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Gaining Knowledge vs. Inspiration : WD06 postscript

At the most recent port80 meet, Myles talked about the lack of cut­ting edge present­a­tions at WD06 and that while AJAX, APIs and micro­formats present­a­tions where good, he was already using them on a reg­u­lar basis and was hop­ing for some­thing new and exciting.

Which got think­ing about what I got from WD06 and was it bet­ter to gain know­ledge or be inspired about a sub­ject. Easy, inspir­a­tion is far more import­ant to me, if I am inspired I usu­ally will go quickly and acquire extra know­ledge from where ever I can, even if it means a lot of exper­i­ment­ing on my behalf. Know­ledge is good, but being inspired to learn more about a sub­ject is better.

The present­a­tions that inspired me most at WD06, were not on top­ics I knew and care about, Derek’s work­shop on access­ib­il­ity improved my know­ledge, but did not inspire me, unlike his present­a­tion last year. Or even sub­jects I had lim­ited know­ledge and I knew I needed to learn more about, Jeremy’s work­shop gave me the con­fid­ence to handle DOM script­ing and AJAX. The res­ults of Thomas and Donna’s IA present­a­tions, was that I sur­prised myself with my level of under­stand­ing of IA and the know­ledge I already had com­bined with what I learnt gave me the con­fid­ence to go to OZIA without the fear of being overwhelmed.

The inspir­a­tion came from unlikely sources, top­ics that I usu­ally only pay lip ser­vice to. Kelly’s iter­at­ive app present­a­tion really hit home, with a major pro­ject I have to man­age com­ing up, everything just made sense, I will be apply­ing what I learnt and chas­ing up all the links that Kelly gave dur­ing her present­a­tion. Andy’s present­a­tion on inspired design just got me think­ing, and that is a dan­ger­ous thing, expect a ser­i­ous blog realign­ment soon and some sort of elec­tronic scrapbook.

As for Myles, Derek’s present­a­tions on access­ib­il­ity did get him think­ing and has sparked his interest in accessibility.

You find inspir­a­tion in the most sur­pris­ing places.

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6 Responses to “Gaining Knowledge vs. Inspiration : WD06 postscript”

  1. Cameron Adams Says:
    October 11th, 2006 at 3:05 am

    At a nar­rowly focused con­fer­ence like Web Dir­ec­tions, where are you going to go for some­thing which you know noth­ing about?

    Nowadays, speak­ers are unlikely to debut some­thing at a con­fer­ence which they haven’t already blogged or talked about pre­vi­ously. It’s what they were brought in to do — talk about a spe­cific idea/technology/technique.

    If you’re tapped into that net­work, it’s not really the present­a­tions you go to a con­fer­ence for. It’s more about the net­work­ing, the community.

    At SXSW the present­a­tions I found the most intriguing were the ones from people I’d never heard of, areas I never worked in. But you can afford to do that at SXSW because speak­ers speak for free, and the scale is massive. WD has to have some draw­cards who are known for what they speak about and will speak pre­dict­ably about it.

    I think Mark Pesce really worked because most people at the con­fer­ence would have never heard of him, though he may be big in his par­tic­u­lar area. He’s not really a web developer, a web designer, or even a web tech­no­lo­gist. But what he says makes those sort of people think.

  2. Myles Eftoss Says:
    October 11th, 2006 at 7:57 am

    Don’t get me wrong, the oppor­tun­ity to meet up with the big names in industry was the best thing about the con­fer­ence, as Cameron men­tiones in his blog post today, the buzz is about meet­ing like minded peole who you can talk tech with and who actu­ally under­stand, or may even have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what you are talk­ing about.

    I guess because this was my first con­fer­ence, I didn’t know what to expect. But I think I’ve got­ten the bug now :)

  3. Tuna Says:
    October 11th, 2006 at 10:01 am

    Yes WD06 was inspir­a­tional, I’m still buzz­ing with ideas I have lever­aged from vari­ous sources at the con­fer­ence. Was I inspired by the core speak­ers, yes and no, more often than not they con­firmed I was mov­ing in the right dir­ec­tion pro­fes­sion­ally. Too often I found myself in a ses­sion think­ing “I do it that way too, just now I have a label for it”. It was the sec­ond­ary tier of speak­ers (that I didn’t know of) that gave me the inspir­a­tional ideas. This was espe­cially true in OzIA.

    Did I learn any­thing new, not really, some, noth­ing major or earth­shat­ter­ing. Like Cameron said its all for the net­work­ing, the com­munity etc. The like minds, one week of geeky tech talk, too much inform­a­tion, too much beer and way too many names and faces.

    Now after hav­ing been to a few web con­fer­ences over the years all organ­ised by dif­fer­ent groups. I can safely say WD did have the rigth buzz about it.

    But is WD too focused and too nar­row in its scope. Its mainly focused on CSS / stand­ards and access­ib­ily usab­il­ity. Is this a good thing. Can the momentium be main­tained for 2007. Is there a need to inject a good deal of new top­ics into the mix. Should there be a more inter­face design ses­sions or a few coder ses­sions (besides Javascript)?

  4. Michael McCorry Says:
    October 11th, 2006 at 3:15 pm

    I had the same sort of vibe, although my inner mono­logue after WD06 was kinda like: “Man that was cool. Did I learn much though? No not really, but man, that was COOL. The Ajax bit was enter­tain­ing, not really inform­at­ive though, but meet­ing Jeremy was COOL. COOOOOL! AGAIN! MORE! Wheeeee!”.

    Then I sobered up.

    Eas­ily, the best bit was talk­ing with other people who knew what they were talk­ing about. Doesn’t hap­pen a lot out where I live. Also, its the inspir­a­tion and motiv­a­tion to get off my bum and fin­ish that side pro­ject I’ve been put­ting off. I can only ima­gine the cool­ness that goes on at (and comes out of) SXSW.

  5. nick Says:
    October 11th, 2006 at 4:01 pm

    Cameron, you are right it is more about the people than the present­a­tions, I learnt and was inspired as much if not more by the people I met and the dis­cus­sions I had with them, than the present­a­tions. That is why I will def­in­itely be back for WD07 and are ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing SXSWi.

    I did not talk about the people in my post by choice, I wanted to talk about what present­a­tions inspired me and why. It is easier to talk about the present­a­tions (lim­ited num­ber and I knew which ones I atten­ded) than the people, I met so many, learnt from some, was inspired by oth­ers and not neces­sar­ily remem­ber all their names, plus it would be an extremely long post.

  6. Ben Buchanan Says:
    October 13th, 2006 at 11:52 am

    At both WE05 and WD06 I found the most inspir­ing present­a­tions were non-technical, or at least less technical.

    I don’t think things neces­sar­ily have to be ‘bleed­ing edge’ or whatever. In this age of rapid pro­to­typ­ing and insanely fast pace, some­times we for­get to go back and do the new stuff *really well*.

    But ulti­mately it really is about the people — gath­er­ing the tribe :)

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