Divided into 4 sessions, each session will cover one significant area of web design and development and feature:

• a renowned domain expert giving an overview of current best practice, standards, as well as commonly used and taught, but outmoded, technologies and techniques
• experts in the education sector, covering the resources available (commercial, free, and open) to develop curricula and training courses
• experienced teachers and trainers with a track record of success in developing and delivering training in this area, sharing their real world experience
• interactive sessions to put these all this knowledge into practice, and share experiences with professionals facing the same challenges as you

The day is divided into the following four sessions

• Session 1: HTML semantic markup and web content technologies
• Session 2: Cascading style sheets and web presentation
• Session 3: JavaScript and Ajax
• Session 4: Accessibility and usability

Ed Directions North is facilitated by Chris Mills, Steph Troeth, Aarron Walter, and Bill Cullifer and feature domain experts such as Dave Shea (CSS), Derek Featherstone (Accessibility/Usability), and Christian Heilmann (Ajax/Javascript).

Education experts include Jeffrey Brown from Damascus High School, Glenda Sims from UT, Land eslie Jensen-Inman from the University of Tennessee.

About Aarron Walter

Aarron Walter is the author of Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond (New Riders, 2008) and the lead user experience designer for MailChimp.com. Since 1999 Aarron has been building websites professionally and has taught interactive art and design courses at colleges including Temple University, The University of Georgia, and The Art Institute of Atlanta—one of the few colleges teaching web standards since 2002.

Aarron is a member of The Web Standards Project and the lead of The WaSP Curriculum Framework project. He blogs, builds, and shares at aarronwalter.com.

About Bill Cullifer

Bill Cullifer is founder of the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), a non-profit professional association established in 1996, providing community, education and certification for Web professionals worldwide.

As the organization’s executive director, Cullifer participates in a variety of industry, government and educational advisory boards that assist WOW in developing and delivering professional standards and improving communication between all Web professionals and business and industry.

He acts as the organization’s chief evangelist to stimulate the continued growth and opportunities of the Web. He also provides daily podcast regarding a variety of Web professional topics.

About Chris Mills

Chris Mills is a developer relations manager for Opera — he edits and publishes articles on dev.opera.com and labs.opera.com, liaises with the community to raise awareness of Opera and collect feedback, and evangelises about Opera software wherever he can. He is also the organiser and editor of the Opera Web Standards Curriculum.

Outside of work, he is an extremely avid music fan, enjoying playing and listening to a wide variety of music, including metal, folk, punk, electronica, prog, and more. His main band at the moment is the mighty Conquest of Steel.

About Glenda Sims

Glenda Sims is a Senior Systems Analyst at the University of Texas at Austin. As a member of UT Team Web, Glenda helps support the central web site for the University. She is the Web Accessibility Coordinator and Web Standards Evangelist for the campus.

She also serves as an accessibility consultant, judge and trainer for Knowbility, a non-profit whose mission is “to support the independence of children and adults with disabilities by promoting the use and improving the availability of accessibility information technology – barrier free IT”. In addition, she is co-manager of the Web Standards Project, a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

About Leslie Jensen-Inman

Leslie Jensen-Inman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where she teaches a mix of art, design, business, and technology. She is also president and principal designer at MORE, a graphic design, marketing, and public relations firm.

Leslie is an active member of The Web Standards Project Education Task Force (WaSP EduTF) and writes and develops courses and curriculum for the WaSP Curriculum Framework. Leslie is also a member of the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) Partners in Business and Education Executive Committee. She is deeply committed to her profession and serves as board member on the Chattanooga Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, as well as, on the Education Committee for the Association for Visual Arts.

She has worked as the Graphic Designer for “The Invasion,” a Warner Bros. film starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, as Creative Director for a small marketing and development firm, and as a Graphic Designer for design firms with in-house print and digital media facilities.

Leslie is an advocate for holistic creative solutions and her diverse background gives her a unique perspective on teaching career development, professional practices, and standards-based courses.

About Stephanie Troeth

Stephanie is a co-founder and the production lead of Book Oven, a collaborative platform for making books. Having spent a decade developing for the web, her professional path has winded through programming secure database-driven applications to user experience design. Over the years, she has been giving back to the web community through her work with grassroots movements such as The Web Standards Project.

When leap seconds permit, she writes, posts her immense backlog of photographs and records the occasional piano impromptu at unadorned.org.