Webstock is a web technology conference held in

Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

featuring a range of high-profile speakers covering a variety of web-related topics such as accessibility, usability, ethnographic design and development practices. Webstock began in 2005 and was created by a small non-profit group (consisting of Mike Brown, Natasha Lampard (formerly Hall), Debbie Sidelinger and Ben Lampard).

Webstock 2006

Speakers at the first four-day Webstock in 2006 included

Dori Smith Dori may refer to: Places * Dori, Burkina Faso, a city ** Dori Department ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Dori ** Dori Airport * Dori River, in Afghanistan and Pakistan * Dori, Dharwad, India, a village People Given name, nickname or stage name ...

, Roger Hudson, Russ Weakley,

Rachel McAlpine Rachel Phyllis McAlpine (; born 24 February 1940) is a New Zealand poet, novelist and playwright. She is the author of 30 books including poetry, plays, novels, and books about writing and writing for the internet. Early life, family and educat ...

, Douglas Bowman, Heather Hesketh, Russell Brown (PublicAddress), Tony Chor (

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

), Darren Fittler,

Kelly Goto Kelly Goto is an American entrepreneur specializing in user experience design and contextual research. She was one of the first design researchers using design ethnography. She is the founder and principal at gotomedia and gotoresearch. Educat ...

Ben Goodger Ben Goodger (born in London, England) is a British-New Zealand software engineer. He is best known for his work on the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. Goodger grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and graduated from the University ...

(

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

), Rowan Simpson (

Trade Me Trade Me is New Zealand's largest online auction and classifieds website. Managed by Trade Me Ltd., the site was founded in 1999 by New Zealand entrepreneur Sam Morgan (entrepreneur), Sam Morgan, who sold it to John Fairfax Holdings, Fairfax in ...

), Donna Maurer,

Joel Spolsky Avram Joel Spolsky (; born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of ''Joel on Software'', a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software Trello. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Exc ...

Kathy Sierra Kathy Sierra (born 1957) is an American computer programmer, programming Teacher, instructor, video game developer, game developer, author, and the curator of Intrinzen Education and career Sierra attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a major in ...

, Andreas Girardet (creator of Yoper) and Steve Champeon.

Webstock 2008

The second Webstock ran from 10–15 February 2008, with speakers including Shawn Henry (

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

Simon Willison Simon Willison is a British programmer, co-founder of the social conference directory Lanyrd, and co-creator of the Django Web framework. Career Willison started his professional web development in 2000 as a web master and developer for the U ...

( Django),

Scott Berkun Scott Berkun is an American author and speaker. Berkun studied computer science, philosophy, and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He worked at Microsoft from 1994 to 2003 on Internet Explorer 1.0 to 5.0, Windows, MSN, and in roles including ...

, Amy Hoy,

Peter Morville Peter Morville is president of Semantic Studios, an information architecture and findability consulting firm. He may be best known as an influential figure and "founding father" of information architecture, having coauthored the best-selling book ...

, Nat Torkington,

Dan Cederholm Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoir ...

, Kelly Goto, Michael Lopp,

Cal Henderson Callum James Henderson-Begg (born 17 January 1981), known as Cal Henderson, is a British computer programmer and author based in San Francisco. Education Henderson attended Sharnbrook Upper School and Community College, and Birmingham City Un ...

, Jill Whalen, Russell Brown, Jason Santa Maria, Rachel McAlpine, Sam Morgan (

), Tom Coates (

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

), Liz Danzico,

Damian Conway Damian Conway (born 5 October 1964 in Melbourne, Australia) is a computer scientist, a member of the Perl and Raku communities, a public speaker, and the author of several books. Until 2010, he was also an adjunct associate professor in the Fa ...

(

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

), Luke Wroblewski and Kathy Sierra.

Webstock 2009

The third Webstock ran from 16–20 February 2009, featuring:

Jane McGonigal Jane McGonigal (born October 21, 1977) is an American author, game designer, and researcher. McGonigal is known for her game ''Jane the Concussion Slayer'' and her role as Director of Game Research and Development at Institute for the Future. ...

, Nat Torkington, Derek Powazek, Meg Pickard (

Guardian Unlimited ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

, Matt Jones and Matt Biddulph of

Dopplr Dopplr was a free social networking service, launched in 2007, that allowed users to create itineraries of their travel plans and spot correlations with their contacts' travel plans in order to arrange meetings at any point on their journey. Addi ...

, Fiona Romeo,

David Recordon David Recordon (born September 4, 1986) is an American technologist with an open standards and open source background. He is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Rebellion Defense. From January 2021 to September 2022, he served as the Dir ...

(key contributor to

OpenID OpenID is an open standard and decentralized authentication protocol promoted by the non-profit OpenID Foundation. It allows users to be authenticated by co-operating sites (known as relying parties, or RP) using a third-party identity provi ...

and then Open Platforms Tech Lead for

Six Apart Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox (the blogging platform). The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is ...

), Cameron Adams, Pamela Fox,

Adrian Holovaty Adrian Holovaty (born 1981) is an American web developer, musician and entrepreneur from Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is co-creator of the Django (web framework), Django web framework and an advocate of "jou ...

, Heather Champ (

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was previously a co ...

), Michael Lopp.

Ze Frank Hosea Jan "Ze" Frank (; born March 31, 1971) is an American online performance artist, composer, humorist and public speaker based in Los Angeles. Personal life Frank was born to German-American parents (his father is Chemistry Nobel Laureate J ...

, Russell Brown, Derek Featherstone,

Annalee Newitz Annalee Newitz (born May 7, 1969) is an American journalist, editor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction. From 1999 to 2008, Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column called ''Techsploitation'', and from 2000 to 2004 was the culture editor o ...

, Joshua Porter, Toby Segaran, Jasmina Tesanovic, Russ Weakley, Ben Goodger, Tom Coates (

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

, and

Webstock 2010

The fourth Webstock ran from 15–19 February 2010, featuring:

Jeff Atwood Jeff Atwood (born 1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the question-and-answer network Stack Exchange, which contains the Stack Overflow website for computer programming questions. He is the o ...

, Shelley Bernstein,

Daniel Burka Daniel Burka (born December 17, 1978) is a Canadian designer, creative director, startup founder, and product director. Burka is currently the director of product and design at the health informatics nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives, working on ...

, Ben Cerveny, Sebastian Chan, Mike Davidson, Regine DeBatty, Esther Derby, Brian Fling, Thomas Fuchs, Adam Greenfield, Lachlan Hardy, Lisa Herrod, Bek Hodgson, Amy Hoy, Mark Pesce,

John Resig John Resig is an American software engineer and entrepreneur, best known as the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library. , he works as the chief software architect at Khan Academy. History Resig graduated with an undergraduat ...

, Eric Ries,

Rives (poet) Rives (born 1968) is an American poet, storyteller, and author. He appeared on seasons 3-6 of HBO's Def Poetry Jam and was a member of Team Hollywood, which won the 2004 National Poetry Slam. His best-known poems include "Kite," about waking up a ...

Kevin Rose Robert Kevin Rose (born 1977) is an American entrepreneur, Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's ''The Screen Savers''. From 2012 to 2015, he was ...

, Toby Segaran, Chris Shiflett, Scott Thomas and Jeffrey Veen.

Webstock 2011

The fifth Webstock ran from 14–18 February 2011.

Day 1 (Thursday 17 February)

Speakers: * Frank Chimero - The Digital Campfire * Michael Koziarski - That's all well and good, but how does it help me? * Christine Perfetti - Adventurous Usability Techniques: Novel Approaches for the Seasoned Pro *

- HTML5 at Facebook *

Mark Pilgrim Mark Pilgrim is a software developer, writer, and advocate of free software. He authored a popular blog, and has written several books, including ''Dive into Python'', a guide to the Python programming language published under the GNU Free Docu ...

- The Future of the Web: where are we going and why am I in this handbasket? *

Jason Webley Jason Webley is an American musician known for his fusion of folk, experimental, and alternative music. Webley plays the guitar and accordion, sometimes providing percussion by stomping or shaking a plastic vodka bottle filled with coins. Webley b ...

- Portrait of an Artist as an Independent Musician *

Nicole Sullivan Nicole Sullivan (born April 21, 1970) is an American actress best known for being a cast member on the sketch comedy series '' MADtv'' for six seasons (1995–2001). She also played Holly Shumpert in five seasons (2001–2005, 2007) of the CBS ...

- CSS Tools for Massive Websites * Jason Santa Maria - On Web Typography * Steve Souders - Web Performance Optimisation: The Gift that Keeps on Giving *

Kristina Halvorson Kristina Halvorson (born July 25, 1971) is an American writer, entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, and expert on the subject of content strategy. She is the founder and CEO of Brain Traffic. Biography In 1993, after graduating from St. Ol ...

- Content/Communication *

John Gruber John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and co-creator of the Markdown markup language. Gruber authors the Apple enthusiast blog Daring Fireball and produces its accompanying podcast, ''The Talk Show''. History Gruber is ...

- The Gap Theory of UI Design * Doug Bowman - Delivering Delight *

Amanda Palmer Amanda MacKinnon Palmer (born April 30, 1976) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and performance artist who is the lead vocalist, pianist, and lyricist of the duo the Dresden Dolls. She performs as a solo artist and was also a memb ...

talks new music paradigm, blogging, Twitter and life

Day 2 (Friday 18 February)

Speakers: *

Marco Arment Marco Arment (born June 11, 1982) is an American iOS developer, web developer, podcaster, restaurateur, technology writer and former magazine editor. As a developer, he is best known for being chief technology officer for Tumblr and creating ...

- Contrary to popular beliefs *

David McCandless David McCandless (born 1971) is a British data-journalist, writer and information designer. Career McCandless is the founder of the visual blog ''Information Is Beautiful''. Early explorations into the synergy between data visualisation and his ...

- Information is Beautiful * Glenda Sims - Practical Accessibility Testing *

Josh Clark Josh Clark (born August 16, 1955) is an American stage and screen actor. Biography Clark was born in Bethesda, Maryland. He studied acting at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Acting career His first screen role was in the 1976 TV movie ...

- Buttons Are a Hack: The New Rules of Designing for Touch *

Jason Cohen Jason Cohen is an American filmmaker. Cohen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for the 2013 film '' Facing Fear''. In January 2020, the Cohen won the Directors Guild of America Award for Reality Programs for " ...

- A Geek Sifts Through the Bullshit *

Peter Sunde Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (born 13 September 1978), alias brokep, is a Swedish entrepreneur and politician. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine. He is an equality advocate and ha ...

- The Pirate Bay of Penzance * Michael Lopp - An Engineering Mindset * Tom Coates - Everything the Network Touches *

Scott McCloud Scott McCloud (born Scott McLeod; June 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. His non-fiction books about comics, ''Understanding Comics'' (1993), '' Reinventing Comics'' (2000), and '' Making Comics'' (2006), are made in comic ...

- Comics: A Medium in Transition *

Merlin Mann Merlin Dean Mann III (born November 26, 1966) is an American writer, blogger, and podcaster. Early life and education Mann was born Merlin Dean Mann III on November 26, 1966, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mann received a B.A. from New College of Florid ...

- Mime The Gap

Webstock 2012

The sixth Webstock ran from 13–17 February 2012 and was attended by over 800 delegates.

Day 1 (Thursday 16 February)

Speakers: *

- MBU: Building the Minimum Badass User *

Jeremy Keith Jeremy Philip Charles Keith (born 1964) became chief executive of Derby County after a corporation he controlled with two others bought the club out of receivership for £3 in 2003. He had previously been a director at Portsmouth and had a finan ...

- Of Time and the Network *

danah boyd Danah boyd (stylized in all lowercase, born November 24, 1977 as Danah Michele Mattas) She noted her mother added lowercase 'h' in birth name "danah" for typographical balance, reflecting the lowercase first letter 'd' and later changed her l ...

- Culture of Fear + Attention Economy = ?!?! *

Dana Chisnell Dana Chisnell is an American public interest technologist, civic designer, adjunct lecturer and Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Career Chisnell began her career in 1987, working with banks, insurance companies, and tech compa ...

- Deconstructing Delight: Pleasure, Flow, and Meaning * Estelle Weyl - Mobile: Don't Break the Web * Erin Kissane - Little Big Systems * Ethan Marcotte - The Responsive Web Designer * Nick Mihailovski - Acting on data * Jennifer Brook - Within Reach: Publishing for the iPad *

Matt Haughey Matthew Haughey (born October 10, 1972) is an American programmer, web designer, and blogger. He is best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter, where he is called ''mathowie''. Life and career Haughey grew up in Placentia, Ca ...

- Lessons from a 40-year-old *

Lauren Beukes Lauren Beukes (born 5 June 1976) is a South African novelist, short story writer, journalist and Screenwriter, television scriptwriter. Early life Lauren Beukes was born 5 June 1976. She grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. She attended Roede ...

- Kinking Reality * Amy Hoy - Change the game * Matthew Inman - How to get a buttcrapload of people to read what you write

Day 2 (Friday 17 February)

Speakers: *

Jared Spool Jared Spool (born December 8, 1960) is an American writer, researcher, speaker, educator, and an expert on the subjects of usability, software, design, and research.Ward, Mark"The long and winding road of e-commerce" ''BBC News'', November 18, 201 ...

- The Anatomy of a Design Decision *

Gabriella Coleman Enid Gabriella Coleman (usually known as Gabriella Coleman or Biella; born 1973) is an anthropologist, academic and author whose work focuses on politics, cultures of hacking and online activism, and has covered distinct hacker communities, s ...

- In Lulz We Trust *

Scott Hanselman Scott may refer to: Places Canada * Scott, Quebec Scott is a municipality in La Nouvelle-Beauce Regional County Municipality, in Quebec, Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten pr ...

- It’s not what you read, it’s what you ignore * Wilson Miner - When we build *

Raffi Krikorian Raffi Krikorian (; born 1978) is an Armenian-American technology executive, and the CTO of the Emerson Collective. He was the CTO of the Democratic National Committee, Head of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, and the former VP of Platform Engi ...

- 3 things that turn out to matter (listed as "Pressure, defense, and responses") *

Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is an American Internet content author, and former editor-in-chief of the website Slashdot. Career Malda is an alumnus of Hope College and Holland Christian High School. In 1997, Malda an ...

- Slashdot — the rise and fall *

Jessica Hische Jessica Nicole Hische ( ; born April 4, 1984) is an American lettering artist, illustrator, author and type designer. She was one of the first of a new generation of letterers and the present-day flourishing of the lettering arts can in part be tr ...

- Typography through song: an historical and epistemological journey *

Adam Lisagor Adam David Lisagor (born February 25, 1978)Adam Satariano“Adam Lisagor, Silicon Valley Startups’ Favorite Video Director,”''Bloomberg Businessweek'', December 5, 2013. is an American commercial director and the founder of Sandwich, a creat ...

- Lonely Pan Flute * Michael B Johnson Making Movies is Harder than it Looks: Building Tools for Telling Stories * Jenn Lim and

Tony Hsieh Anthony Hsieh ( ; December 12, 1973November 27, 2020) was an American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He retired as the CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos in August 2020 after 21 years. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsi ...

- Delivering Happiness * Derek Handley - Doing Good and Well

Webstock 2015

Webstock 2016

Webstock 2017

Webstock 2017 ran from 13 to 17 February 2017, with masterclasses on the first two days and the conference proper on the last two days. Scheduled speakers were Lindsay Aitchison;

Genevieve Bell Genevieve Bell is the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian National University and an Australian cultural anthropologist. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice research and technological development (including as ...

; Jonathon Colman;

Anil Dash Anil Dash (; born September 5, 1975) is an American technology executive, entrepreneur, Prince scholar and writer. He is the Head of Glitch and VP of Developer Experience at Fastly. Career In 1999, Dash launched his personal weblog, dashes.com ( ...

; Katie Dill; Janine Gianfredi; Kim Goodwin; Jeff Gothelf;

; Lara Hogan; Indy Johar; Sacha Judd; Tim Kadlec;

Darius Kazemi Darius Kazemi (born 1983) is an American computer programmer and artist. Kazemi and Courtney Stanton are the co-founders of the technology collective Feel Train. Early life Kazemi was born on July 28, 1983. He attended Thomas Jefferson High Sch ...

;

Patricia Moore Patricia Moore (born 1952) is an American industrial designer, gerontologist, and author. She is one of the founders of the universal design philosophy. Moore is a fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America and in 2016 was named one ...

; Ashley Nelson-Hornstein;

Stefan Sagmeister Steve (born August 6, 1962) is an Austrian graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer based in New York City. In 1993, Sagmeister founded his company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs for the music industry. He has designed album covers for ...

;

; Lisa Welchman; and Marcin Wichary."Speakers - Webstock 2017"
/ref>

Webstock Mini

In between the major conferences, the group runs one day and evening events regularly throughout the year, featuring both New Zealand and International speakers.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Webstock
Web-related conferences