This year three of our team were lucky enough to be part of Webstock – an annual conference celebrating the web and its makers… the creativity, the magic, the craft and everything in between.
Kerry (Web Developer) and Pete (Educator Engagement Lead) and I were the lucky ones who got to be part of the coolest conference around, but for the benefit of everyone else we had a chat and came up with a selection of our favourite Webstock moments.
- Nick Gray
Nick Gray’s keynote was a hit – Pete’s favourite speaker of the entire conference. “His keynote ‘Museums are F***ing Awesome’ changed my thinking around what it is to really be engaged, and how we can amplify the passion of individuals to make that happen. A big highlight for me was hearing Nick’s presentation being taken apart (carefully!) by someone who runs a museum. Having ideas challenged and upended is one of my favourite things. There is so much more to appreciating art, and history than can be unpacked in a single high-speed tour, and we have incredible people in our museums making connections.” - Ethan Marcotte
Kerry’s favourite meanwhile, was Ethan Marcotte, the man behind responsive web design. Ethan talked about how the map can never truly represent the territory – it can’t capture the tremendous detail, beauty and interest of the territory, and a map that tries to becomes hard to use and – eventually – unfit for purpose. In essence, it’s easy to tend toward just-one-more-feature, simple is hard. Kerry said, “Thinking specifically of Pond, I think it’s important to endeavour to keep Pond a map – a useful tool to discover and navigate the great parts of the education world.” - The other Webstock attendees
The speakers were awesome but there was such a diverse and smart crowd at Webstock that breaks were a highlight on their own. Reflecting on the talks with other participants was really valuable. Everyone came with a different background, both in and out of tech, and seeing other perspectives and trading ideas (often conflicting with mine or the speaker’s) added an extra dimension to the talks. - Ensuring your products retain a sense of humanity and delight
We all really enjoyed Anna Pickard from Slack for two reasons. Firstly, she talked about the the concept of having humanness ‘peeking around the edges’ of your product. We think we do a pretty good job of this already at N4L, but it’s always good to remember to let great humans show through, beyond just the strength of their work. How do we build a culture that allows them to contribute and be human beyond their paid position. Secondly, if you’re familiar with Slack you’ll know about the engaging witty release notes they create as well as the Twitter posts the Slack team is renowned for. They use these platforms to connect with and engage with their audience in really personal and meaningful ways. The challenge for all of us is to consider how we share delight and wonder in the most unexpected of places. - Keavy McMinn
My favourite speaker was Keavy McMinn. Her talk “How to mend a broken identity” resonated with me, as well as challenged me to consider how we function as educators. Her key point was that in mending and maintaining our identities, we need to be compassionate and true to ourselves, and that it’s OK to have an elastic identity as we progress through life. As adults we often identify with our places of work or the roles that we’ve chosen in life. How do we see and value the other aspects of our identities, like those based on whanau or friendships? Our young people are growing up in multi-faceted and constantly shifting environs like the Internet, but reside in physical places with analog demands. As a result, how much more challenging is it for them to create and then feel well-being in their own identities?
And lastly, as this is my blog post, I’ll add an extra cool moment. Steve Hillenius works at NASA with a small team designing and building tools that allow astronauts to manage and control their tasks and experiences. His talk on how the team created and tested these tools, including a complete mockup of the International Space Station, housed underwater off the coast of Florida was fascinating. The key idea of how a centrally managed system can be designed for individuals in widely separated areas, and support their autonomy really maps onto what N4L is and how it can deliver its services and tools. A bonus was having a chat with him at the after party event and learning a bit more about his work.
Webstock’s 10th birthday event was a fantastic experience – two days filled with challenging and inspiring speakers, set within a welcoming environment, that made it easy to engage and learn with people.
The event is created and curated by a thoughtful team who really care about all of the details, and do so in a way that means the event is worth far more than the sum of its truly extraordinary parts. If you can’t get there to enjoy the experience, then they’ve even kindly provided all of their previous speakers online for public viewing.
All three of us would highly recommend attending a Webstock, it’s a brilliant start to a year and a wonderful way to reconnect with being human and working in a digitally connected world!