Webstock lineup announced

webstock-logo.png How do they do it? Get these fascinating speakers to come from the centre of the earth to our little corner, Wellington, New Zealand? I suspect wizards, elves or at the very least hobbits are working on the [tag]Webstock[/tag] team.

Read all about Webstock 2008

Here's the lineup of speakers for February 2008, with a few items from their bios.
* Shawn Henry (W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence)
* Simon Willison (Django Web Framework, OpenID, rapid application development...)
* Scott Berkun (The Art of Project Management and The Myths of Innovation)
* Amy Hoy ("A user interface nerd-designer-writer-educator, programmer-photographer-hyphenator extraordinaire")
* Peter Morville ("A founding father of information architecture")
* Heather Champ (On the Flickr team at Yahoo! as Community Manager.
* Derek Powazek (Named one of the top 40 Industry Influencers this year by Folio Magazine)
* Nat Torkington (Perl Cookbook, has chaired the O'Reilly Open Source Convention for over a decade. Ran the first web server in New Zealand.)
* Dan Cederholm (Bulletproof Web Design 2nd. Ed., Web Standards Solutions)
* Kelly Goto (Gotomedia, Web Redesign: Workflow that Works)
* Michael Lopp (Designs software and manages people at Apple, Managing Humans)
* Jill Whalen (Pioneer in search engine optimization, High Rankings)
* Russell Brown (NZ journalist, blogger, web entrepreneur and mediaphile. PublicAddress, HardNews.)
* Jason Santa Maria (Graphic designer, Happy Cog Studios, Art Director for A List Apart.)
* Rachel McAlpine (Yours truly)
* Sam Morgan (Founder of Trade Me, New Zealand's most successful Internet business. And that's just the start.)
* Tom Coates (Works for Yahoo Brickhouse, develops new concepts in social software, future media and the web of data.)
* Liz Danzico (Information architect, usability analyst, and editor. Rosenfeld Media, A Brief Message)
* Damien Conway (The mad scientist of Perl. Thoughtstream.)

What's the draw for these people? The novelty of visiting New Zealand and Webstock's reputation as a conference with a difference. A human difference.

4 comments

Sep 16, 2007 • Posted by rachel

Now I wonder what you mean…

Oct 17, 2007 • Posted by Amy

That was totally the draw for me (the heavily hyphenated speaker above). Every interaction I’ve had with the Webstock organizers has been over-the-top awesome, not to mention Kathy Sierra’s praise from her blog over the last one…

Oct 17, 2007 • Posted by rachel

Stop, Amy — I’m getting over-excited and there are still four months to wait. But it’s great to know that some of those missing hyphens are in safe hands.

Sep 13, 2007 • Posted by ben

Yes, you’re right. There is a hobbit on the team…. ;)

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