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We need to talk about Documentation

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Last week, myself and Kelsey van Haaster presented a talk at the Agile Business Analysts Meetup in Melbourne. The Agile BA’s meetup is my favourite Melbourne meetup group (it ranks second only to the Sydney Business Technology User Group that I used to help run in Sydney).

The talk was in two parts – Kelsey talking about Requirements documentation and me talking about Help documentation. The theme of our talk was using Confluence as a tool to help make documentation more a part of the agile software development process, rather than an afterthought or a tedious chore.

Having all the documentation in one place that everyone in the team is responsible to update, is, in my opinion, the only way to do documentation.

Read more about Documentation

Moving away from Command and Control

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Tasks are bad! Well, sometimes they may be useful, but most of the time they are abused and are used by management to try to command and control their staff. There are other ways other than using tasks.

This is the post for a presentation presented at LAST Conference. The idea for the presentation, and this post came from a client that asked me to ensure that all the tasks in their system, that had not been completed within 2 days of the due date by subordinates, were to be escalated to their manager, and then if they were not completed within 2 days by the manager, escalate to the GM. I said no, I would not be building a system that does that, there are other ways we can deal with things getting done.

Read more about Command and Control

Event Management and Emails for your Community Group

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Updated

This is the fifth in a series of posts for Creating a Web Presence for your Community Group. In this post I will take a look at Event Management for your Community Group.

Community Groups exist for having events – whether they be committee meetings, fund raising or the gatherings that are the reason for the group. Community Groups also have members, and you need to keep in touch with the members, and invite them to the events.

This post will cover how to maintain membership lists, how to email members and people interested in your group, and software to help you run events. This post has been the hardest to do, as there are so many options and it is very hard to pick the best ones to recommend, and that are free, provide the level of features you need, and are not too difficult to use.

Membership Lists

Where is your current membership list? it’s probably in an excel spreadsheet, on someone’s home PC, or worse still, hand written in an exercise book that gets handed to each new incoming secretary (and yes, that is a real scenario from a community group I belonged to).

Why do you need a membership list? It is probably part of the constitution of your group, and that probably says you need to keep the name, address and the date they joined, as minimum information. You probably also want to include Phone and Email details.

You can use a Google Docs spreadsheet via your Google Apps for Your Domain account to maintain a list and share it with other members of you committee, and you can even use a Google Form to collect information from your members.

But for full management of all aspects of your members you may want to go with a full CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. There are a few that have free plans such as BatchBook or Wild Apricot (specifically for membership management), and they could be enough for what you need. Wild Apricot is the only one free online management system I have found that enables members to update their own profiles, but I have not tried it yet to be able to recommend it fully. But see below about MailChimp.

Emails to Members

You need to email members regularly, and unless you have under about 20 members it’s not a good idea to email your members using your email account. Often you can forget to BCC everyone, and you won’t comply with the Spam Act. This is where I recommend using MailChimp. It is a full email management system and it’s FREE for mailing lists of up to 1000 subscribers. You can import your contacts list from anywhere, and it will handle email bounces and unsubscribes for you. You can even put a link from your website to a sign up form to enable people to subscribe to your newsletter automatically.

The great thing about MailChimp is that the sign up form and lists can include most of the information that you need to keep about members, such as Name, Address, Phone Number, Date Joined etc (however, they can not update this information themselves). So the MailChimp list could be your full membership database.  MailChimp also has a powerful groups feature that allows people to sign up to receive information about specific topics.

Update
I really don’t know how I missed this when I first wrote this post – but MailChimp does allow your members to update their own details via the Update Profile link included in each email. This is such a fantastic feature, that I would strongly recommend that you maintain your full membership list inside MailChimp and just let people update it as they wish. At any time you can export your current membership list into Excel or Google Docs to do something like print a list of names onto labels for nametags.

Basically, MailChimp is so good that I would not recommend any other app to do emails to your members or handle your membership lists.

Event Management

When you run events, you may have large events that the general public can get or buy tickets to. There is a great range of web based apps for running and ticketing of events now. The original (and probably best) app is Eventbrite. The number of features of Eventbrite is quite amazing, including an iPhone app to check people in at the event. Eventbrite is free for free events, and it is simply the best way to organise, promote and manage free events. Unfortunately, for paid events it gets quite expensive. A cheaper option (that I have not tried) is TicketBud. They have a flat fee of US$19.99 to manage a paid event.

Of course, after your successful event, import the list of people who attended the event into your MailChimp subscribers list for emails of future events to those people (assuming you have told people that that’s what you will be doing with their email address when they give it to you).

A day at the Tennis

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As I sit here watching the final of the Australian Open 2010, it’s a great opportunity to write about my day at the Tennis on Monday.

I was very fortunate to be a guest of IBM as part of their Insight10 project. Insight10 is a group of 10 people who IBM have gathered to help them understand what is happening in small to medium business, so they can become more relevant to these businesses. The 10 of us will be blogging a bit over on the IBM Business Insight blog(and twitter feed). The day at the tennis was a great opportunity for 5 of the 10 of us to get to know each other over a casual and relaxed day out.

I’m not a huge tennis fan and have only ever watched a few big matches on TV (if I had to choose I would probably watch a good cricket match or game of golf before watching tennis). I had never seen a game of tennis played live before.

The day started with (soft) drinks in the IBM corporate tent (well, have a look at the pics and see for yourself – it was an impressive tent), and then went for a tour around Melbourne Park and underneath Rod Laver Arena, (but not in the areas the players were in). We go to see the bunker where the team from IBM run the IT at the event. It was great to see them very relaxed and sitting back watching sport (grid iron, not tennis) – as everything was obviously well under control.

Over lunch we had a Q&A with John Fitzgerald which was great. My question to him was, “As someone who has never seen the tennis live, what should I look out for that you don’t pick up on the TV”. His answer was that I would be amazed at the power with which they hit the ball – and I sure was.

After lunch we had a special treat especially for us geeks… whilst everyone else went out to see the tennis match, we had the pleasure of grilling two of the team that look after the Australian Open websites. These guys have a great job travelling around the world going to each Grand Slam, the US Masters Golf and the Tony Awards, where this IBM software is used.

Then we headed out to watch the tennis. Wow! Fantastic seats – 3 back from the court and in the corner near the baseline – and in the shade the whole day! We had two great games to watch – Djokovic vs Verdasco and then Williams vs Stosur. The first game went for 4 hours so it was fantastic to watch. The 2nd game only lasted 1hr and 5 mins but it was still amazing watching the impressive Serena Williams at close range.

The Tennis finished at about 7.30pm so we had a very long and full day. There is a great tweet and pic from the day here… (and I actually wasn’t tweeting, I was trying to work out how to MMS from the Android, but that is another long story)

Some of the things I learned on the day:

  • The tech is very impressive. You can read more about on my Insight10 colleagues blog posts here, here and here, and in the article published in the Australian IT section the following day (the reporter was obviously part of our group).
  • The amount of people required to run a tennis match is amazing – 2 sets of line people and ballkids (they swap every 30 mins or so), 1 umpire and 2 (or 4) players. So that’s 33 people just to play the match. Then there was 14 camera’s (some with 2 people running them, and they also swap out with new teams after a while), 4 stats people and various other people down on the court, not to mention the commentators, and other broadcast staff. There are 3 televised courts and 15 courts in play on the main tennis days – that all up is a huge amount of people.
  • The stats are impressive. There are people on the court who manually enter every shot into a very basic (looks like an old VB app) application – they have keyboard shortcuts to make it quick. Every forehand, backhand, winner and fault is entered manually. The stat’s people also enter the scores, but the court umpire has a PDA like device that can override the score that the stats people enter. These stats and scores are then fed live to the broadcasters, the web sites, and the on court and off court displays. It is a very impressive feat to have all this happening instantaneously.

So I had a great day at the tennis and would very much love to go again – especially with the great experience of the corporate tent and the tour and lunch.

We also did some video Q&A for IBM so it will be interesting to see what comes of that – I will post a link in the comments when that is up. Thank you so much to Andrew Bidese and the team from IBM for a great day.

UPDATE: The video is now live and can be found here…

Conferences Been to and Going to

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A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend my first Microsoft TechEd which was held on the Gold Coast. It was a great event and just as good for networking and catching up with friends and acquaintances from all parts of the Microsoft World.
My key take away from the 3 day event was about the 2010 platform. Consisting of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Exchange 2010. These 5 products together are fantastic – it’s like Microsoft have been playing up until now, and these products are the real deal. However, that comes with one big caveat. They rock becuase they all work so well together. So don’t expect to install Office 2010 and have some of the cool new features in Outlook, because they don’t work without Exchange 2010. So with this in mind, I think it is a tough ask to have businesses upgrade their whole business platform all at once (not to mention the cool Dev tools of Visual Studio 2010 also). I hope businesses do come on board with this, because there is so much benefit in the whole platform, but I think it will be a while.

The SharePoint 2010 launch is happening in October in Las Vegas (which I sadly won’t be attending), so I can’t wait to see what excellent features will be in the new version.

However, the conference that I am attending very soon is Web Directions South 2009 on October 8 and 9 in Sydney. This is the premier Web Industry event and I previously attedned in 2007 and can’t wait to see how much I learn at this event.

Wow what a year

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This part “Christmas Message”, part Summary of the year and part thank you to all the fantastic wonderful people I have met and hung out with this year.

But, wow, what an up and down year this has been… I feel in some ways that this Christmas is a deja vu of last Christmas (ie being unemployed), but there has been so much that has happened this year that things are quite different this Christmas. So here’s a bit of a rundown of the year.

Job(s)

Well, I’ve had 2 jobs this year – a Consultant at Hands-on Systems, which I loved, but left after 3 months as I was headhunted by ProjectCentre for my perfect job, combining my IT and Construction Skills. That job lasted just over 3 months, and I loved it, and thought I was doing a great job and getting the product ready for release and then I was “retrenched” – I won’t go on about it, but I’m still very angry and upset about that one.

So back to the horrible world of job hunting and recruiters – I can’t say how much I hate job hunting! I have such specialised skills that recruiters won’t even look at my resume because it just does not “tick all the boxes”. I have found some great recruiters that really do their job well, but some of them are so bad I just have to hang up. The problem is that my Ideal job that is combining IT and Construction just does not exist as construction companies don’t think that they need to spend money on IT. However, if I can get in there and start working, they see how valuable my contribution is. For me the biggest hurdle is getting to the interview stage. I tend to do much better once I’m in front of a potential employer.

With the impact of the GFC, I’m concentrating my job hunting efforts in IT rather than Construction as I think that IT may weather the financial storm better, but I won’t rule out construction – I won’t rule out any job doing anything as long as it pays the mortgage.

I have been doing some great work on contract for the few months I’ve been out of work, and I’ve enjoyed doing it, but I can not earn enough to live… right now I’m just earning enough to keep a few bills paid and living very frugally. Also, I hate contracting. I hate not knowing where the next few hours work is coming from. I hate working alone (although I do have a small team for my current work which is good). So I do really need to find a full time job that pays well, so I can feel settled and secure once again.

In January I have some more contracting opportunities and I will be back to the job hunting again, and will try some other tactics rather than dealing with recruiters too much. So here’s hoping that 2009 will be the year I get a good job where I earn enough, I am valued as an employee and I love going to work. And I wish that for everyone else too!

Wellbeing

Another up and down year this year… I’ve had a persistent nagging bronchial infection for a lot of the year which has not been great and it curtailed playing Underwater Hockey for much of the year. Luckily there was a good stint of a few months mid year where I felt great and well, and that coincided with my Trip… so that worked well.

I’ve still been doing Feldenkrais all year, have been doing it now for at least 15 years and still get so much out of it. It’s rare for me to miss a Saturday class and I love going and love catching up with all the people in the class for coffee after.

I’ve also been doing my Nordic walking most weeks. We now have only a very small group of regular walkers and it’s difficult to keep the group running but I enjoy it so much I will keep it going.

But overall, this year has been the worst health I’ve had for many years and I really hope 2009 will be much much better.

Travel

Well this is the year that I finally did it… finally got to London, Europe and Dubai. I now feel like a real member of the human race having at least seen London and Paris, and Dubai was amazing.

Despite the GFC and the dollar crashing a few weeks before I left, I had a great time and loved the whole trip. I won’t go into a lot of detail here as I’ve written a few blog posts about it already and you can a selection of my photos on Flickr.

The highlights of my trip were Bilbao, the Be2Camp in London, Wales with Emily, Paris and Dubai.

I would love to travel again now… so hopefully an opportunity will arise some time in 2009!

Social

This is the aspect of my life that has been the best year ever! I have met such wonderful new friends this year and have been to so many great events that it has just been so great. This is mainly due to Twitter and the Sydney Tech Community which is thriving. Some of the excellent events this year have been

  • New Years Eve (thanks @ceibner)
  • Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (thanks to @trib for the ticket)
  • Earth Hour Girls night out
  • Regular STUB events (thanks @happener, @funkycoda and @alegrya for organising), including many Picnics too
  • Girl Geek Dinners (@damana you rock!)
  • Various catch up’s with @trib and @mspecht when they have been in Sydney
  • Interesting South No. 2
  • CodeCamp Oz (we missed @ceibner but I had a great time with the boys)
  • Demos Happen Here Comp (thanks to @rog24 and @coatsy)
  • PubCamp (thanks to @jedwhite and @mediamum)
  • TechEd Week, Women in Technology event (even though I did not attend TechEd)
  • Web 2.o University, Web Directions Week and AussieTUB (even though I did not attend Web Directions itself)
  • GirlTUB x 2 (excellent evenings out with the twitter girls)
  • Sydney Open Coffee (thanks @kimheras for an excellent idea)
  • SBTUG (Sydney Business and Technnology User Group, thanks to @craigbailey & @aussienick)
  • BarCamp x 2 (one which I helped organised and the other thanks to the org team esp @funkycoda)
  • NSW KM Forum (thanks to @cheiftech for including me on the panel at the last minute)
  • WebBlast (thanks @russmaxdesign and @happener)
  • Very regular catch up’s with twitter peeps – Nano STUB’s Micro STUB’s, Mini STUB’s

I’m sure there are others that I have not mentioned, but wow, that is some list!

And the excellent non-tech events

  • Family Wedding in Tumut in September
  • Various trips up to the Gold Coast / Brisbane

And a very special mention to the people and events during my trip

  • GGD in London
  • Be2camp in London (thanks to @eepaul, @pbroviak and @martinbrown)
  • Green Drinks in London (excellent evening)
  • Dinners out with people in Barcelona during World Architecture Festival
  • Wonderful Family and Friends catch-ups

Next year is shaping up for another big one with

  • New Years Eve again (thanks to @ceibner again)
  • CupCake Camp in Feb
  • More STUB’s
  • Another BarCamp or 2
  • The remotest possibility of a Be2Camp in Sydney some time
  • Definitely more GirlTUB’s and GGD’s
  • We definitely need another Wild Wicked Wanton Women of the Web 2.0 event (looking at you @silkcharm)
  • I really hope to get to more conferences in 2009
  • I need to start to get to Social Coffee on Friday mornings (thanks to @servantofchaos that organises this)
  • ooh and my Family trip in May to celebrate my Mum and Dad’s 50th Wedding Aniversary, and a family Wedding in March

And I just have to make special mention to the biggest group of wonderful people on twitter this year that I have had the pleasure to hang with

The girls: @ceibner, @kcarruthers, @silkcharm, @pixel8ted, @alegrya, @misswired, @mediamum, @damana, @headwellred, @christydena, @bronwen, @allidc, @zuzu, @aussieAna, @dekrazee1

The the guys: @trib, @funkycoda, @dizzystuff, @lstoll, @aussienick, @cadbloke, @angusscown, @nickhac, @stillgherian @apostrophepong, @snarkyplatypus, @mpesce, @nathanaelb, @rog42, @coatsy, @ryancross, @fush, @flungabunga, @seancarmody, @marclehmann, @sethyates, @jedwhite, @maniacd, @jamesbreeze, @mspecht, @aDB, @warlach, @coliwilso, @liako, @eskimo_sparky, @gregdwyer

The UK Peeps: @martinbrown, @eepaul, @melstarrs, @jodiecarnegie, @amcewen (and of course @pbroviak virtually)

And all the Perth / Melb / Canberra peeps that were around for AussieTUB and I’ve probably left many people off the list, but thanks to you all!

Wow, I really hope 2009 is even more social, I meet even more people and the Sydney Tech community has many many more great events!

Be2Camp is Confirmed

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Thanks to the Be2Camp unorganisers, the date and venue for the Be2Camp is now confirmed. It is now on Friday October 10 at the London Building Centre.

Be2Camp is an unconference about the use of Web 2.0 tools in the Built Environment industries such as Architecture, Construction and Engineering. With a bit of Sustainability and Virtual Worlds stuff (eg building in Second Life) stuff thrown in.

We also now have a new Website at http://be2camp.ning.com. So now we need Sponsors, and Agenda, Speakers etc… lots of work to do in the 2 months we have left to go…

I’m very exited about this and even though I will be very jetlaged as it is the day after I get to London, I would like to present on some topic around this subject.

Please come and join our Ning site and come to the Unconference when it’s on. We are even hoping to have virtual participation at the conference, so you don’t even have to be in London.

Demo’s {almost didn’t} happen here

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Last week I completed my entry into the Microsoft Demo’s Happen Here competition. Wow what a big job it was to actually get that entry completed and submitted! I almost gave up, but I had such wonderful help to get the demo done, that in the end I had no excuse but to complete it and get it submitted.

So Demo’s Happen Here is a Microsoft Competition to promote the new 2008 products of Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio. The idea was to do a demo of a new feature in one of these products and present it to a user group and submit a video of the presentation on-line.

I didn’t have a great urge to enter but then my user group, Sydney Business and Technology User Group (SBTUG) were having a Demo Fest where a number of people were all going to do a presentation, so I sort of half heartedly said I would do one… and then I won an eval copy the software that evening so I had no excuse… The other reason for entering is that Catherine had done an excellent job of her first entry into the comp and I thought that there needs to be more geek girls entering the competition.

The first thing I did wrong is I left it all too late! The Saturday before the demo fest on the Wednesday I attempted to install the software. For some reason SQL Server would just not install on my Vista PC (it would not install the services, which from google searching seemed to be an issue with Administration rights but I tried 4 different ways and could not get it working). So for most of Saturday and Sunday I was just reasearching and preparing my script and slides.

My next step was to get a copy of a pre-configured Virtual Hard Disk to run in a Virtual PC. I’ve never used a VPC before so I did not want to attempt to create and install one myself, and as I was only needing SQL server for the hour or so to test and record my demo it did not seem worth it to build one myself.

My first attempt to get a copy of the VHD failed as it was an old VHD from the original Hero’s Happen here presentations and it would not install as it was Time-Bombed. That was Sunday night.

Monday night I picked up a copy of a VHD on DVD. When I got home the DVD failed and would not install.

So, despite all our best efforts and wonderful help from a wonderful friend, I could not get anything working and was just about to call it quits when another wonderful twitter friend offered to build a VHD for me and lend me a portable hard disk. I picked that up on Tuesday evening and hey presto, it installed first time!

Now I had no excuses and had to finalise my SQL script and presentation and record it. I used the fantastic tool Community Clips from Microsoft Labs to record it. Wow, doing the demo for recording was sooo difficult. I had about 6 false starts – would get tounge tied about 2 mins in and then have to stop and start over… eventually I realised there is no way I would be able to do it in 1 take and it was getting late. So I would just pause and re-start the sentence again if I got stuck.

Then I had a lot of editing to do and boy, it is really horrible having to listen to your own voice over and over and over again. The recording is terrible, I really sound like I have a speach impediment. So much stuttering and so many ummm’s it’s unbeleivable. But but this stage I was so over it and just wanted to get it done… AND I still had to present it the next evening at the User Group

The next hurdle was getting the demo uploaded to the competition site… what a painful and slow process that was. I had to google search to find out that I had to disable Silverlight to upload the video to the Silverlight website – WOW! So that took about another hour or so – another late night.

On Wednesday evening when I finally did my presentation I was much more relaxed and it went much much better with a lot less hesitation in my voice. (@Rog42 secretly videoed it which I have not had the courage to look at yet).

So for posterity’s sake here is a link to the demo… but I really don’t recommend you watch it – it’s not really that interesting, and does not sound very good at all.

However, the SBTUG’s Demo Fest was fantastic and there were 5 other excellent presentations and overall the night was a great success, so I hope we do something like that again – maybe a yearly event?

And I learned a lot from the whole experience. Be prepared early; relax; it does’t have to be perfect; Just Do It!; I’m much much much better in front of a live audience; and most importantly, friends are wonderful and will help!

I would like to do some more presentation stuff because I realised I’m so out of practice with it and it is something I love doing when I’m finally in front of the audidence, but it’s just the prepartion that sucks big time!

Upcoming Tech / Geek Events

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I like to keep my colleagues up to date with what’s happening in Sydney’s geek communities so I thought I’d put together a bit of a post about what’s happening in the next few months. Wow there are a lot of events. Here’s a slightly modified re-post of that list.
BarCamp Sydney
BarCamp is an excellent event. It’s an un-conference. Based on the idea that one of the best things at conferences is sometimes what happens impromptu in the hallways and the people you meet. The content of BarCamp is entirely up to you. You rock up on the day and you decide if you are going to talk on a topic, and put a note on the time slot that you want to talk. If people are interested in your session, they attend. The last two BarCamps have been fantastic both in the content and the wonderful people. Focus of each event so far has been different – the first one was quite geeky and the second one was quite entrepreneurial but there was a lot of pure tech stuff also.
BarCamp is at the UNSW Roundhouse on April 5 and 6 (Saturday and Sunday). On Saturday evening there is drinks at the Roundhouse bar. On Sunday afternoon there is an Entrepreneurial Soapbox event where people can get up and promote their start up or their next big idea and get advice from other entrepreneurs.
To register and find out more details go to www.barcampsydney.org.
Geek Girls Dinner
The last Geek Girls Dinner was excellent and this one is going to be really great – it’s at Google’s offices in the City and you get to have a tour around their offices (ok they’re not as good as Google’s Zurich office if you’ve seen those pictures online, but it’s apparently pretty good).
You need to register online for this one. Click here for more details http://girlgeekdinnerssydney.blogspot.com/2008/03/dinner-2.html
User Groups
Sydney Business and Technology User Group – SBTUG
This is a really interesting user group as it’s more business focused as well as being tech focused. Last month’s talk on unified communications was great. Next month it’s Mitch Denny talking about the future of Software Agents – little bots that go around the internet finding info for you.
This one is on the last Wednesday of every month at Microsoft at North Ryde.
Go to http://www.sbtug.com for more info.
Sydney .NET User Group
This is one of the oldest user groups around – I started going about 9 years ago when it was the Access User Group. Last month’s presentation was on the fantastic workflow tool by Atlassian called Jira. This month it’s on building Facebook applications.
This one is on the third Wednesday of every month at Microsoft at North Ryde.
Sydney SQL Server User Group
This one is VERY techy, but also very interesting. Last month was about PerformancePoint, this month is about Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans.
This one is on the first Tuesday of every month in the city.
Go to http://www.sqlserver.org.au/ for more details.
Conferences
Wireless World 2008
This may be just another conference about Wireless products but it’s also got one very interesting stand from the Free Wireless movement. People from FreeSydneyWireless and FreeCanberraWireless groups will be hosting the stand to promote sharing your internet connection to your neighbours and community through the use of mesh networks.
For info on Wireless World see here http://www.wirelessworld2008.com/
Wireless world is on Wednesday and Thursday 2 and 3 April.
Cebit
Cebit is the major tech conference in Sydney this year at the exhibition centre. It is a conference plus expo. It’s usually enough to go to the expo to get an idea of the latest in tech.
  1. Tuesday 20th May 2008 (10am – 6pm)
  2. Wednesday 21st May 2008 (10am – 6pm)
  3. Thursday 22nd May 2008 (10am – 5pm)

The team at Scouta recently won a free booth at Cebit for winning the first prize at the Australian Startups carnival a few weeks ago. You can read about that here http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/australian-startup-carnival-highlights-antipodean-startups/

see www.cebit.com.au for more details.

Re-Mix
Didn’t get to Vegas for Mix08? Well don’t worry there is always Re-Mix. Re-Mix 08 is a one day event highlighting the major topics discussed at Mix. Re Mix 08 is in Sydney on 20 May. See here for details http://blogs.msdn.com/ausdev/archive/2008/03/19/remix-australia-dates-confirmed-for-sydney-and-melbourne-20th-and-22nd-may.aspx

TechEd
This is Microsoft’s major Developer event for the year. The report from last year on the Gold Coast were great. This year it’s on 2-5 September. See here for details http://www.microsoft.com/australia/teched07/index.aspx


Web Directions
Web directions is the premier web technologies conference. It is held each year in Sydney and Vancouver. Last year Web Directions was the inspiring catalyst that made me change careers to work in the IT industry.
This year Web Directions is holding two small conferences in Melbourne and Canberra before the main event in Sydney in September. This one is worth attending.
See details here http://www.webdirections.org/


So this is a lot of events, but if you only go to one, come to BarCamp. Otherwise I highly recommend Geek Girls Dinner SBTUG and Web Directions.