Web Teacher » events

Useful links: Video, Access U, WordPress widgets

vdebolt — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:07:49 +0000

Video for Everybody! “Video for Everybody is simply a chunk of HTML code that embeds a video into a website using the HTML5 element, falling back to Flash automatically without the use of JavaScript or browser-sniffing. It therefore works in RSS readers (no JavaScript), on the iPhone / iPad (don’t support Flash) and on many browsers and platforms.”

A Knowbility conference is coming up on the West Coast. It’s Access U @ CSUN, toward the end of February. Learn from accessibility experts such as Shawn Henry, Jennison Asuncion, Denis Boudreau, Molly Holzschlag, Derek Featherstone and others.

An excellent presentation from Kathy Gill on using widgets in WordPress.

Going to An Event Apart? 5 Tips to Help You Get Ready

vdebolt — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:30:25 +0000

The latest iteration of An Event Apart is nearly upon us, to be held in Atlanta next month with subsequent sessions upcoming in Seattle, Boston, Austin and Washington, DC later in the year. Widely recognized as the most important conference of the year for web site designers and developers, An Event Apart offers a series of educational workshops and seminars aimed at helping you, quite simply, to become even better at everything that you do online.

With topics ranging from content creation to raw design and web standards, all with an innovative focus on the future, An Event Apart boasts the very best minds and voices in the industry with speakers and presenters who have been and continue to be behind some of the most popular spots on the interweb.

If you’re a web designer or developer and have the time and means to attend then your first decision has been made for you! Once your initial plans have been made, it’s time to focus on how exactly you can best prepare to get the most out of your An Event Apart experience. Check out the tips below to effectively utilize social media in helping you to create a personal itinerary:

1. Get to Know Your Fellow Attendees

There is one thing you can be sure of when considering the people you’ll meet and converse with at An Event Apart: they are all utilizing social media of some sort to stay in touch with clients and colleagues. Leading up to the conference, learn more about the speakers, guests and presenters by following their social feeds; you’re sure to meet many of the colleagues you’ll soon be rubbing shoulders with via the same method!

2. Stay Active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+

An Event Apart attendees will seek each other out not generally by face, but by online reputation. Utilize your social media presence to let the world know that you are an innovative thinker with good ideas and give your colleagues a reason to seek you out! There is no better place in the world to network and build contacts with both potential clients and potential partners than An Event Apart; make the most of it!

3. Update Your Site

When duty calls and you’ve spent the last few weeks or months thinking and dreaming code and design, it can be easy to allow your personal site and portfolio to lapse. Take the time to update your “About” page and add fresh content to your site and blog in order to give those you’re connecting with a reason to stay and chat. Also, if you plan to leave An Event Apart with wads of your business cards having been handed out, the same folks that you impressed with your ideas at the conference can also be impressed by your personal home on the web.

4. Prepare Your Review

Attending An Event Apart gives you the immediate ability to act as a qualified reviewer after the fact, letting your clients, colleagues and visitors in on the intimate details of your experience and the new knowledge and strategies that you walked away with. While the review itself will obviously have to wait until after the conference is over, you can get started now by preparing your review template, planning the outline and letting your social followers know that your blog is the place to look for a thorough and enjoyable overview of the latest iteration of An Event Apart!

5. Enjoy the Preparation and Conference

Image Credit: Peter Hart.

An Event Apart is not only an intense educational experience for web professionals but also an event focused on the fun that springs naturally from bringing so many like-minded people together in one place. In preparing for the conference, be sure to enjoy every minute of online shoulder rubbing with the knowledge that you will walk away from An Event Apart having learned so much from your colleagues, all applicable to your profitability as a web designer or developer.

The more you take away from the event, the more you have to offer your clients once you’re back behind your desk!

Convinced? Here are traveling tips to get you started planning the trip:

Flights: Here’s the official site of Atlanta International Airport for travel tips and flight information
Living there: Bookmark Atlantahotels.org for lodging help.

Guest Author Jessy Troy is a social media enthusiast and tech blogger. She blogs in many places – follow her articles via her Twitter feed @jessytroy.

Happy New Year

vdebolt — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:53:20 +0000

Since I’m learning to play the ukulele and these two are the cutest things ever, I’m going to use this song to wish you a wonderful new year.

Women Take Note: BlogHerEntrepreneurs ’12

vdebolt — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:37:35 +0000

BlogHer announced the second annual BlogHerEntrepreneurs Conference, focused on business, entrepreneurism and technology, which will take place on March 22-23, 2012 in Santa Clara, CA.

There are only 100 seats available for this conference, so register quickly.

If you’re a woman who has a big idea that involves technology, the Internet or social media, we have an opportunity for you. With the leadership of 50 pioneering entrepreneurs, technologists and business leaders, BlogHer is hosting a special event for women who want to start something.
-Lisa Stone

Here are some instructions from the announcement by Elisa Camahort Page:

Who Should Attend and What You Need to Make the Most of It

Here’s what you need to attend:

(1) An idea. Or a fledgling business. Or both.
We invite you to attend if you have a big idea and need encouragement to build it into a business. We invite you if you already have your seed or angel funding and want to take it to the next level. We invite you if you want to lead an innovative new program or initiative at your company. Are you anywhere in between? Great — join us!

(2) Do your homework.
This year we will be focused on providing more informational resources as we get closer to the event, a path to follow to make the most of the conference. Generate talking points about your idea, concept or business. Bring a full-blown pitch deck or business plan, if you have one. And if you don’t have one, you have until March 22, and we’ll be there to help.

(3) Invite men from venture capital, technology, business and entrepreneurship
One final point, so as to be explicit: Men are absolutely and enthusiastically invited to attend this event. Lisa, Jory and I have met dozens of men in the industry — from VCs to engineers — who openly seek our advice on how and where to recruit women for their start-ups and businesses, and who contribute thoughtfully to the discussion about women in tech. So yes indeed, we invite men interested in funding, hiring or advancing entrepreneurial women to please join us. And if you know women who would benefit from this event, contact Kristin Auger about sponsoring a table of them!

You can see the agenda in the event announcement.

Go. Get help and inspiration. Start something.

Useful links: top 25 books, edu conferences, blue beanie day, semantics, Think Up

vdebolt — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:23:57 +0000

The top 25 books for web developers and designers from .net is a good list to check to see if you’re keeping up with the latest. I noticed that several of the 25 are from A Book Apart. That led me to tweet this:

Is there some sort of brain implant that would directly feed every publication from A Book Apart into my brain?Sun Nov 13 17:26:02 via TweetDeckVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Oddly, there were people on Twitter who didn’t see the humor in that and suggested I should read the books. With my eyes. Because I don’t want you to worry about me, you should know that I am reading them. With my eyes.

Conferencepalooza suggests some good conferences for high ed folks. Check it out, there might be a great one there. You do know that SXSW is holding a special pre-conference for EDU this year, don’t you? It’s SXSWEDU.

Get out your blue beanie and join Chris in giving thanks for web standards on Nov. 30, 2011 – Blue Beanie Day. Why should we give thanks, Chris asks? Because the bums lost!

Installment 3 in a round robin of posts about semantics. This one from Paul Irish explains enough about the first two that you can follow even if you haven’t read them. (Why haven’t you read them!)

Think Up is new software that Gina Trapani announced was out of beta yesterday. It does all of what I was wishing Twitter would do plus more with Facebook and Google+. It’s installed or your server or can run from the Amazon cloud for a monthly fee. I think Think Up is going to be big.

Who has the best Halloween costumes? Geeks!

vdebolt — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:31:46 +0000

Right about now, all the sci fi geeks and horror geeks and tech geeks out there are scouring thrift shops for the perfect articles to make costumes for Halloween.

If you’re still looking for the perfect idea for a costume for yourself for this year, I’m here to help. Take a look at some of the suggestions from the tech blogosphere.

I love the suggestions at Take Back Halloween because their ideas include Ada Lovelace, Pele, Persephone, Lise Meitner, and Madam C.J. Walker, among others. Here’s their image for Athena.

Image Source: Take Back Halloween

Not only does Take Back Halloween show you details of the costume, they also have a list of what you need and instructions for how to make it. These are all ideas for women.

For those who want to go high tech, check out the 15 high tech Halloween costumes ideas that light up the night from DVICE. Most of these costumes involve high tech parts that light up. They mostly appeal to the guys, but there is one suggestion for a woman (it’s number 15, Portal’s GLaDOS) dressed up in a computer that I would love to wear to haunt the night.

Geek Sugar has some ideas from Geeky TV shows. How about an outfit from Star Wars or an outfit from Battlestar Galactica? If there is an artist somewhere in the world with a costume that could make me look like Gina Torres in Serenity/Firefly, I’d like to hear from them.

Geek Sugar doesn’t stop there. They also have suggestions for costumes that come from Internet memes and ideas for the littlest geeks.

Kiwi Commons posted 5 Tech Costumes for Halloween that include dressing as a Wii remote or as a Facebook profile.

Not that the geeks don’t own cosplay (costume play) all year long. Look at the photos from any Comic Con and you’ll see elaborate cosplay on display.

Assassionista went to the New York Comic Con, where she showed off her own Lara costume and photographed lots of other great costume ideas such as Chun Li from Street Fighter, Jesse from Team Rocket in Pokemon, and Vanille from Final Fantasy XIII.

Geeks are Sexy went to the NY Comic Con, too. They have a photo gallery that could give you some good ideas for costumes.

Geek out this Halloween with a costume that shows you at your geekiest. Happy Halloween!

Cross-posted on BlogHer in a slightly different form.

It’s time to speak up about online harassment

vdebolt — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:25:12 +0000

BlogHer and many other organizations are lining up behind a campaign to stop bullying. It’s called Stop Bullying: Speak Up. You can join in at Facebook and take a pledge to help. You can also get a widget like this one that allows others to participate.

There are a constant stream of blog posts by women in the tech world who have been harassed, bullied, and intimidated by online haters and trolls. I hear about it from women in private conversation again and again.

The tech world loses women because of this – women who are smart and who make valuable contributions. Kathy Sierra is a famous example of the loss of a valuable contributor to the conversation about how to make technology work better for people. (See the recent post: Kathy Sierra speaks out on the nymwars and hater comments.) Women are reluctant to speak at conferences, even when they have something valuable to contribute, because of the online harassment that often follows a woman after a public appearance. Now the tech community is losing Skud, who explains about her harassment and her struggles in this post.

The prevailing wisdom has been “don’t feed the trolls.” But that is changing to a philosophy of calling out names and exposing trolls. Skud is doing just that: giving names, IP addresses, and trying to uncover the hidden identities of offensive online bullies.

Another blogger who is urging women to speak up is s. e. smith from Tiger Beatdown. In On Blogging, Threats, and Silence, she said,

All of the bloggers at Tiger Beatdown have received threats, not just in email but in comments, on Twitter, and in other media, and the site itself has been subject to hacking attempts as well. It’s grinding and relentless and we’re told collectively, as a community, to stay silent about it, but I’m not sure that’s the right answer, to remain silent in the face of silencing campaigns designed and calculated to drive us from not just the Internet, but public spaces in general.

We’ve lived in an online culture where the advice is “ignore the trolls and they will go away.” But that advice isn’t working. Sweeping it under the rug isn’t working. Pretending that it’s okay because it’s directed at women isn’t acceptable. Laughing about it isn’t an option.

Women can’t change the culture of abuse toward women by themselves. Women need men to speak up. Men who will let other men know that online harassment and bullying of women is not acceptable to men.

SW Conference on Disability: Can the Dynamic Web be Accessible Panel Presentation Slides

vdebolt — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:39:39 +0000

The slide deck, which is mostly a list of resources, can be found on Slideshare.

I prepared some info for my part of the panel, which I put at vdebolt.com/swconf. This was just a small part of what we discussed, but since I was going to talk about alt text, I thought I needed some visuals. Other panel members did not need to do this.

My Ada Lovelace Day Pick: Emily Lewis

vdebolt — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:16:07 +0000

It’s Ada Lovelace Day! This day is for all of us to honor, mention, and share the names of the women in STEM that we admire. Who’s my choice for 2011? Emily Lewis!

Emily is a web designer running her own business at Emily Lewis Design. She has a blog at A Blog Not Limited. She’s written a book about microformats and part of a book about HTML5. She writes guest columns for Script Junkie and other techie places.

Emily does podcasts about Expression Engine and about the tech scene in Albuquerque, where she lives. She performs a great community service to the Albuquerque web tech community by co-managing a group called Webuquerque that hosts educational/social events for webheads. She speaks on panels for tech events such as SXSW, MIX, and others where she shares her knowledge and expertise with competent professionalism.

To summarize Emily, she’s an outstanding creative professional who makes important contributions to her chosen field of web design. Three cheers for Emily!

Past Ada Lovelace honorees:

SW Conference on Disability

vdebolt — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:38:08 +0000

I’ve been a bit distracted this week, getting organized to present a panel at the Southwest Conference on Disability. This is an ongoing conference that had never focused on web accessibility until last year when Sharron Rush from Knowbility, Inc. gave a keynote. She realized the folks there needed to add more about web accessibility to the mix. (Did you click on the conference site link?)

This year Sharron offered a full day workshop on accessibility as part of the conference, which happened yesterday. And Sharron recruited me, Emily Lewis, and Jason Nakai to be on a panel talking about web acessibility. That happens tomorrow.

We will have something to share with you after it’s over. Our slide deck is mostly a list of resources, but we’re filming the panel, so that may be available in a few days. Stay tuned.