Please God; not another conference about responsive design.

Edge of the Web: Cowboys & Indians

Outsourcing, design thinking, ethics and the future

A loosely structured conference for web devs, ethicists, creatives, entrepreneurs and futurists

Web devs

Outsourcing: a taboo subject. It’s a threat to Australia developers and designers; also an opportunity. Matt Barrie is the founder of freelancer.com. He’ll keynote for us.

Then, some of your peers will share what they’ve learned in that area and how they now approach it. After that, Q&A, with delegates contributing their experiences.

And for those not competing on price, what’s your business strategy? Troy Dean, Jane Farrow and Adam Griffith will frame that discussion. Then we go interactive.

Ethicists

• Ryan Holiday is the Marketing Director for American Apparel. He’s also a media strategist and the author of Trust Me, I’m Lying. It’s a book about manipulating the media through blogs. Disclaimer: we’re totally not looking for advice in that area.

• Between now and EOTW, AWIA will have tried to blanket the market with Widelines, our Code of Conduct. Did people sign up? Is behavior improving? Will anybody care? Designers

Then Will Donovan leads us into some design thinking about the industry itself. Seriously. How can we improve our reputation, standards, job satisfaction and income? [If you’re doing strategy with clients, you should definitely see how this guy runs a collaborative workshop.]  

Creatives

We will license graphic designer delegates who want to create Port80 merchandise. With permission, any cute phrase tweeted on Day#1 is a Port80 T-Shirt on Day#2. If you like, you can collaborate with design A-lister Samantha Thebridge on this.

We’ll split the proceeds, with designers taking the bulk. Help make Port80 the baddest meetup in the Australiosphere. MUST HAVE uber-cool geek shirts.

Entrepreneurs

• What are we learning from Startup Weekend about how to create a startup? Participants lined up from both the first Perth Startup Weekend and the second one (which finishes days before EOTW). Those guys will be wired. Watch them deconstruct the event and its lessons. Attendees may be exposed to enthusiasm. Discussion led by Isaak Dury.

• Peter Webb is one of the most talked-about characters in the Sydney IT consulting scene. Original and off-the-chart irreverent, describing the Android Market Experience.

Futurists

We’re designing a set of futures for the web industry at this conference. Create a little history with us in the unconferencing sessions. Also:

Gian Wild on the future of accessibility. Christian Frichot on security, Darcy Laycock on APIs, Chris Lienert on Forms, Evan Cunningham-Dunlop on SEO and AWIA Chairman bret treasure on web developers as a lobby group.

Recreation & such

Recreation is optional but we recommend you come early and leave late. Wednesday we’re planning the Accessibility BarCamp (to be confirmed). Thursday night we’re down the beach. Saturday early-morning running, then shooting, wind-surfing, the aboriginal tourism experience thing, then slacking off at a très cool hotellery.

The StartUp Weekend ShutDown event is in there somewhere too. More to reveal in coming weeks.  

This is not the Experts talking at us; we’re doing considerable unconferencing. All up, two days talking about what matters. Influence each other. Learn stuff. Party. Fire bullets. 

If you require any further information or assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us by email :  

registrations@partnerandprosper.com.au