brendan forster

Disclaimer: I'm currently running on a few hours of sleep so corrections may be required as the memories return. I'm also waiting for some of the photos to surface from the day - including @Rog42's crazy photography experiments!

Yesterday was the Amped Web day, a hack day following the Web Directions South conference held in Sydney. The day is for teams to compete in specific categories - around design and development - and put together a solution in a few hours. It may have been an all-day event, but the time flew by. The solutions were reviewed by judges over the afternoon - providing feedback and suggestions as the teams polished their ideas.

I teamed up with Tatham Oddie (@tathamoddie) and Aaron Powell (@slace) to create a platform and prototype client for a specific problem.

What was that problem? Check out the video!

All the details are available on http://openconferenceprotocol.org/.

Our solution won the Best Overall Windows Phone application, and the "product launch" was a pitch to win the Grand Prize - a trip to Tokyo next month for Web Directions East.

When the dust settled and all the teams had their pitches, the judges decided to send us to Japan! I'm looking forward to seeing the Japanese development community in action, and it will be my first trip to Japan. Time to learn some more Ruby - and some Japanese won't hurt either!

Special thanks to John Allsopp (@johnallsopp) and the other organisers of Web Directions for putting together a great event. The sponsors of the event - Windows Phone, Adobe, Paypal, SBS, the Powerhouse Museum and others - also helped make the day awesome with food, swag and prizes.

I'll have to check out the full conference - and return to defend our title - in 2011.

But now, Tokyo awaits!

Footnote:

We'll continue to polish our idea over the coming weeks - adding features, enhancing the story, getting feedback from the community - so stay tuned for more. I'll put up a higher-res video of the WP7 application for those who are having troubles seeing it clearly in the pitch.

For those who have specific questions, you can leave a comment here or reach me on Twitter (@shiftkey)