Journal
SXSW, Recap
16 March 2006 › 9 comments
Well, I have made it safely from Austin back to good ol’ Boise. I had a great time, and got to meet all the guys / gals at our Godbit dinner. I just wanted to summarize the last few days spent at SXSW Interactive. I wanted to highlight a few of my other favorite panels / sessions, that I didn’t really have enough time to talk about at length in my previous post. I’ll keep this brief, because there are already so many others blogging their Austin experiences.
Web 2.1
Making Web 2.0 Accessible: This was a great panel done by Faruk Ates, Derek Featherstone, Shawn Henry, James Craig and Matt Vande Voorde. The focus was to swing the pendulum back towards user centered functionality, and shift the focus from simply having cool Ajax effects. Shawn said it best, advising people to focus less on the letter of the law, and more on the spirit of making things accessible. Basically, she was saying that if all we do is trick the automated validators, we’re not actually helping real people – good point.
Standard Deviation
This panel was originally entitled “F__ Standards,” but was toned down a bit by the conference. It was led by Glenda Bautista, Aaron Boodman, Kevin Gibbs, Johnnie Manzari and Sergio Villarreal. Some of the topics covered were Gmail chat, and how by using non-standard server push methods, it provided a more smooth user experience than relying on standard, but largely unsupported methods. Another practical example was vertical centering of content, for instance on a splash page. As of yet, CSS cannot do this without a series of hacks, whereas a single cell table can with vertical-align.
Web Standards Task Force
This panel consisted of many web veterans of the WaSP – Steven Champeon, Matt May, Drew McLellan, Dori Smith, Jennifer Taylor, Chris Wilson, Kimberly Blessing and Molly Holzschlag. Their areas of standards expertise range from being on the Adobe / Macromedia Dreamweaver team, all the way to working for Microsoft. They basically had a very open and candid conversation about the adoption of web standards by browser makers. They talked about some of the upcoming hopes for the next acid test, as the Acid2 test is somewhat biased towards certain browsers. They also covered some hopes for IE7.
Dogma Free Design
This was a good discussion about getting past numerical measures of good design, and back to the basics of producing things that make sense to the end-user. They held up a laundry list of “rules” for the new Web 2.0, and then tore it up. My personal favorite was “It must use Ajax.” The panel was headed by Kelly Goto, Luke Wroblewski, Dirk Knemeyer and Joel Grossman. They talked about the importance of having objective litmus tests for large businesses, but also emphasized that once you are familiar with the process, it becomes second nature. For instance, wireframes are good to a certain extent, but if you’re a usability expert, you can just design in your head.
Serendipities
I also learned some random things while I was there. Here are but a few of the tidbits I hadn’t anticipated: The meaning of Kaizen, from Faruk. Ryan Brill rocks at bowling, Mike Rundle does not. Blue Flavor guys have their own bowling shirts. Avalonstar won best blog, 9rules won best community. Garrett is really tall; so are Jaredigital and Erik Sagen. Snook is better than me at pool, and so is Featherstone. Forty Media and 30 Second Rule people love shuffleboard. Alex Giron reads Godbit RSS and vice-versa. Joshua Lane of Pixelworthy has pink hair. Everyone has business cards and Apple laptops.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 Joshua Lane
Did it really look pink!? I was going for a shade of red, but it probably came out brighter than it was supposed to. Oh well :)
#2 Nathan Smith
Joshua: Well, at any rate, it looked very RAD. It was cool to talk to you for that brief while in the hallway, and to overhear the Pixelworthy crowd playing GameBoy while enjoying the free hotel beer. I’m looking forward to 2007.
#3 kartooner
Yes, Joshua did have some great hair. (sigh) ;P
By the way, it was fantastic meeting you Nathan and getting the chance to pick your brain about your heritage, amongst other things. It was also sweet to hang out with Cody and Nathan (Logan).
Joshua, you seemed really cool as well man. Maybe next time we can hang out more or something. Regardless, consider me a new reader on your blog.
Next year, ah yes, next year.
Also, while I’m not as tall as Garret (who I think is like 10 feet tall, give or take), it’s kind of cool that most of the people I met didn’t think I was tall, but rather in their mind they were expecting an elf of some sort. Strange.
#4 Nathan Smith
Erik: I don’t think I was expecting you to be a certain height necessarily, but certainly didn’t think you’d look like an elf. However, I guess I went into the week not knowing what to expect, since the only representation of you I’ve seen has been your pirate avatar on the forum. Keep sportin’ the Nike hat!
#5 Elliot Swan
Did it really look pink!? I was going for a shade of red, but it probably came out brighter than it was supposed to. Oh well :)
I wouldn’t worry about it, after all, guys like pink too. ;)
Sounds like fun, they’d better release a podcast of all the panels and keynotes, because I want to hear ‘em. Hopefully I’ll actually make it there in person sometime…
#6 Ritz
I don’t have an apple laptop!!!
Probably will soon… Just a guess.
Ohh, ya. Shuffleboard is the bomb-shiggitty. Next year there’s gonna be a Shuffleboard Extravaganza. I’m guessing around 8 people will make it.
#7 Aaron Post
shuffleboard rules
#8 Derek Featherstone
Nathan – it was great meeting you… And honestly, I’m not that good at pool – I think I got lucky. See you again next year, I hope!
#9 Nathan Smith
@ Ritz + Aaron – Yay, shuffleboard for everyone!
Derek, I didn’t say you were great, just that you were “better than me” at pool, which isn’t saying a whole lot. We willl have to do a rematch in ‘07.