Workit for Webstock

1 March 2010

Webstock’s silver sponsor and longtime supporter Microsoft have taken a different approach to their presence at Webstock this year. They have chosen to take on the role of observer and broadcaster. Their efforts have culminated around a single piece of collateral – a backstage pass and a website – to create a lasting memory of Webstock for attendees and those not lucky enough to participate in the event. We caught up with Microsoft New Zealand Web Evangelist Nigel Parker and talked about their contribution to Webstock this year.

1. Tell us a little bit about the workit.co.nz website and the idea of the backstage pass.

I have been lucky enough to be involved with Webstock since its inception in 2006. I have got to know the team and previous speakers that have been involved with the event and each year that Webstock takes place I’m fascinated in the excitement and love that gets generated. Previously we have engaged the audience in activities like our Valentine’s Day Flickr photo booth. This year I really wanted to bottle that excitement and take it to a wider audience and other communities.

2. How did you go about generating the content?

Every year leading up to Webstock a small gathering of fascinating people takes place at Mahurangi College in Warkworth. The event is known as Kiwi Foo Camp and is organised by Nat Torkington and Jenine Abarbanel, with assistance from Russell Brown. This year at Foo I pulled aside Webstock speakers Ben Cerveny and Eric Ries to talk on camera about themselves and the Webstock event.

With incredible support from Webstock personality and Senior VP Natasha Lampard I was able to attend and share Adam Greenfield’s mind blowing Wellington Walkshop and talk on camera with Jeff Atwood.

2. On the site you have interviews with companies and people attending Webstock, what are you trying to achieve with this?

I have been actively part of the New Zealand web community for many years. I am continually inspired by the innovation that comes from kiwis on the web. What I wanted to do with the site was showcase some of the Microsoft Gold Partners that I think are doing cool work. Among them, Intergen has been a resident sponsor of Webstock since the beginning and I caught up with their team at the event and in their office to talk about an exciting new kiosk project that they have been working on.

Also anyone that follows me on twitter knows that I’m a huge cricket fan so it was great to be able to interview another Microsoft Gold Partner NV Interactive about their latest exciting project launched this week for New Zealand cricket.

3. You mentioned Microsoft Gold Partner, what does this mean?

Microsoft is a platform company that coalesces with a strong partner community to achieve scale. The Microsoft Gold partners are highly visible in New Zealand but sometimes that can be intimidating for smaller web companies starting out. This year we have rolled out a new programme called WebsiteSpark. The programme is designed to give smaller web companies the tools to build web solution using the latest Microsoft web and design software with no upfront cost. Peter at Swizzle has done a great job of supporting this initiative with a local hosting offer.

Eighty three NZ web design companies have already signed up to WebsiteSpark. Having worked personally with some of the companies like Mcgovern, WebsiteSpark is already showing its potential to be a great program for innovative New Zealanders working on the web.

4. Webstock is an advocate of freedom and web standards. The backstage pass site leverages both Silverlight and Flash – what are your feeling around using plugins and standards based web technologies.

I find technologies like Silverlight and Flash work as a “ready now” cross platform solution to create immersive user experiences. I see standard technologies like HTML5 as “ready soon” technologies that will achieve much of what Silverlight and Flash can do today. I am excited about the prospect of HTML5 and will definitely start using it when browsers, frameworks and tools evolve.

If you take the workit.co.nz backstage pass site as an example. I chose to publish the videos on YouTube for greatest reach and discoverability, this lead to a dependency on Flash that means you needed the plugin installed to watch the videos. The site is fully functional if you don’t have Silverlight installed but if you do have Silverlight it lights up with slicker navigation and an amazing immersive photo mosaic of shots from the Webstock conference connected to the Flickr photo service.

As more web companies support a programmer’s interface to their services the opportunity to enhance experiences on the web continues to develop. It is this future that I glimpse at during the two days of attending Webstock and plan to take back to future projects that I participate in.

Thanks for your time Nigel. We really appreciate the support that you’ve provided Webstock.

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2010
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The sponsor interviews: Springload

13 February 2010

We recently caught up with Bron Thomson, founder of Springload.

1) Tell us about Springload. How long have you been around, how did you start, what sort of work do you do?

It’s hard to say when Springload truly started to be honest. I started working on websites waaaay back when the Internet was just a wee young thing in New Zealand, around 1994. Over the years I’ve gathered more and more cool people around me, including my business partner Carl. Springload is the result, with a current team of 20 people dedicated to designing and building websites that have a strong focus on user centred design.

2) If you had to boil down the essence of Spingload’s philosophy or methodology to a few sentences, what would you say?

Love the web! It’s our Springload vision and the philosophy that we work by. We love the web and everything about it – the technology, the design, the interaction. And we want others to love it too. We also love the people that we work with – our team, and our clients, and the extended Springload family.

It is our team that make coming to work each day a joy, and it is our clients that inspire us on each project we work on. So to us, Love the web really sums up pretty much everything about what we do.

3) We noticed there were a number of Springload entries for the ONYAs. What’s been your impression of the ONYAs to date? Are they good for the industry?

Well, it’s a brand new gig, but we’re really very excited about the ONYAs. There aren’t that many awards that recognise and honour websites from a fully rounded perspective; not just the visual design, but also interaction, content, architecture and functionality as well. Web awards should be about the whole package! And we think the ONYA’s are going to be just that.

4) What speakers at Webstock are you personally most looking forward to seeing and why?

Woah, that’s a hard one, am I allowed to say them all? ;-) We’re thrilled to be sponsoring Daniel Burka, and I’m particularly interested in hearing about his Creative Director role at Digg. Others that I’m looking forward to are Scott Thomas and his focus on design and content to capture an audience; Esther Derby to get some management tips; Amy Hoy for some inspiration on avoiding same-same design; and Sebastian Chan for keeping content fresh by analysing users on the fly. Lots to learn!

5) What do you most love about working in the web?

I’ve got one of those strange brains that likes both the logical and the creative as much as each other (I did a maths degree and a music degree). This seems to me to be what the web is all about – the merging of form and function. You can’t have one without the other, and I love the challenge of meshing the two and creating an experience that is so good you almost don’t even know it’s there.

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2010
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Interview with the DJ: Peter McLennan

10 February 2010

Peter McLennan (@dubdotdash on Twitter) will be providing the sounds at Webstock and we’re really stoked. Webstock’s Ben Lampard caught up with him using the power of the internets and this is what happened.

Well Peter we’re very excited to have you providing the sounds at Webstock this year. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I like chocolate.

Oh, you want more? I discovered Len Lye and punk rock roughly at the same time, as a teenager. I later figured out a lot of Len Lye’s attitudes to art were very punk. I started playing guitar at high school in a band called the Worst. The name was apt. I ended up going to art school and working with film and video, while playing in a band called Hallelujah Picassos, who released two albums, a handful of singles, and played around the country scarring young minds as often as we could. Our approach to playing live was best described as “search and destroy”.

I went on to direct a few music videos for the Picassos too, which led me to work in TV for a while. I’ve also had other gigs as a music journalist, magazine designer, radio DJ, office cleaner, music video shoot runner (I got to drive Shayne Carter round once for a Bike video, we talked about Sly and the Family Stone) and more.

I like chocolate too. You were a member of the Hallelujah Picassos, easily one of the best live bands of the time. For instance, the gig you played in 1994 at the Otago University Student Union still ranks as perhaps the best live performance I’ve ever seen anywhere. Tell us a bit about the band.

We labelled ourselves as the four-headed beast. We all wrote, we all sang, and we all played at 100 miles an hour intensity onstage. We mashed up genres way before it became cool (see Sublime, Rancid) and had a great time playing to folks around the country. Our sound generally got labelled with a barrage of hyphens…. ska-reggae-hiphop-funk-punk. See? I’m proud to say that all my former band mates in the Picassos are still my friends.

What keeps you busy these days?

Currently I DJ on BaseFM and KiwiFM, write a music blog and make music as Dub Asylum.

I’m also writing a book.

Holy cow, and you found time to do this interview. What are some of your current influences and how would you describe your sound for those who haven’t heard you recently?

Oh crap. Seriously? I hate this question. It sucks harder than a vacuum cleaner. Current influences… Rhythm and sound, Lee Scratch Perry, Onra, Public Image Limited, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Ragga Twins, Julien Dyne, Carl Craig and ZILLION more… My sound is a mix of reggae, funk and hiphop. That’s the type of music I make as Dub Asylum, and also what I play when I’m DJing. Cept when I’m DJing there is usually some steel drums in there.

Yeah, sorry about that question, I thought it was mandatory when interviewing musician types. Too much Rip It Up as a kid. What 5 songs/albums/artists would you recommend to our readers?

Music by Iggy and the Stooges, Mulatu Astatke, Eric B and Rakim, Kraftwerk and the entire back catalogue of the On-U-Sound record label. Or the entire back catalogue of Daptone Records, home to Ms Sharon Jones and the Dapkings, The Budos Band, The Daktaris, Naomi Shelton and more. This could go on for days….

And it will go on for days at Webstock ladies and gentlemen. Thanks Peter, we look forward to meeting you and hearing some of this stuff next week.

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2010
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