Australian Innovation Festival

Apparently this week is the Australian Innovation Festival. I only know this because it was mentioned at the ACT Innovation event. I don't rally know what it is, having see nothing else about it. This evening there was a large pile of brochures at the door. These appear to be about the festival, judging by the cover, but seem to contain nothing but PR material and advertisements. I had difficulty finding anything about the actual event. But there is a web address on the cover, so I will have a look at that: ausinnovation.org

Even without using the web address it tells me something: this is very similar to the ACT Innovation web address and so may well be related. Having clicked on the web address I am still none the wiser, as so far noting has loaded. I am using a slow wireless Internet connection at present and it seems this web page has not been designed with this in mind.

In the interim John got my attention by using the example of turning a problem into a solution with Staten drugs for reducing cholesterol.

It has been several minutes at the supposed Australian Innovation web site still has not arrived. So I decided to run a few tests to see what might be the problem with the web site. These are the sort of tests my second year ANU web design students learn to do on their assignments.

The first test is to validate the HTML of the web page. The Australian Innovation web page failed this test with 96 Errors. This is a very large number of errors. Students are expected to have no errors on their web pages and a typical web page might have a half dozen errors.

The second test I usually run is for mobile ok. This tests how well the web page will work on the typical mobile phone. Unfortunately the test failed to complete.

John got my attention again by mentioning Bob Clifford, Tasmanian large fast ferry builder. John pointed out that having a ferry tied up at the factory unsold represents millions of dollars. It happens that I met Mr. Clifford once on the bridge of one of his ships at an Olympic Games function (the US DoD now buys such ships from Australia). He surprised me by leaving me in charge of the ship, while he popped down stairs. Fortunately it was tied up at a wharf, but it was still lonely on the bridge.

The third test I usually run is for accessibility. An automated TAW test, which reported thirteen priority 1 problems, 56 Priority 2 and one Priority 3 problems.

At this point the web site finally appeared after several minutes. From first glance, it is obvious why the page took so long to load: there are a lot of high resolution graphics and animation on the page. Unfortunately none of this has helped me find out what the event is about. There are photos of unidentified people along with large blocks of test appearing. But these are disappearing before I can read the text, or work out who these mysterious people are. There are also lots of maps and logos which suggest this is an important and well supported event, but I am still none the wiser as to what it actually is. So far about all I know is that this web site must have cost a lot of money to develop.

Here is the text of the page:

Australian Innovation

* Home * Festivals * Events * News * Publications * Get involved * AusInnovation TV * About Us * Supporters * Newsletters * Login

Ausinnovation.org

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Take a look inside GM's new EN-V concept car as Chris Borroni-Bird explains how this zero-emission, electric vehicle ...

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This suggests that the web page is a collection of events to do with innovation. The rapidly changing content on the home page appear to be examples of events. Exactly who is doing this, or why, is not clear. A search of the ASIC database shows there is an organisation AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION PTY. LTD, created 04/06/2009.