Web’s gurus take a byte at the future

9:34am Tuesday 5th September 2006

Some of the web industry's most influential figures will be in Brighton this week to discuss the future of the internet at the d.Construct 2006 event.

Delegates from Google, Yahoo and Amazon will be speaking at the 350-capacity event at the Corn Exchange, which sold out in 36 hours.

d.Construct is a grass roots event aimed at web developers.

The conference, now in its second year, will explore how cutting-edge technology is widening the scope of the internet to perform different functions.

The line up of speakers includes Jeffrey Veen from Google, Simon Williams and Paul Hammond from Yahoo and Jeff Barr from Amazon.

Others on the rostrum are technical trainer and author Derek Featherstone, Thomas Vander Wal from InfoCloud Solutions and Aral Balkan from Ariaware.

A podcast, hosted by Jeremy Keith from Brighton web consultancy and event organisers Clearleft, is running alongside the event at www.d.construct.org He told The Argus: "Until recently the internet was attracting people to your site and then bombarding them with advertisements, that was the business model.

"But we are starting to see a shift now, which some people are referring to as Web.02, where some sites are exploring the possibilities of sharing data. For example, there is a great website called flickr.com where users can have their own website page to store and display their photographs.

"It's happening with entertainment sites as well where you can host your own reviews page. Without wanting to sound too hippyish it's about sharing.

"It's a new business model as well and people will make a lot of money out of it but d.Construct is less interested in that side of things.

"d.Construct looks more at the technical nitty gritty side of it, the ideas and the technology. It's for web-developers who want to hear about new ideas."

Last year d.Construct was held at Fabrica when 100 tickets were snapped up in half-an-hour.

This year the venue is bigger but the tickets still went quickly.

Jeremy said: "It's great that Brighton can host something like this.

"People are coming from all over the UK and some are travelling from mainland Europe.

"There has always been a feeling that to do something like this you have to be in London but Brighton has got its own buzz about it and can pull it off.

"There is no reason why we won't continue to hold d.Construct every year now but it is important to us that we keep it quiet, small and grass roots.

"That is what it's all about."