Webstock 2011 Launch Party

We've been planning Webstock 2011 since, oh, the day Webstock 2010 ended! We're partly nervous, partly proud and mostly excited about being able to launch Webstock 2011 on Thursday 23 September. To celebrate the occasion we're holding a Webstock Mini featuring the usual mix of great speakers (Denis Dutton and Mark Billinghurst), great company and, ummm, alcohol!

Not to mention unveiling the Webstock 2011 speaker lineup and rounding off the evening with a no-holds-barred debate.

And also, we'll be giving away two tickets to the Webstock 2011 main conference. You'll need to be at the launch party to be in the running for these.

When

From 5:30pm — 9.15pm Thursday 23 September.

Where

Paramount Cinema, Courtenay Place, Wellington

How much

$50 per person. This includes finger food and all you can drink!

You know you want to be there, so register now!

Timetable

Time	What's on
5:15 - 6:00pm	Registration
6:00 - 6:15pm	Welcome and Webstock 2011 launch. Plus, two free Webstock tickets given away!
6:15 - 7:00pm	Denis Dutton
7:00 - 7:45pm	Mark Billinghurst
7:45 - 8:30pm	Break, food and drinks
8:30 - 9:15pm	The Great Webstock debate

Denis Dutton

Denis Dutton, a philosopher, is founder and editor of the highly regarded Web publication, Arts & Letters Daily.

A native of Los Angeles, he teaches the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, writes widely on aesthetics. and is editor of the journal Philosophy and Literature, and author of the recently published The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure and Human Evolution.

Dutton's 2009 book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution proposed that the commonly held modernist view that art appreciation is culturally learned is wrong and that art appreciation stems from evolutionary adaptions made during the Pleistocene period.

In 2004 Dutton criticised Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings as "ham-fisted, shallow, bombastic, and laughably overrated".

Mark Billinghurst

Professor Mark Billinghurst is a researcher developing innovative computer interfaces that explore how virtual and real worlds can be merged. Director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) at the University of Canterbury, he has produced over 200 technical publications and presented demonstrations and courses at a wide variety of conferences.

He has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington and conducts research in Augmented and Virtual Reality, and Mobile User Interfaces. He has previously worked at ATR Research Labs, British Telecom and the MIT Media Laboratory. One of his research projects, the MagicBook, was winner of the 2001 Discover award for best Entertainment application.

Augmented Reality: Making the Invisible Visible

Augmented Reality (AR) attempts to bridge the digital divide by overlaying virtual images over the real world so that the digital and physical are merged together. Although the technology was first developed over 40 years ago, it has only been in the last few years that AR has reached the mainstream with web-based and mobile phone AR applications.

This talk will present a brief overview of the history of AR, before reviewing the current state of the AR and the important directions for future research and commercialization. Examples will be shown from the HIT Lab NZ and other leading research groups and companies worldwide.

The Great Webstock Debate

In the spirit of civilised conversation, the genteel exchange of ideas and the advancement of human knowledge, we present to you the Great Webstock Debate of 2010! Two teams will debate — for your pleasure and amusement — the topic: "Open is good".

And the teams…

The affirmative — aka The over-confident, over-exposed and down-here team from Auckland

Ben Gracewood — @nzben
Ben Gracewood enjoys reviewing gadgets, developing software, making up new swear words on Twitter, and long walks on the beach. Ben also notes that the tendency to refer to oneself in the third person is a common symptom of narcissism.
Sacha Judd — @szechuan
Sacha Judd is a lawyer, a lecturer, and a champion of the commercially oppressed. She is a partner at Buddle Findlay and has debated with success on almost every continent on earth.
David Slack — @davidslack
David Slack is a speech writer, columnist and author. His site speeches.com, which he co-founded with Al Gore, has been generating automatic speeches since the dawn of the modern internet.

The negative — aka The home-town heroes aka The good guys

Keith Ng — @keith_ng
Keith Ng is a data visualisation consultant and writer who has it in for David Slack, who will be going down. Down like a flaming hard-drive containing the only copy of your entire business.
Isabella Cawthorn — @fixiebelle
Isabella Cawthorn has a background in law and environmental studies and a deep (but not limitless) respect for science. She loves the combination of a good enthusiastic fact-free debate with alcoholic beverages, but there's no excuse for policy without an evidence base unless policy-makers are happy to have "wannabe Philosopher King" on business cards. She is also a fancy-dressing speedster with Frocks on Bikes.
Mike Brown — @maupuia
Mike Brown has something to do with Webstock and is clearly in the debate through nepotism rather than competence.