This was my first time attending Web Directions Summit, and considering how I was going to be based in Australia at the time it seemed like an opportunity not to miss. The lineup was spectacular and I was very excited to see Kyle Simpsons name on the list. The keynotes I must say also grabbed my attention, though they are often not a draw card I did not want to miss the opportunity to see Genevieve Bell speak.
The keynote she delivered was well worth the ticket cost, I really enjoyed hearing her views on Australias future capabilities for artificial intelligence and the reason she has decided after all these years to call Australia home again. She has come back to help Australian National University design a new AI course for Australia that aims to put humans at the heart and centre. I am unsure if it will be available on video but if it is I will update this post.
There was post conference drinks and an evening dinner at UTS which was a great networking event and I got to see some old faces and meet some new minds. Had a great chat with Kyle as I always do on the importance of learning JavaScript as a language as apposed to starting to learn it from a framework. Also got introduced to Justin the organiser of the Internet of Things Sydney meet-up, which was awesome and filled with the introduction to some new gadgets.
https://www.meetup.com/Internet-of-Things-Sydney/
Link to 2014 talk by Genevieve on the “Human Digital World”
I would also recommend following their twitter feed, alot of conference feeds tend to only speak about the conference and related topics however with Web Directions the twitter feed is definitely one that I find full of useful information and news articles around current and emerging tech. https://twitter.com/webdirections