Made it back from speaking at Small Business September events in regional NSW to attend the final day of Web Directions South 08 in Sydney.

Again Maxine, John and the team put on a great event and diverse range of speakers.

The real standout presentations for me – because they made me think – were from Jeffrey Veen and Mark Pesce.

Veen talked about data and the importance of data visualisation in a web 2.0 world where we enable users to control the rendering of our data.  He used the great example of John Snow who used visually presented data to convince his peers that cholera was caused by water rather than bad air. Looking forward to seeing his slides again for more cogitation.

While Pesce, dressed in red and black for a reason, gave a rousing call for us to realise that anarcho-syndicalism is the answer.  As he stated: “A system with no hierarchy, no bosses, no secrets, no politics. (Well, maybe that last one is asking too much.) Anarcho-syndicalism takes as a given that all men are created equal, and therefore each have a say in what they choose to do.”

The interesting thing about his notion is that for it to work we need to open source and collectively build a peer to peer network that is equal to or better than that provided by the telcos.  Some animated discussion afterwards made me think that we are on the brink of this possibility.

Of course, the after party and dinner were great fun and the pics are on Flickr.