Videos from the 2012 conference
Welcome to the Web Directions South 2012 Videos
These videos – over 40 hrs of viewing – are available to everyone who attended Web Directions South 2012. Attendees will have received a login which can be used here. Contact us if you did not receive your login.
Didn’t come to Web Directions South but still want to see the videos? We’re also giving access to everyone who comes along to our upcoming event Web Directions Code – so grab yourself a ticket while early bird pricing continues for a double-plus-extra-good bargain!
You can also watch the sample video: Douglas Crockford’s Programming Style and Your Brain.
- Keynotes
- Development
- Design
- Big Picture
- Startup
Jon Kolko A means to an endHTML was invented in 1990, and most of us have enjoyed building with it since. This technology - this powerful force, this beautiful material - can be aimed and directed. But where shall we direct it, and to what end? In this talk, Jon Kolko introduces design-led Social Entrepreneurship as the profession for humanizing technology. You'll learn about what it means to be an entrepreneur, and you'll hear some examples of failure and success. Ultimately, you'll learn how, and why, to aim technology at problems worth solving.
Tom Coates An animating spark: mundane computing and the web of dataNetwork connectivity is reaching more and more into the physical world. This is potentially transformative – allowing every object and service in the world to talk to one other—and to their users—through any networked interface; where online services are the connective tissue of the physical world and where physical objects are avatars of online services. It’s a world where objects know who owns them and can tell the world where they are. A world where ‘things’ are services, and where their functions can be strung together in daisy chains across the planet. Now the only question is how we make it useful and comprehensible for normal people.
Ben Hammersley The flower, the field and the stackThis talk is about the interconnectedness of all things, or finding compassion in TCP/IP. Ben Hammersley is the UK Prime Minister's Ambassador to Tech City, but don't hold that against him. He's really quite a fascinating and charming gent and not at all a smarmy politician. When he's not running marathons in the Sahara desert, Ben is a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He reports on the effects of the internet on society, foreign policy, business, and culture ...not just on his blog either; his writing has appeared in proper dead-tree publications like The Times, The Guardian, and Wired UK (where he is Editor at Large).
Josh Clark Beyond mobileEveryday technology is hurtling into the realm of science fiction, even magic, with new devices that are as surprising and delightful as they are useful. Developers and designers are running hard to keep up with this warp-speed pace of tech innovation, and for now, mobile devices are at the forefront. But what's next? Designer Josh Clark, author of "Tapworthy," takes you on an expedition of this final frontier. Learn how the iPhone and other sensor-rich devices have changed how we approach computing, and explore how we can better design for sensors. Learn how more and dumber machines will make us smarter, and how our current work lays the groundwork for a future of social devices.
Douglas Crockford Programming style and your brainProgramming is thought to be a “head” activity, but there is a lot of “gut” involved. But gut messes us up when it come to matters of style. This talk looks systematically at the development of a programming style that specifically improves the reliability of programs. The examples are given in JavaScript, but the principles are applicable to all programming languages.
Cameron Adams Opening credits, behind the scenesCameron takes us on a whirlwind tour of the web technologies underneath the hood of his opening credits, and how he put it all together.
Troy Hunt 5 things you need to know about web securityThere’s an increasing number of hackers knocking on the door of your sites. Most of the time it’s the same flaws which are leaving websites vulnerable and the mitigations are tried and tested – just not well understood. This talk is designed to take a look at what some of those key vulnerabilities are and what you need to do to protect your site against.
Chris Lienert Building & breaking forms with Quaid-JSThere's little worse than trying to fill out a form on the web only to find a site error won't let you submit it. It's critically important that your forms are easy to use and work every time. Chris Lienert has done the groundwork for you and wrapped his skills up in a light-weight, open source library, Quaid-JS, which embraces and extends HTML5 forms.
Dmitry Baranovskiy What’s hot in animation?If you think animation is just more CSS pixie dust to add sparkle to your designs, come along to this session and see Dmitry demo its even more awesome powers, and show how they are within the reach of even us mere mortals.
Damon Oehlman Better than MVCThere is so much hype around MVC and so-called MVC frameworks at the moment. Is the hype really worth it though? Does the MVC pattern really help us build lightly-coupled, extensible web applications. In this session, Damon will stir the pot on modern web application architecture and challenge you to think about other approaches before picking up the MVC hammer.
Mark Dalgleish Prototypal inheritance in JavaScriptWith JavaScript applications running on the client and the server, the need to structure code in more object-oriented ways becomes clear. One issue many face is JS features prototypal inheritance hidden behind a misleading classically-styled syntax. We will compare the 2 approaches, and see why JS's inheritance model is in many ways more powerful.
Silvia Pfeiffer WebVTT & video accessibilityWebVTT is the “Web video text track” file format. You might think it’s just about captions and subtitles. But far from it: in HTML5 we’ve developed a comprehensive solution for any text-like data or events that occur relatively rarely along a video or audio element’s timeline. We will look at captions, subtitles, video descriptions, and chapters, which all solve parts of the accessibility picture for HTML5 media.
Stoyan Stefanov JavaScript performance patternsJavaScript is the second largest contributor to the page load size (after images). But images only affect first impressions, JavaScript can make your app slow for as long as the user interacts with it. It's therefore critical to understand and tame JavaScript performance. This talk looks at both page delivery and user interaction to highlight areas of improvement.
Jared Wyles What’s the point?So you think computers are smart? Think they can out math even the most brilliant mathematician? So why does .1 + .2 = .30000000000000004 in a lot of languages? Even if you prefer to ignore maths until it goes away, you can come and learn how a computer actually works and why this may break your code in the future.
Myles Eftos Single page web apps: a practitioners guideSingle page web apps have come in to their own now that we can store data locally on browsers using local storage and application caches. But how do you build them? In this session we'll discuss the architecture of a single page app, how to structure them, and what you can use to help you build them.
Alex Danilo Basics of Three.jsWebGL brings power, performance and flexibility to graphics authoring in the browser but with it, quite a lot of complexity to tame. Enter the wonders of Three.js — a framework designed to make 3D in the browser simple. We’ll cover the basics of getting up an running with Three.js. From scratch we’ll see how to draw a simple object, get going with animation, lighting and shaders.
Arunan Skanthan Roll your own (style guide)Arunan will rant be talking about his experiences of working with existing and legacy projects, that have poor or no documentation; why style patterns help you learn, do less tedious work, and make you a "rock- star" in the eyes of future developers of what you are working on now; and how to make your own style-guide framework.
Sebastiano Armeli-Battana Lazy load everything!This session will present an approach where resources such as scripts and images are lazy loaded for improving the performance of a web application. Loading a resource can be an expensive operation, so being cautious will make all the difference in terms of performance.
Tim Gleeson The Monster Music MashUsing the power of the Audio API to show how to mix and mash audio files together to create interactions between the audio and elements within the page.
Opening Titles Web Directions South 2012 Opening TitlesThese opening titles are designed by Cameron Adams for the Web Directions South 2012 Conference. They run entirely in real time in the browser (Chrome). A mix of JavaScript, CSS3, WebGL, Canvas & WebRTC. They include elements of live performance using the webcam (the opening sequence and closing sequence).
Josh Clark Buttons are a hackTouch gestures are sweeping away buttons, menus and windows from mobile devices—and even from the next version of Windows. Find out why those familiar desktop widgets are weak replacements for manipulating content directly, and learn to craft touchscreen interfaces that effortlessly teach users new gesture vocabularies.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher Getting unstuck: content strategy for the futureWe all want a web that’s more flexible and ready for unknowns. But our content is locked into inflexible pages and documents, far from ready for today’s world. We can’t keep creating more content for each of these new devices and channels. Instead, we need content that does more for us: Content that can travel and shift while keeping its meaning and message intact.
Lea Verou More CSS secretsAccording to .net magazine, Lea’s “CSS3 secrets” was one of the 15 best talks of 2011. This talk continues on the same path, with even juicier “secrets”. It will teach you how to take advantage of modern standards in unconventional ways to solve common web design challenges and in the process, it will open your mind to truly understanding how these new features work.
Mark Boulton Adapting to responsive designResponsive design involves more than just fluid grids and media queries. The way we design and build web sites is changing, but the way we manage and evolve our websites needs to change too. Mark will share his thoughts and experience of how adopting responsive web design practices needs to begin in the the boardroom, rather than the developer’s office.
Samantha Thebridge Developers will design: let’s make them amazing at itAny designer working with software engineers has run into the situation where a developer suddenly puts on a design hat. To truly become a design led organization, we asked ourselves: why not Developer on Design? Samantha takes you through the process Atlassian went through to place to give developers a real role in their design process.
Jay Rogers Avoid opinionitisOpinionitis: A dangerous syndrome where personal preference, unverified statements, and misconceptions direct the approach and deliverables of a product team, often resulting in products with no connection to reality. Opinionitis can destroy teams, products, and professional relationships. Avoid at all costs.
Andrew Fisher Datatium: radiation free responsive experiencesThe trend surrounding responsive web design is part of an overall move towards responsive experiences. A responsive experience may take place in part in the browser, but it extends well beyond media queries and image sets. Andrew will focus on how data as a material and data as tooling in the design process, Datatium, can shape deeply engaging experiences.
Craig Sharkie Responding to responsive designNo matter what you do, your design is going to be responsive. Even if your response is to ignore Responsive Design. Craig will look at a range of techniques and attitudes – and even an application or two – that will make simply ignoring Responsive Design harder than embracing it. From the server to Media Queries and beyond we’ll look at taking the big R from Responsive and making at a big ahhhh!
Heather Champ How to grow and sustain a passionate communityCommunities cannot be built, but they can be fostered. The choices you make early in your new site's life will effect the kind of community you grow. Heather will share best practices of the work you can do prior to launch and afterward to grow a happy and engaged community.
John Allsopp What we talk about when we talk about the webThe web has passed through two epochs, each heavily informed by technologies and practices that came before. The “pre-cambrian” age was the web of pages. Where our design practices were informed by the tradition of print design. While this era continues, a second, described by Scott Jensen as “Jurassic”, is upon us. The age of apps.
Matthew Sheret The bit between data and youHow can we play with data to offer genuinely new perspectives on the things we're doing? And what stories are emerging as we do that? Using comics, cutaways and a few well-placed Markov chains Matthew looks at the new spaces opening up in the gap between data and storytelling.
Charlie Gleason You are a developer, the internet is your friendThe internet is getting really, really big and developing it means knowing more than ever before. So how do designers take the plunge? What are the tricks that everyone seems to know but no one seems to tell you? And do developers really work in text editors? Charlie Gleason will tell you the secrets to how he learnt to stop worrying and love the code.