Web 2008 Conference Tutorials

Tutorials

Tutorial Descriptions — Morning Session (8:00 - noon)

Installing and Configuring a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MYSql, PHP) Server

Jay Hoff, IT Technical Trainer, Penn State and Roy Long, Systems Administrator, Penn State

The popularity of Blogs, Wikis and Web sites to deliver dynamic content is steadily increasing. With many departments managing their own servers and Web sites, the associated low cost of delivering these services using Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) is a viable alternative to the traditional boxed solution provided by hardware and software vendors. Servers now being offered by Dell, HP and Apple running Linux and Mac OS X respectively, come pre configured with a host of open source packages, offering the end user and server administration a wealth of solutions.

This workshop will cover the installation of a working LAMP environment, including basic configuration of the Apache Web server with mod_php and mod_mysql.

Skill Level: Intermediate

Time: AM Session

Location: Room 124

Negotiation for the Web Professional

Steven Lewis, Web Manager and Information Security Coordinator, The College of Brockport

Negotiation is a basic skill. We do it every day, whether we think about it or not. Studying negotiation yields a toolbox of techniques one can draw upon to navigate everyday human interactions. As professionals, the goal is to get along, find agreement, and get what we need to get our jobs done. After all, command-and-control is for the business sector, and when are we Web people ever in charge? This tutorial is designed to cover some of the basic tools every negotiator should have, with an several in-class scenarios to illustrate key points.

Attendees will learn basic negotiation strategies, including how to analyze a situation in preparation for negotiation, how to divide a “fixed pie”, how to identify opportunities for expanding the pie, and will have several opportunities in the session to practice the skill with other tutorial attendees.

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: AM Session

Location: Room 125

Presentation (.ppt file)

The Long Tail of Social Networks — Building Successful Niche Social Networks

Mark Greenfield, Director of Web Services, University at Buffalo

In Chris Anderson’s best-selling book The Long Tail, he describes how our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from focusing on the relatively small number of mainstream products at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. This theory also applies to social networks where niche social networks are providing the perfect platform for people to connect and collaborate around shared interests.

This presentation will explore the sociology behind the growth of social networking and provide a framework for building successful niche social networks. Case studies will also be presented on networks that succeeded as well as those that failed. Attendees will better understand the power of social networks and what it takes to successfully created them.

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: AM Session

Location: Room 126

Creating a web site with Adobe CS3

Tim Plumer, Jr., Sr. Solutions Engineer, NA Education Sales Adobe Systems Incorporated

Building upon the conference session, this tutorial will teach you how to create the site that I demonstrated in the presentation. You will work with Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Flash.

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: AM Session

Location: Room 206

Tutorial Descriptions — Afternoon Session (1:00 - 5:00pm)

Birds of a Feather (This is a free tutorial)

Christian Vinten-Johansen, Information Technology Manager, Penn State

Birds of a Feather sessions are almost as old as technology conferences. They are an informal gathering at conferences, built around topics or subjects of immediate interest for conference attendees, and often precede more formal follow-up organizational meetings or mini-conferences. Advertise your topics on a wiki, gather supporters, and organize conference activities that will develop into communities of interest.

Rewards of Birds-of-a-Feather meetings include meeting like-minded colleagues and technophiles, developers, architects and new alchemists. Future directions are born in BoF meetings. Emerge as a new technology leader!

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: PM Session

Location: Room 124

Deploying User-Centered Design Techniques Workshop

Matthew Winkel, Communications Officer for Web and New Media at TCNJ

A user-centered design strategy facilitates your teams decision-making process by testing your design assumptions of each page element from the perspective of the various audiences that use your site. This workshop will cover a variety of usability techniques including: interviews, card sorts, co-design activities, paper prototyping, and performance testing. There will be an overview of each technique followed by hands-on exercises. This session will be valuable for any professional (i.e. marketing, technology, or communications) who is part of the redesign process for a Web site or Web application.

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: PM Session

Location: Room 125

The Semantic Web: A Guided Tour

Daniel Frommelt, University World Wide Web Coordinator, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

What does the future of the web have in store for us? The goal is to derive meaning from all of the content on the web but how? Microformats are the first real world example of semantics (the study of meanings) using technology that we have now (XHTML.) However to get additional meaning, we need to understand how to mark up data so it has exact meaning. This allows computers to understand that data and its relationship to other data generating new information. This is the goal of the Semantic Web. Join the tour!

In the words of Tim Berners-Lee, "The good news is that a number of technical innovations (RDF which is to data what HTML is to documents, and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) which allows us to express how data sources connect together) along with more openness in information sharing practices are moving the World Wide Web toward what we call the Semantic Web."

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: PM Session

Location: Room 126

Beyond Email: Blogs, Wikis and RSS

Mark Heckel, Information Technology Trainer, Penn State

Blogs, wikis and RSS provide us with new, different, more efficient means of communication, collaboration, and information sharing. In this tutorial we will look at the Penn State Blogs tool, Wikispaces, and how to create and add an RSS to your Web site.

Skill Level: Introductory

Time: PM Session

Location: Room 206