The HighEdWebDev 2007 conference begins tomorrow and I am all ready to go. This is my second year to attend this gathering. Last year, I was sitting at the vendor table (Hello, I would you like to buy a pound of CMS?
), guest-blogging at Collegewebeditor.com, and that’s about it. This year, I (thankfully!) will not be vending software
goods, but I did sign up for guest-blogging. In addition, Jeff
Keeton and I will have a post-conference Workshop 2.0, a boundary-busting, mashpit-flavored jam session of collaborative learning.
We’ll start with breaking down the what’s, the who’s, and the why’s of the gnarly beast we all lovingly call Web 2.0. We’ll talk about the traits and the hype, the comers and the goners, but please pelt us with rotten iPhones if we spend more than 20 minutes doing that.
Next, we’ll conduct an exclusive virtual (hold your fingers crossed for Skype) expert panel, discussing what the future holds in store for the Web of tomorrow. The panel will feature several gurus and senseis of the Web, including our own, battle-tested Mark
Greenfield and Web 2.0’s uncle Chris FactoryJoe
Messina. We tried to get Father Tim, but Twitter was down at the time.
In another 20 minutes, we’ll pull the plug on the Skypecast, claiming technical difficulties, and get to the most exciting part of the shop:
the hands-on. In the remaining 2 hours, we will venture to build a new site. Together. Not to compete with the CSS experts next door, we’ll skip the part of finding fun rendering bugs in IE, but rest assured, we’ll follow the process from start to finish. Please bring
your smocks — this is going to get messy.
Armed with our shockingly brilliant collective intelligence, our Team 2.0 will pick the site project, brainstorm goals, audiences, creative concept, doodle wireframes and even say words like AJAX
and Controlled Vocabulary
. Together, we’ll argue about pros and cons of promotion techniques, mull over minute details of information architecture, decide on underlying technology and discuss details of implementation while the Photoshop geeks in the corner will
be quietly cooking rounded corners, gradients and drop-shadows.
Throughout, we’ll use social networking tools to facilitate the architecture, development, and promotion of the site, making sure to squeeze the most utility out of the Web 2.0 hype. We probably won’t walk away with a real site. But we sure will try. And in the process, we’ll capture and cherish the spirit of
working together and having a good time.