Once again the organisers managed to put together a great line up of speakers. I’m not sure how they convince these people to travel half way around the world to come and talk to us, but good on them for doing it.

Actually, that’s not true at all. It’s obvious how they do it. They treat the speakers like rock stars, fuss over seemingly little details, and go the extra mile to create a great experience for everybody who attends – right down to the t-shirts, bags and name tags. It works! Even people who attend lots of conferences seem to love it.

I did wonder what I was going to talk to Sam about in our fireside chat. In the end it seemed to go okay (thanks to those who sent in questions). Everybody there seemed happy to sit back and take it in at the end of a long first day. I’ll post a link here to the video when it’s available for those of you who were not able to make it on the day.

With that out of the way I enjoyed the second day much more.

The highlights for me, to name just a few (with links to review from LukeW where available):

Nat Torkington was thought provoking as ever. I have to apologise (on behalf of my laptop) for messing with the ye olde font he used – but in the end it added an extra dimension to his presentation on future trends. I especially liked this quote, on the explosion in the amount of data available nowdays:

“Needles have stayed the same size, but the haystack is growing exponentially”

Cal Henderson from Flickr. A lot of the tool and techniques he talked about were familiar to those of us lucky enough to have worked at Trade Me, so it’s good to have a second example to point to when talking to developers about how to manage this sort of thing.

Tom Cotes, who gave the best explanations I’ve heard to date for why it’s important to think outside of your own little sandbox. Succeeding online means thinking about how to take advantages of the network rather than just simply trying to build the best website.

Dan Cederholm. Dan is originally from Vermont just like Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream. Once you know about that about him, his approach to design and (as he talked about in his session) “craftpersonship”, makes a lot more sense. He had a lot of practical advice too – it’s nice to come away from a presentation with half a dozen things that you can apply immediately to the things you’re working on. Thanks Dan. :-)

Damian Conway and Kathy Sierra both lived up to their top billing and were a nice way to finish things off.

And the winner? Well, according to Walter, Nat was the only speaker to mention all of Twitter, Flickr, LOLcats and the iPhone. So he wins. :-)

My only complaint was that the streamed sessions either side of lunch on the second day meant that there were a number of interesting speakers who I didn’t get to see. I guess we have to wait until the videos are available to remedy that.

UPDATE: audio and video of many of the presentations are now available.

So, all in all, a fun couple of days.

How, we wonder, will they top that at the next Webstock in 2010?

PS if you’re suffering withdrawal symptoms, you might like this video of Steve Krug (who surely must be on the invite list for next time?)