Webstock 2012
Posted 24 February 2012 // Helen Rickerby
The main thing I’m looking for at Webstock – New Zealand’s major web conference – each year is a look at what’s going on at the cutting-edge of the internet, and some ideas about what the future of the web holds. Then I want to be able to take these ideas back to work and think about what we can do on Te Ara and on other web projects at Manatū Taonga, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage. But this year I didn’t get as much of that as I was hoping.
The speakers at Webstock are all polished presenters, who seem to have done their time at Toastmasters or other kinds of public-speaking courses. But sometimes I felt the presentations were a little too slick – a bit more style than substance, and I was really looking for something I could get my teeth into. On the first day especially I found I was tiring of hearing too much about the presenters’ personal life stories and not enough about the topic at hand. I learned more about one presenter’s introversion and her house-in-a-tree than I did about publishing for the iPad (which was what was promised in the blurb). There is no denying that it’s a very cool tree house, but I really wanted to see the final version of the iPad app she started talking about, but then seemed to forget.
While I’m on the subject of things that I didn’t like, I found myself getting quite angry during the last two sessions on Friday afternoon, where we were being preached to by millionaires about the importance of happiness. It’s not that I’m against happiness or anything, and I actually agreed with a lot of what they said. But it’s a bit hard to swallow when someone who has sold their media company for an enormous amount of money says that the recession is kinda a good thing because it makes us re-think things, when you know that a lot of other people, who had nothing to do with causing the recession, are really suffering.
Enough whining though – there were lots of things to learn and to think about. Some of my particular favourites were:
- Lauren Beukes, a science-fiction novelist who talked about the power of fiction
- Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal), whose cartoons I have long admired on the net
- Jessica Hische, a typographer and designer
- Michael B Johnson, head of the Moving Pictures Group at Pixar, who talked about processes and culture at Pixar.
A few days afterwards, after everything that got crammed into my brain in two days had settled a little bit, I considered my main aim at Webstock – to gain some insights into the likely future of the web. Despite no one addressing this specifically, I realised that I had gleaned quite a bit from various speakers. So here are my predictions.
In the future the internet will be:
- more gamified. Gamification is where people receive some kind of reward for completing tasks – turning something that isn’t a game into a game. All the presenters who talked about gamification were against it, and considered it manipulative and false motivation, but I still think it’s coming.
- more algorithmic. One presenter suggested that the internet was really a more natural place for algorithms than people, and algorithms are very busy running our searches and apparently trading our shares on the internet. I expect more of this kind of automation.
- more hand-made. Conversely, many of the bits of the internet that are still run by actual humans will be made with love and an artisan’s eye.
- prettier, with nice typography. Since the invention of technology such as Typekit web designers have been able to use more fonts in their designs, rather than just the standard handful that everyone has on their computers.
- the site of more protest and activism. This will be both on the internet – such as crashing or hacking internet sites in protest (such as occurred recently when Anonymous protested the Megaupload arrests), and off the internet – where the internet is used as a method of communication and organisation, as notably occurred, for example, in some Arab countries last year.
- more mobile. We’ve been talking about it for a while, but now it’s really taking off – we’re taking the internet with us where ever we go, and that’s going to lead to new opportunities and new challenges for people working in and on the internet.
So, those of you who were at Webstock, you’ve had a week now to recover; what were your highlights and lowlights? What would you like to see more of? What did you learn? Let us know in the comments.
I agree that too many speakers were telling their life stories rather than talking of their expertise or the story behind their product. I think that’s absolutely fine, as they’re all interesting people, but it needs to be balanced with more analytical talks; talks that investigate sites that have become successful over the past year, and problems that the web community is facing.
I also found it strange that Christchurch was never mentioned (unless I missed that bit). I think it would have been a great opportunity to celebrate the efforts of individuals and companies, fresh out of Webstock 2011 that built sites and web services for those on the ground, within days of the earthquake.
Estelle Weyl was great. She had lots of really useful tips. Her talk was at that ideal technical level; she wasn’t just talking to the developers.
I found Jessica Hische incredibly inspiring. I always leave Webstock wishing their were more designers speaking. One of the key points she made about font services like Typekit was that designers need to be careful not to get carried away. You won’t find these services used on Te Ara anytime soon as the macron (āīōū) support isn’t there yet.
I enjoyed the energy and positivity of Webstock, but I needed more substance, more to take away and apply.
I agree with most of the comments made by Helen and Heath. The most directly useful session for me was Responsive design - we are redesigning a couple of websites at the moment, so I’m now definitely going to be pushing for multiple screen width css - or at least making sure the design will accommodate this in the future.
I too was disappointed at the almost complete lack of reference to what is going on in NZ. For example, I really enjoyed the Twitter guy’s talk, but it seemed like a missed opportunity for him to talk about the Twitter response to the Japan earthquakes without mentioning what happened here after Christchurch. (It was interesting to me that in the graphic he showed of tweets crossing the world after the Japan quakes, there was a strong stream coming up from Chch - a visual representation of the empathy Cantabrians felt).
As usual the organisation was brilliant - great food and drink, great swag and plenty of opportunity for networking. Thanks to all who made it happen.
Definitely too many “Here’s my fascinating life story”, “Here’s what I do in my fascinating job” talks this year. They actually *were* fascinating, but I did feel that the level of ideas to take away was pretty low. Although to some degree that may be just in contrast to the extraordinarily high level I have experienced in the past two years.
I guess that’ll always be somewhat down to the luck of the draw - Webstock attacks great, world-class speakers but it’s hard to guarantee that their chosen topics will be consistently relevant and thought-provoking. Maybe this was just a dry year - I’ll definitely be back in 2013.
As for the one thing that Webstock always excels at - inspiration - it had that in spades. Wilson Miner was my highlight for 2012, but there were other gems in there as well.
Cheers,
Robert
(In Christchurch, trying to work in craftsman’s time, and not at all nervous about what happened shortly after returning from Webstock ‘11.)