SXSW Interactive 2007

• Panel
  • Nick Bradbury, FeedDemon
  • John Gruber, DaringFireball
  • Shaun Inman, Mint and Shaun Inman Design
  • Michael Lopp, Senior Engineering Mgr. at Apple
• The Developer
  • Several shifts lately
  • There is a blurring and evolving relationship betwen developer and designer
  • In the start-up world, there is a level playing field for mindshare and bits
  • It’s a small world and easier for startups to get into the game
  • Independent developers are building for the users, not for the business
  • “Independend developers are designing for themselves” -Shaun Inman
• All the successful “indie” products have been made by problems the developers faced or filling a gap they saw
• All the products they’ve made have been products they themselves wanted
• New Product Cycle
  • Gruber: Always starts on paper
  • Inman: Start by learning, defining the problem first
  • Bradbury: Designs the product twice. Codes it roughly first, then throws away and codes it again, learning from the first time
• Involving the Community
  • Bradbury: Blogs about new product features all the time to find what the users are realistically wanting
• Lessons from working in larger companies
  • Bradbury: Found there to be some filter in large companies, communication with the customer got lost along the way
  • Inman: Keep my thoughts in my own head and don’t work so well communicating product ideas to peers
• How do you work at home?
  • Bradbury: Found a room in house that’s cut off to focus in
  • Gruber: Close the door if you can’t be interrupted
  • Inman: Separate offices in home
• Gruber (quoting Walt Disney): “I want to make money not just to make money; I want to make money so that I can make more pictures”
• How do you compete with larger companies’ competitive products?
  • Bradbury: You can move much faster as a small company. You can respond to customer desires very quickly without worrying about complex patents and other issues.
• Q: When you’re designing a new product do you start with the UI or have an idea of what it will look like?
  • All say yes, mostly
  • Gruber: Think of the wireframe model of the UI and think less of the colors and icons

• Panel
  • Eddie Codel, co-founded of Geek Entertainment TV
  • Micki Krimmel, Revver
  • Kent Nichols, Ask A Ninja
  • Kevin Rose, Digg Architect
  • Scott Watson, CTO Walt Disney R&D
• Problems Online
  • Net Neutrality
  • Most of the user-generated content sites like YouTube have TOS’s that say they own your content
  • Kent says we need a User Bill of Rights across websites that lets us own our content, have privacy rights, etc.
  • Bandwidth: ISP’s dont give out nearly the bandwidth they’re selling
  • Scott says in order for video to become ubiquitous on the web, we need an entirely new network, one designed to deliver video in real time
• Community & Passionate Audiences
  • Audience members are integral to Diggnation and many other community-oriented online shows
  • Can mainstream media generate viral online content that people will want to watch?
  • They do something like this with popular shows like Lost but it isn’t really interactive in the way most online shows are
• How does Joost (”The Venice Project”) fit into all this?
  • One of its pitfalls is its closed nature, as opposed to YouTube’s open upload model
  • So far, the system is aimed at mainstream media content like a direct translation of TV to the Internet
  • Kent asks Why reinvent TV exactly as it is?
• Q: Do you promote videos through your site or directly on YouTube?
  • If you care about “building the brand”, as old media puts it, promote it through your site
• Q: How do you feel about trying to promote media online first but as a way of eventually getting it to the traditional TV networks?
  • Kevin: Never again! Have more viewers now than on TechTV
  • Notes that Diggnation is available in 6 formats, making it available across many platforms

• Panel
  • Steven Smith, CEO of FiveRuns
  • Marcel Molina, Rails Core developer
• What are Enterprise Class Web Apps?
  • Origin
    • Rails now has AJAX support right in the framework
    • This means having a system of abstraction of the page in your framework
    • Old solution assumed updating only one element on the page
    • Used template methods like form_remote_for, etc.
    • New system is RJS, Ruby JavaScript
  • Feedback
    • Need to have a way to indicate to users that your applicaiton is working in the background
  • Degrading
    • To degrade between JS and non-JS browsers gracefully, Rails can use respond_to method in a controller to detect whether the request is JS or standard HTTP and not have to duplicate templates and controller logic
    • This supports both a rich client interface AND old school HTML linking
  • Scalability
    • It IS possible to overload a browser with JS
    • You always want to balance server and client-side scripting where it makes sense
    • Leverage server-side processing when you can afford it
  • Testing
    • Selenium brings systematic testing across multiple browsers
• More Information
  • Slides will be available at www.fiveruns.net/events
  • RJS screencase at www.peepcode.com
  • Automated Testing in your browser www.openqa.org/selenium
  • Ajax on Rails book oreilly.com

• Speaker: Matt Mullenweg, Founder of Wordpress and Akismet (anti-spam)
• Started the company Automatic software company
• What is the problem with scaling your community?
  • Shows screenshot of a web forum
  • Shows Wordpress weblog
  • Shows Godin’s blog, no comments
• What is scaling?
• How do you keep the intimate feeling of a rock concert when you’re speaking to a half-empty room?
• You have to set up a good Foundation
• Steps
  • Start as simply as possible
    • Break things down in the simplest way you can articulate
    • Everything that is currently free will always be free
    • We will never sell your email address
    • Don’t just promise, visualize
  • Bootstrap
    • Be your most passionate user
    • Get outside your blog or website and talk to people
    • Pre-moderate
  • Let it go
    • Release some control of your community
    • If you’ve bootstrapped well enough, your will have raised people who are even more enthusiastic about your site than you are
    • Your users will steer it better than you may be able to
• Use open source
• Embrace and extend
• Personalization
  • Different from Customization
  • Every action your user makes on your site is sacred. Every tag, every click.
  • Personalizaiton is fundamentally a filter. Work to filter in only things people want, based on past actions or defaults
  • Keep it fresh
  • Make it magical. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Make your application give users the willies.

This panel was really revealing to me in how much of today’s web design practices are not compatible with screen readers and other tools of the physically impaired. Lots of great tips as well as insights into accessibility.

• Two ways of looking at accessibility
  • Making sites accessible for screen readers or other particular devices (Accessibility)
  • Making sites standards compliant and readable by all browsers (Universality)
• Universality, with Jeremy Keith
  • Achieving universality is easy when you follow the principles of Progressive Enhancement
  • Progressive Enhancement
    • Begin with content
    • Decide how to structure your content, asking what does this mean?
    • Choose the best [HTML] element for the job by asking What does this mean? not What should this look like?
    • Next ask what it should look like
    • Finally ask how should this work
  • How does this translate
    • Content
    • Structure –> HTML
    • Presentation –> CSS
    • Behavior –> JS
  • The problem with so many popular web applications today is they start by thinking ‘AJAX’, which is skipping to the end of the process from the beginning
  • New Buzzword: Hijax
    • Use Progressive Enhancement
    • Then add Ajax
  • In the browser you have links (possibly with query strings) and forms
  • On the server you have modular components of the page
  • With Hijax, instead of sending query strings and forms directly to the server, send that to the Ajax client object, which transacts the query on the backend and returns the output from the server
  • Paradox: plan for using Ajax from the start, but don’t implement it until the end of the process
• Accessibility Feng Shui, with Derek Featherstone
  • Feng Shui means wind and water
  • He looks at this as a big metaphor for making web applications
  • History
    • 1999- Accessible scripting. Site works with and without scripting
    • 2004-5- Accessible scripting, uh-oh
  • Showing an example of a canadian bookseller

• Panel
  • Gina Trapani
  • Molly Ditmore
  • Matthew Haughey
  • Annalee Newitz
  • Penelope Trunk
• As a freelance web geek, your self presentation do matter
• Independence doesn’t mean you’re “too good” to do self-marketing
• Newitz
  • Just published book “She’s Such a Geek” about women in technology
  • Working on getting her book publicity
  • Has found that if a book (or website or whatever) is really good, people will just magically find it is NOT TRUE
• Molly Ditmore
  • First piece of advice: have an elevator pitch
  • An elevator pitch is a precise, heavily practiced, pitch about what you do
  • Be brief, be positive (say what you do, not what you don’t do)
  • Don’t be embarasses to rehearse your description in the mirror
• When you’re explaining what you do or what your product is about, talk about how it relates to them, not just about the topic in general
• Make it relevant to the listener
• Matt Haughey
  • Differing opinion: marketing is not black and white
  • Build a great product and build a great reputation
  • Find web design meetups and other smaller group meets to network
• Listening is more important than talking
• Self-linking
  • Matt thinks linking to earlier work has too much bias
  • If you are linking to yourself, make sure you are being reasonable and only linking to relevant other information, not promoting yourself excessively.
• It’s important to participate in several social groups, but not too many. Like only be in about 2 to 4 groups. (If you’re in too many, people will wonder why you have so much free time on your hands)
• Can turning down jobs make you more desirable?
  • Sometimes. You should always choose jobs that enhance your career path
  • Matt says you never say ‘No’ in freelance; just double your price
• Blogging or keeping a personal site of some kind helps immensely in developing street cred, as well as bringing a sense of trust to someone who is considering hiring you
• The sad truth of freelancing is that you should spend 50% of your time promoting yourself
• Q: What is your Absolute Truth?
  • Ditmore: Show, Don’t Tell
  • Haughey: Have a great site and show them you’re the best
  • Trunk: Specialize. Say exactly what you do, dont try to do everything.
  • Newitz: Don’t stop, just keep going.
  • Trapani: Trust your gut and keep with it.
  • (Audience member recommends Secrets of Consulting by Gerald Weinberg)
• Q: What is your experience with the online freelance marketplaces?
  • Many community sites are setting up job boards
  • Check them but don’t rely on them
  • Networking by finding designs you like and contacting the designer works better

• Panel
  • Jonathan Boutelle, CEO of SlideShare
• SlideShare is built to be the YouTube of PowerPoint
• Users upload ppt files after a conference and get a flash-version compiled that is share
• and embed-able worldwide
• The app uses both Flash and AJAX integrally
• 1- Play the field
  • You don’t have to choose either AJAX or Flash
  • You might even need both tools
  • Bottom line: pick the best tool for the job, don’t let biases or hype decide which tool you use
• 2- Keep Flash on a leash
  • Full-screen Flash is a no-no
  • People don’t like 100% flash sites over time
  • Use “Flash nuggets”
  • A less-thought of disadvantage is that search-engines can’t spider Flash apps
  • Flash is bulkier and takes a little longer to load
  • Instead of the bulk of Flash, use the power of HTML already given to us over time
• 3- Cheap Tricks
  • Things like in-place editing, attention control, in-page messaging to user, tabs
  • In-place editing
    • Show people data in a read-only fashion, with small controls to change the data
    • When they click to edit, change the read-only data to text fields, or some analogous field for your type of data.
    • When done editing change back to read-only and save behind the scenes using AJAX
  • Attention control
    • Show that “something happened” behind the scenes
• 4- Flash graphic goodies
  • Flash is the best for things like embedding fonts, heavier animation, vector graphics, etc.
• 5- Flash multimedia
• 6- Widgets
  • Choosing the Flash or JS version of a widget depends on what effect on the page you want to have
  • Flash tends to be more noticeable, JS tends to integrate into the page better
• 7- Cool Flash features that aren’t useful
  • Sockets
  • more pro’s choose an HTTP hack to keep the session open. Used by GTalk and Meebo
  • Local Data Objects
  • not a lot of people using them, a cookie-like client storage system
  • FLEX
  • mostly outputs full-screen Flash application replacements

Check out Jonathan’s slides on his SlideShare.

Sorry for being slow in posting, it’s been a crazy morning.

• Panel
  • Frank Robles, CEO Impalta Networks
  • Dan Dubno, Blowing Things Up,
  • John Hanke, Google, director of Maps, Earth
  • Doyle, MIT Museum working on Museum without Walls Project
  • Gina Bianchini,
• Doyle’s Museum without Walls
  • MIT is a large campus, 20K on 160 acres
  • 2800 wireless access points
  • Lots there for conferences
  • Many buildings and easy to get lost
  • Location-based storytelling
    • Trying to make it easy for people to contribute stories about places, in this case, places on campus
    • Need a place to store these [video or audio recorded] stories
    • Have a place for others to view these stories
    • The usage for this will be applications like guided tours using handheld devices
  • “Tour 2.0″
    • Handheld device
    • Location sensitive
    • Complete with stories from the online storytelling library
• John Hanke: Building the Spatial Web
  • 2004 - Made Keyhole
  • Became Google Maps in Feb 2005
  • June 2005 Google Earth launched, Google Maps API
  • Google has an exclusive partnership with a nonmilitary high-res satellite imaging company and provides the satellite basemap for Google Earth
  • 1.5 million places worldwide have been placed by users
  • Google bought SketchUp and released it to the world free
  • Hopes to bring real 3D models to maps by letting users add buildings to the map
• Dan Dubno
  • Attended many discussions on the ideas that John Hanke actually implemented with Google Earth
  • Problems with current system:
    • Spotty satellite imagery coverage
    • The majority of nonurban areas are not high-res
    • High-res worldwide is important for those rare times when you need imagery, such as providing imaging during earthquakes
  • Interesting use of Earth in partnership with CBS News is the Earthquake monitor
  • You can mashup a feed of earthquake events with their corresponding latitude and longitude and look it up on the Earth along with satellite imagery of the location
• Frank Robles
  • Did work with Panoramio which geotagged millions of photos
  • CAP - Common Alerting Protocol
    • Government-mandated location-based civil alert system
  • Also using Google Earth to map very tall buildings and show what level of Internet bandwidth are available there
• Gina Bianchini
  • These technologies are bringing the power of this map technology to the people, where it used to be only (in a lesser capacity) available governments
• Questions
  • Accessability
    • Want to allow people to navigate the system if they have physical disabilities
    • Need to have ability to read instructions aloud if necessary
    • Working to make this information available in more than one language
  • Privacy Issues
    • Dubno: Somebody’s always going to get concerned when you start carrying around a device that knows where you are, etc.
    • Dubno: These technologies will be opt-in and user-controlled
    • Hanke: The “eye in the sky” fear that spying on people is possible with Maps and Earth products is simply not the case
    • Hanke: on the other hand, satellite imagery has in some cases revealed to people what is happenning near them that they didn’t know about. Things like the rich elite’s mansions or dictator’s military location
  • What can this technology do for Third World Countries?
    • Huge potential. For example in Mexico, many cities that were previously unmapped got mapping online for people to see, perhaps for the first time
    • Another use is in natural disasters when location information is critical, that worldwide geoimagery is tremendously useful.
    • Hanke: Friend runs the Fair Trade organization that labels certain exports like coffee that are being made by places with proper and “fair” production practices