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You’re sick of hearing about it already, right? Well, voting closes this Friday (you HAVE already voted, HAVEN’T YOU) so soon I’ll have no choice but to shut up about the Perth Festival web site and our Webby Award nomination. ahem.

Anyway, we made it into the newspapers… a small piece in the Arts section of Wednesday’s West (thanks to Ben for spotting it, and Al for rescuing a copy from the cat’s litter tray for me), and the a mini “feature” in the Perth Voice, complete with picture. I had to hunt to track down a copy of the Perth Voice – finally found one in a newsagent in Leederville. I joked that the paper was so obscure that no one would even see it, but then later that night we saw Paul, and he announced that he’s seen me in his local paper.

So there you go!

Remember… voting closes this Friday. We’re in Websites > Living > Events. Sign up here!

Heh, kinda. the Perth International Arts Festival web site – aka, my pet project – has been nominated in the events category of the 11th Annual Webby Awards (the “Oscars of the Internet”, dontcha know).

It’s pretty exciting stuff. Everyone involved is stoked to be nominated – that includes Isabel at Block Branding who did the gorgeous design, and Georgia, formerly of the Festival, now at PICA, who managed (babysat) the site and obsessed over it day in day out for months. The actual winners are announced at the beginning of May. While the official winners are up to the judges and completely out of our hands – I wouldn’t even know who to try to bribe, heh – there’s also a People’s Voice Award for each category. So, faithful readers, you could help to make a local site achieve international fame and glory. Sign up now and vote – it’s pretty easy. The site is under “Websites” (duh), then “Living”, then “Events”. Go, go and do it now. I’ll wait.

Back already? Told you it was easy – thanks a lot for your help. Now tell everyone you know to do the same. We can make the difference!

This month was the first of the Port80 “mini-talks” – two speakers giving 10 minute presentations on suitably geeky topics. First up, Brian Madsen (better known as Deprecated Cruelty on the Port80 forums or CSharpZealot in other circuits) gave an overview of the new Microsoft Expression suite.

Next up, Myles Eftos gave a presentation entitled “Out of the way JSON – if CSS can be unobtrusive, so can JavaScript” which covered the basics of DOM scripting.

Both speakers did a great job and the concept was well recieved. The Velvet Lounge rocks as a Port80 venue – looking forward to many more cool events there!

Yesterday the Perth Web Women got together for breakfast at the New Norcia Bakery in Mt Hawthorne. We had good coffee, a tasty breakfast and lots of excellent, geeky conversation. An excellent start to the day.

We’ve talked in the past about the different things a web women group can do, like mentoring for school age girls who are interested in technology careers and speaking at various events in a similar capacity, but one thing that I value from our networking sessions is the chance to share a coffee with like-minded women who are just as much at home talking about shopping for a pair of shoes as shopping for a new PDA. We have people coming along from all stages of life and career, and hearing from people who have families and careers and are doing just fine with that, thank you, is really an inspiration.

So a big thank you to Tania, Megs, Harriet, Helen, Kristy, Susanne, and Rosemary, as well as all the others who come along to Web Women Wednesday breakfasts or lunches – you gals rock!

As he’s a Delphi dude and I’m a web chick, we’ll be concentrating on what we do best – for him that’s writing software and GUI/usability evaluation, and for me it’s search engine optimisation, online marketing (like blogs and newsletters) and of course general web development. There’s a few plans, plots and schemes in the pipeline but we’re always on the lookout for new stuff.

So tell me, the new site: do you love it, hate it, or something in between? The link again: go visit the fishies

The mission of OneWebDay is to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life: September 22, 2006

I love it – now all we need to do is find something suitably HUGE to do to participate. Fortunately, there's a little while to think about it yet. Anyone got something? Official web site: OneWebDay

The AustralianBlogs.com.au site itself is a perfect use case for tag clouds – I know, I know, tag clouds are supposed to be the new mullet, but seriously, you can lose hours clicking on things that people categorise themselves as. The diversity and talent shown is amazing – I’m proud of my fellow countrymen and women. A nation of geeks indeed.