Friday’s WebVisions was a fun affair—a lightweight event with good humor and valuable content. Frankly I’ve never been in a room with as many people before that debated the merits of various text-editors nearly as vehemently as they jostle the niceties of Photoshop and Firefox plug-ins. It was web-in and web-out, summed up nicely when I noticed (during my first presentation sit no less) someone posting digital pics of the opening speaker to Flickr while nearly simultaneously another PowerBook across the room hammered out a blog post linking to the same tagged pictures. (Hey—where the web isn’t quality at least it’s timely.)

Three Speaker Highlights

1. The Evolution of Flash Animation: Bedrock Revisted — Sandro Corsaro
   Structure isn’t Sandro’s bag, but amazing flash is. I’m glad I sat in on this one for a superb flood of flash animation tidbits, presented by a guy with a solid traditional animation background. Watch his reel for great sample of his work and a quick laugh.
2. Forward Thinking Design: Tips, Techniques and Typography — Cameron Moll
   Cameron’s presentation was a crash course in mobile web presentation, and while it first felt content-light, it was a giant leap forward in my understanding of production and delivery for mobile users and alternative user agents. I know it took a ton of work and I’m thankful, the product was first rate. An overview of his presentation is online, with more details to come.
3. Why Simplicity Matters (and Why it’s so Difficult to Achieve) — BJ Fogg
   Fogg, from Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab had a brilliantly terse and vivid presentation. He managed to talk more personally about computers than anyone I’ve ever heard, reminding all present that while we shape computers more significantly they shape us. The fallout will undoubtedly allow me to rethink many of my content production, consumption, and day-to-day technological interactions.

Overall the conference was an interesting mix of seasoned web veterans and industry novices, and it was remarkably void of the latest catch phrases, AJAX, ruby, et. al. while still confidently outlining the future of mobile media and that lofty goal of “convergence.” Instead of drowning in the technical details of a new frontier however, the group collectively seemed to confidently say, “when the users want their mobile content, we’ll have it for them.”