After just one day in Wellington for the Webstock 09 event I’ve got some insights into why the web scene is more vibrant than anything in Australia, including Sydney. Though there are definitely still mysteries.
Ze Frank at Webstock 09 from Kiwi on Flickr.
With Webstock being so interesting, I’m going to bullet point this;
- It’s focused (*ducks*) – it really is. It’s a small town. 300,000 people but for New Zealand, 90% of the web world seems to be here and if it’s not, they all come here to congregate and exercise the ricochet effect (bumping into each other).
- The people stayed – not that they are better, just that some of them did some different things. Firstly, they’ve been successful and stayed or at least came back. Good people who’ve done some solid laps of the tech and web world and made plenty of healthy fails and wins. Lance, a buddy, comes back regularly. Not every one does, but enough do. Not sure what you can do with that, but it’s just the fact.
- The people got off their arses – no one flew into Wellington and said “thou shalt have a Kiwi Foo and Webstock!”. No one paid them to do it. Someone woke up, and got it done. Even amongst our busy lives. They got some really big names, interesting, cool people to come along. People like Ze Frank (he rocked of course, even though it was a retrospective). Not that Australia hasn’t gotten off their collectives arses, lots of people have done lots of great stuff, but we have to keep doing it, do more and do it better. I know we can.
- Less corporate – this is a grey point since the town is quite government, but even the government are at Webstock. The reason why Australia being corporate is a drain on the web community is because the events, energy and money goes to corpoate. It goes to building .NET products internally, in a cublcle for a big bank (or currently solvent firm). It overwhelms and out-shouts the web space in so many ways.
Why Does Everyone On Twitter Have a Black Avatar?
While I’m here, I’ll let you know about a protest which is currently being waged in New Zealand about some bad bad bad laws around Internet access.
Back to Webstock.