Webstock is a web technology conference held in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) 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 second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

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 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 education McAlpine ...

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

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

), Darren Fittler, Kelly Goto,

Ben Goodger Ben Goodger (born in London, England) is a British-New Zealand software engineer, formerly employee of Netscape Communications Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation and former lead developer of the Firefox web browser. Goodger grew up in Auck ...

(

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 current and ...

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

), 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, who sold it to Fairfax in 2006 for NZ$700 million. Trade Me was publicly ...

), 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 Exce ...

Kathy Sierra Kathy Sierra (born 1957) is an American computer programmer, programming Teacher, instructor and video game developer, game developer. Education and career Sierra attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a major in exercise physiology and spent 10 ...

, 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 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

Simon Willison Simon Willison is a British programmer, co-founder of the social conference directory Lanyrd, and Director of Architecture at Eventbrite. Originating from the UK, he currently resides in San Francisco, California. Simon is a co-creator of the ...

( 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 includin ...

, 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 i ...

, 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'Ivoi ...

, Kelly Goto,

Michael Lopp Rands is the pen name and alter ego of Michael Lopp (born 1970 in California), a blogger, software engineering manager, and webcomic author. Lopp originally used the name "Rands" as his chat room handle, and it is his persona when writing about ...

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 Jill Whalen is an Ashland, Massachusetts based former search engine optimization consultant (SEO), speaker and writer. Whalen was the CEO of High Rankings, and co-founded Search Engine Marketing New England. She was a regular speaker at Search ...

, Russell Brown,

Jason Santa Maria Jason ( ; ) was an ancient Greek mythological hero and leader of the Argonauts, whose quest for the Golden Fleece featured in Greek literature. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcos. He was married to the sorceress Medea. He w ...

, Rachel McAlpine, Sam Morgan (

), Tom Coates (

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

), 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 Fac ...

(

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offici ...

Luke Wroblewski People *Luke (given name), a masculine given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) * Luke (surname) (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Luke the Evangelist, author of the Gospel of Luke. Also known a ...

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 advocates using mobile and digital technology to channel positive attitudes and collaboration in a real-world context. Biography Early years ...

, Nat Torkington, Derek Powazek, Meg Pickard (

Guardian Unlimited TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and ''Guardian Unlimited'', is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers ''The Guardian'' and ''The Observer'', ...

, 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 Di ...

(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 provider ...

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 hea ...

), Cameron Adams, Pamela Fox,

Adrian Holovaty Adrian is a form of the Latin given name Adrianus or Hadrianus. Its ultimate origin is most likely via the former river Adria from the Venetic and Illyrian word ''adur'', meaning "sea" or "water". The Adria was until the 8th century BC the main ...

, Heather Champ (

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and 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 a popular way for amateur and professional ...

Ze Frank Hosea Jan "Ze" Frank (; born March 31, 1972) 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, who has written for the periodicals ''Popular Science'' and ''Wired''. From 1999 to 2008 Newitz wrote a syndicated weekly column call ...

, Joshua Porter, Toby Segaran,

Jasmina Tesanovic Jasmina ( sr-cyr, Јасмина), sometimes Jasminka, as a feminine variant, and Jasmin ( sr-cyr, Јасмин), sometimes Jasminko, as a masculine variant, are given names used in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Macedonia, Mont ...

, 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 (1970) is an American software developer, author, blogger, and entrepreneur. He co-founded the computer programming question-and-answer website Stack Overflow and co-founded Stack Exchange, which extends Stack Overflow's question-an ...

, Shelley Bernstein,

Daniel Burka Daniel Burka (born December 17, 1978 in Canada) is best known as the former creative director for website Digg and as a design partner at GV. He is also a founding partner at the web design company ''silverorange'' based in Charlottetown, Prin ...

, Ben Cerveny, Sebastian Chan, Mike Davidson, Regine DeBatty, Esther Derby, Brian Fling, Thomas Fuchs,

Adam Greenfield Adam Greenfield is an American writer and urbanist, based in London. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968. Early life Greenfield attended New York University, graduating with a degree in Cultural studies in 1989. Between 1995 and 200 ...

, 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 undergraduate ...

, 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 Kevin Rose is an American 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 a venture partner at GV. Earl ...

, 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 sincere 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. ...

- Portrait of an Artist as an Independent Musician *

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

- CSS Tools for Massive Websites *

- On Web Typography * Steve Souders - Web Performance Optimisation: The Gift that Keeps on Giving *

Kristina Halvorson Kristina Halvorson is an American writer, entrepreneur, speaker, podcaster, and expert on the subject of content strategy. She is the founder and CEO of Brain Traffic. Education and career In 1998, after graduating from St. Olaf College, Halv ...

- Content/Communication *

John Gruber John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and one of the inventors of the Markdown markup language. History Gruber is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel Unive ...

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

Amanda Palmer Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman 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 ...

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 and web developer, podcaster, technology writer and former magazine editor. As a developer, he is best known for being chief technology officer for Tumblr and creating Instapaper and ...

- Contrary to popular beliefs *

David McCandless David McCandless (born 1971) is a British data-journalist, writer and information designer. Early life and education McCandless is an alumnus of Westfield College. Career McCandless is the founder of the visual blog ''Information Is Beautiful''. ...

- 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. Sunde is of Norwegian and Finnish ancestry. He is best known for being a co-founder and ex-spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent sea ...

- The Pirate Bay of Penzance *

- 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. He is best known for his non-fiction books about comics: ''Understanding Comics'' (1993), '' Reinventing Comics'' (2000), and ''Making Comics'' (200 ...

- 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 Florida. ...

- 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 - Of Time and the Network *

danah boyd danah boyd (stylized in 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 last na ...

- 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 com ...

- Deconstructing Delight: Pleasure, Flow, and Meaning * Estelle Weyl - Mobile: Don't Break the Web *

Erin Kissane Erin is a Hiberno-English word for Ireland originating from the Irish word ''"Éirinn"''. "Éirinn" is the dative case of the Irish word for Ireland, "Éire", genitive "Éireann", the dative being used in prepositional phrases such as ''"go h� ...

- 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 best known as the founder of the community weblog MetaFilter, where he is known as ''mathowie''. Life and career Haughey grew up in Placentia, Califo ...

- Lessons from a 40-year-old *

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

- Kinking Reality * Amy Hoy - Change the game *

Matthew Inman ''The Oatmeal'' is a webcomic and humor website created in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman. It offers original comics, quizzes, and occasional articles. Inman has produced a series of ''Oatmeal'' books with content from the webcomic and previou ...

- How to get a buttcrapload of people to read what you write

Day 2 (Friday 17 February)

Speakers: *

Jared Spool Jared Spool 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, 2011. Retrieved December 7, ...

- 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 cultures of hacking and online activism, particularly Anonymous. She previously held the Wolfe Ch ...

- In Lulz We Trust * Scott Hanselman - It’s not what you read, it’s what you ignore * Wilson Miner - When we build *

Raffi Krikorian Raffi Krikorian ( hy, Րաֆֆի Գրիգորեան; 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, ...

- 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 and ...

- 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 t ...

- 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 creati ...

- 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, Hs ...

- Delivering Happiness *

Derek Handley Derek Handley (born 1978) is a New Zealand entrepreneur, speaker, and author who was born in Hong Kong. With his brother Geoffrey Handley, he co-founded the global mobile marketing and media company The Hyperfactoryand the mobile advertising ...

- 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 an Australian cultural anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice research and technological development (including as a pioneer in the field of futurist research), and for being an industry ...

; 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; Ashley Nelson-Hornstein;

Stefan Sagmeister Stefan Sagmeister (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 alb ...

;

; 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