A packed conference full of edgy and smartly dressed young things awaited.

ZDNet.com.au has seldom seen so many smartphones and laptops at a conference.

Unusually for an Australian technology conference, everything ran on Apple.

An Aboriginal elder welcomed participants to Gadigal land. He shocked the room by asking participants to turn off their mobile phones and laptops ... but was just joking.

Web Directions founder John Allsop told the audience there was irony in a bunch of such internet-connected individuals getting together in one physical room.

Allsop said the Web worked best when it was woven into the fabric of our lives. "The point of it all is to make being human better," he said.

FastCompany.com director of social media Lynne D Johnson gave this morning's keynote speech, telling the audience there were "new rules for new media", and going through some of the developments in the Web 2.0 world, as traditional publishing companies are forced to adapt their models.

Question time saw the audience take its turn to have its say.

After the keynote, we spotted some of Australia's Web 2.0 luminaries, including social media consultant Stephen Collins.

Morning tea saw our sugar levels spike upwards.

Microsoft has a big presence at Web Directions South, with live demonstrations of its Silverlight technology.

iBurst had promised to provide the conference with free Wi-Fi, but the intense demand for bandwidth virtually ensured nobody could use the service's 4Mbps internet pipe.

The Web Directions team created its own magazine to go with the conference.

Like every good technology conference, Web Directions South came with its own bag of goodies.