National Association of Government Webmasters

Presented by Molly Holzschlag, Opera Software

For many years the Web has primarily been a document-centric environment. The now-annoying term "Web 2.0" brought with it a message of change, and while the hype confused many of us, the change in technology and approach is clear. No longer are we a document-centric environment. In this session, attendees will learn the heritage of HTML, the evolution and dissolution of XHTML, and what HTML5's role in this means. We'll cover HTML5 design principles, take a look at some of the new semantics and how that can help us for both documents and applications, examine how CSS3 techniques can enhance our work, and look at what the "Open Web" really means in terms of emerging best practices for Web professionals. Add a bit of history, politics and anecdotes from the trenches, and this four hour session will leave you with a true understanding of where we have been, where we are today, and where - at least for now - we need to be setting our "sites" for tomorrow.

Presented by Paulette Neal-Allen

Best practices for project management and how to make them work for a web project, especially when you have a small or even a 1-person project team. Sample documents and examples from a case study will be presented.

Presented by Carole Lassak, Delphia Consulting

Users don’t read on the Web. They scan, picking out individual words and sentences. Web users have also become more impatient than ever before. They are busy and want to find the information they set out for quickly. They want the facts without marketese or boastful claims found in much content presented on the Web. Your content must answer the users’ questions or they will quickly surf on. Writing appropriately for the Web improves the accessibility of your content and boosts your SEO. During this session, learn the guidelines for writing web content and put them into practice rewriting content from your own site. Review it with your peers. Leave this session with revised content ready to upload to your site.

Presented by Robin Hastings

Missouri River Regional Library recently went through a complete redesign of their website - from graphical layout to going from pure HTML to a Drupal-based backend. Learn how it was done and what went right - and wrong - and what you can do to avoid these issues.

Presented by Adriel Hampton

This 4-hour training session will focus on practical online community building and mission-driven application of social media for local government agencies and programs. Whether you're a beginner or an old hand at social media tools, plan on a vigorous real-time session applying tips and strategies to new and existing agency accounts. We will discuss practical applications and growth strategies for tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, podcasting and location-based social networks.

Presented by Nathan Smith

Are you ready to take your jQuery skills to the next level? If you have used jQuery on a few of your pages, and you are excited to learn more, this intermediate level workshop is for you. Topics will include advanced jQuery selectors, the jQuery event model, jQuery UI, AJAX with jQuery, and creating your own jQuery plug-ins. Bring your own laptop for this interactive, hands-on workshop.

Presented by Jon Gunderson

The objective of this seminar is for participants to understand the needs of people with disabilities and a best practices approach to implement Section 508 standards and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) to meet Section 504 laws. The workshop will present tools and techniques needed for managing and implementing accessible design within state and local governments, and the benefits of accessible design for all users, including constituents with disabilities.

There will be three main parts to the workshop. The first part will demonstrate web browsing experiences of people with disabilities to develop a fundamental understanding of the issues and barriers that inaccessible web design present. Participants will participate in simulated disabilities as they try to perform common web browsing tasks. The participants will then experience how accessible designs improve the web browsing experience of people with disabilities. This experience will help the participants understand more than just the minimal requirements of web accessibility guidelines and standards and help them understand the functional accessibility goals they represent. Previous participants in workshops always rate this experience as helping them really understand and appreciate the need to improve accessibility.

The second part will present information on the best practices approach to the implementation of current web accessibility guidelines, including the Federal Section 508 and W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This part of the presentation will focus on the concept accessible design rather than accessible repair promoted in many accessibility forums. Current accessibility work is often characterized as accessible repair. The author creates the web resource and then reviews their design for accessibility problems at the end of the design process. This often results in web resources that meet accessible design guideline requirements, but often are not functionally accessible and usable to people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design is focuses attention on accessibility at the beginning of the design process, when templates and coding modules are being developed. Authors choose a best practices approach to markup that is inherently accessible and the results make also make web resources more usable to everyone and easier for developers to maintain. Examples of accessible web resources that use the accessible design approach to creating web resources will be included in this part of the seminar. Examples include websites from both state and higher education resources in the IBHE Web Accessibility Consortium.

The third part of the seminar will present approaches to managing web accessibility as part of the web development process. This includes information on how to build a consensus using best practices based approach.

Presented by Jim Maivald, Adobe

Join Jim who is an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) for an exciting, fast-paced session on the revolutionary new features in Adobe Creative Suite 5! Come join this exclusive half-day “open laptop” session and explore over 250 new timesaving enhancements to Adobe's industry-leading tools for digital imaging, publication design, web development and motion graphics. See practical examples of how CS5 will help your agency differentiate its brand, increase efficiencies, extend the reach of your content across multiple screens, and optimize that content for any constituency.

Moderated by NAGW

Join your fellow webmasters as we work hands-on to develop a code project in a day! We'll choose a project, break into groups based on our coding skills, and create a code project from the ground up, then show it off to our fellow campers and share it with our fellow NAGW members!

PHP, .NET, ColdFusion, Javascript, AJAX, and CSS folks will all be needed. Show off your skills, work with your friends, and help build something great!

A fee will cover food costs and all Code Camp attendees will have access to breaks and lunch along with Pre-Conference session attendees. Participants should bring their own laptops. Wi-Fi and electrical outlets will be available.