This morning at the New Zealand Backpacking Industry Julian Ledger CEO of YHA New South Wales opened the conference with an overview of the Australian backpacking industry. To me the most interesting stuff was the overview of the success of the industry association.

This post is a bit of a whinge really and not for any reason but it does my head in when marketers can’t think for themselves and steal other people’s ideas.

I have already posted this once – but again the first NZ Backpacking Industry conference is on in Auckland in three weeks and if you are in this sector in NZ (or even Australia) you should be there.

I think Xebidy has always been at the forefront of trying to use Web 2.0 elements in our web design to create a better website. We are always looking for different ways to use data from other websites – particularly user generated content – to improve the overal web experience. We however came to the conclusion today that Web 2.0 is brilliant until it fails at which point it absolutely crashes and burns!

The launch of the new “Web 2.0″ style Austrian Tourism website has really grabbed me. It’s simple and clean – exactly what you would expect from something Austrian – almost clinical in it’s efficiency. Yet, it also has personality and best of all it does all the little things absolutely perfectly.

We have finally got a demo version up and running for the Bootstrap interface for the SilverStripe content management system. Check it out at http://xebidy.com/demo

Wrote this article for a column in August edition of M2 Magazine – thought you might like it.