Also, Jeremy Keith live blogged the whole works from the front row.

Web Directions North is an internationally respected conference for web professionals. This year’s conference was a good high level overview of the new trends and technologies online. Some of these trends are emerging organically and we need to react to them and others are good ideas which need the support of developers to be adopted.

While the talks covered a variety of subjects there was a lot of overlap on these main themes:

Open data

Open data formats like XFN, microformats, and APIs are encouraging sites to share data between them. This allows sites to combine data for display in new ways, to make new connections between data, and to formulate it is more user friendly ways. Users may one day be able to manage their profiles, passwords, and social networks from one central account.

Mobile & Accessible Interfaces

In a few years there will be more people in the world with the ability to access the web with a mobile device than with a computer. Designing for browsing devices challenges designers to consider different contexts and device capabilities. Bright sunlight makes low contrast sites hard to read, common input devices like a keyboard and mouse may not be available. These are the same challenges developers face making interfaces accessible and there are over lapping.

Dynamic User Interfaces

Many websites are providing their users with the ability to customize what information is displayed to them and how. Many more sites which don’t provide these services are being altered by users anyway using special browser add-ons or websites which take data from existing websites and find new ways to display it.

There are also ties between these three trends – open and accessible data is easier to gather for customization with a different user interfaces which take into account different user needs like mobility or accessibility. Some examples:

Ironfeathers

This site uses Google Maps API to display running routes but it has removed the inaccessible Google Map controls and replaced them with their own custom accessible buttons. Try zooming in on the map in Google Maps using only your keyboard – then try it on Ironfeathers.

Everyblock

This site brings together data from government websites for the police and city hall, commercial sites like craigslist and social sites like Flickr in one place where it customizes it to make it more accessible, searchable, and explorable.

Twitter

This site has an open API and presents all its data as microformats. It has made it super easy for spin off sites like foamee. Foamee doesn’t require you to create a new username, password and profile – it just makes use of your twitter one. You don’t login and update foamee from your computer you just text message it.

I also had good conversations with the Microsoft representatives about the version meta tag they are planning on introducing in IE8, the BBC team about CMSs and centralized CSS (we’ve got it easy), and several free lance designers about client management strategies.

It was encouraging to see that BCIT is headed in the right direction with the incorporation of microformats into contacts and VTcal, to get confirmation that standards are still the leading industry concern, and know that our work on the Marqui templates will be moving us in the right direction to create a mobile version of the site.

• Tim O’Reilly
• Delta Tango Bravo
• Web Typography
• Boxes and Arrows – currently featuring an article on comic books!
• Netvibes – normally I’m not a portal person. To be check out in combination with Veerle’s theme.
• searchmash
• poetpainter
• Book: Four Hour Work Week
• ma.gnolia.com
• Flash aid
• Note Tab
• digg labs
• Book: Concrete by Paul Chadwick
• Pingerati
• Book: Just Ask
• Book: Neuromancer
• Article: Tao of Web Design
• Book: Pro Javascript Techniques

Presentations:

Missed a few, let me know if you have them.

• Dan Cederholm: Interface Design Juggling
• Jeffrey Veen: Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps (PDF)
• Cameron Moll: Designing for Communication (isn’t working, might not have written fast enough to get the whole thing?)
• Andy Clarke: Royale with Cheese
• Tantek Celik: Microformats, Building Blocks, and You

The speakers have all been excellent so far. I always need a few days to process information though so I don’t have much to say at this point other than: Andy Clarke remembered me from Web Directions North! I was flattered.

A few sessions feel like the same information I got at WDN which makes me question just how many of these conferences one needs to go to in a year and makes me feel better about the fact that I won’t be able to attend An Event Apart, mind you I haven’t heard most of their speakers… Are conferences addictive? Either way I’m out of funding sources and would have to pay for that one myself. Since I’m on the market for a new computer that’s not likely.

As part of the Technology Enabled Knowledge (TEK) initiative at BCIT Danny Catt, one of the faculty, was sponsored to take a trip around South America and Antarctica studying local research and responses to sustainability and environmental issues. Throughout the journey he used blogging, digital photography, virtual lecture software, shared file storage space, and of course e-mail to keep in touch which his students and communicate with the world.

Terry Fuller, the instructional development coordinator that was helping Danny with the project submitted a paper to CADE to talk about “Using the Internet to make Meaningful Global Connections in the Classroom.”  I was involved in creating the web page and blog that was the highlight of the project and Terry asked me to talk about the “technical” side of designing the website.

Rather than boring the crowd with PHP, HTML, CSS, CMS and other TLAs. I talked about the rest of the stuff that goes into the design process: user needs, site objectives, functional specifications, content requirements, information architecture, navigation design, visual design, and all that good stuff but for those of you who care the site was driven by Drupal and included a XML driven flash photo gallery, a Google map mashup, and some video and audio recordings, though not as many as we’d hoped – apparently it’s tough to upload media files from the middle of the Amazon – who knew?

The project was a lot of fun and very different my usual daily duties. I’ll post a summary and the slides soon.

Blog posts I hope to make in the next two weeks:

• Taking credit where credit is due – in response to a discussion about women in IT at zeldman.com.
• My thoughts on the hiring process and the job market and why I do what I do where I do for the pay I get.
• Some of the steps we’re taking to convert our templates from tables within tables within tables to just… one table, well it’s an improvement.
• Highlights of our presentation at CADE and my thoughts on the rest of the conference.

Until then, if you think of yourself as a web designer – go take A List Apart’s Web Designer survey.