Pat’s Point of View

Well what a second day! If I worried that the quality of the first day couldn’t be maintained, I needn’t have. Even the one complaint I had from yesterday (the temperature: in the big room it was freezing, in the little rooms it was warm) had been rectified.

And I thought there was a great line-up of speakers today, possibly better than yesterday. We started with Scott Berkun talking about innovation, or indeed talking about not talking about innovation. This was a great topic considering the myriad of start-ups, mash-ups and ‘new’ ideas that dominate the web industry, and Scott is an excellent speaker.

I followed this with George Oates and her presentation that focussed on Flickr and its history and underlying concepts. Very cool, made me want to have my own start-up and just begin experimenting.

During lunch I spoke to the guys at Gekko Images about Expression Media, and I have to admit I’m pretty sold on it. I’ve tried it in the past and I think it has the right combination of simplicity and functionality to suit the work I do.

After lunch, Lisa Herrod and Stephen Cox gave us two whole user-centred sessions. I particularly liked Stephen’s talk about using ethnographic research methods within a commercial organisation such as News Digital Media. He is the master :)

To finish off the day, and the conference, was Mark Pesce’s presentation on…well, on lots of things but most importantly the destruction of the ‘hierarchy’ by the ‘network’. This was more than just a keynote, this was a real reality check. Eye-opening, inspiring and scary in equal parts. I’m sure many people in that auditorium will do just as he suggested, and question why they are doing the jobs they are on Tuesday.

All in all, lost of things to think about over this long weekend (yay!)

See what people are blogging about: wds07

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This must be a new form of blog comment spam, but I’m not getting comments where people are trying to offer me jobs! How annoying.

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Day one of the Web Directions South conference made me feel good about going to conferences again. Not since the UPA conference in Austin had I been to a conference like this; congrats must be paid to John, Maxine and all the organisers.

The venue is great and the schedule is well spaced: a nice 9:00 start, morning and afternoon breaks of good length, lunch and sessions of a decent length. The exhibitions were well placed without being intrusive. The legendary WDS bag was also a welcome change from the normal conference fare.

This is the equal of—if not better than—any of the big conferences I’ve been to around the world.

And the speakers weren’t half bad either. I enjoyed the opening keynote by Rashmi Sinha. Slideshare is a fantastic app and Rashmi has a great perspective on…everything. I walked away with a new understanding of the various social media networks that proliferate the web. I also had a good chat to her over lunch (and if you’re reading this Rashmi, can you tell me why Slideshare mucks up our logo when I upload my slides? :)

I also really liked the talk that Andy Clarke gave on what comics can teach us about laying out web pages. Very cool.

Quite the serendipitous pleasure was the ‘Mobile 2.0′ talk by Brian Fling. Great stories and the case study of creating a simple but useful iPhone app with CSS3 was fantastic.

And to add to the day, the breaks were a great opportunity to mingle (yes I did say that). Despite my increasing distance from ‘web development’, there is still plenty to talk about and keep me interested. Hopefully next year we can inject a bit more UX material (although to be honest quite a few speakers were talking indirectly about user experience).

Bring on day two.

See what people are blogging about: wds07, slideshare, iPhone

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Please never say enterprise software again. I don’t really like enterprise software. Pretend you’re making consumer software. [...] Make software for people in big companies.

Jonathan Grubb (at CHI 2007)

So true. Engineers and techies who build the underlying system might need to think of the whole enterprise—in terms of performance, capacity, reliability—but when it comes to designing the functionality and interface, the people who will use it should be the focus.

Ironically, on the same day I thought about blogging this quote, I did observe a woman on my bus reading a memo entitled User Guide for Simplified Sign-on for XYZ Mainframe (or something to that effect). The memo was about six pages long, crammed with fairly dodgy looking annotated screenshots and quite a lot of instructions, with many bolded sentences.

I thought to myself, if it’s the ’simplified’ version then why does it need such lengthy explanation? By the look of that memo I would say it was far from simplified and far from anything I would want to roll out across a major financial institution (and yes, ‘XYZ’ is definitely a pseudonym in this case).

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Another day, another eight sessions! There were some good discussions today, both in and out of the sessions.

I received a heap of feedback on my presentation, all positive. The use of collaboration in web design and information architecture struck a chord with the audience and it was universally acknowledged as best practice. Almost as equally the topic of mentoring was intriguing to most people I talked to.

Some of the comments thrown my way, and discussions which ensued, included:

“Very open and honest”

“How much of the mentor’s time is taken up?”

“Just how much longer did the project take?”

“I liked that it was specific, not just theory”

“Delays between sessions could be beneficial, gets them to get on with it”

“I realised I’ve been doing that for ages but I didn’t know it!”

“What is the long-term future of UX teams within government agencies?”

“How sustainable is it? Have the mentorees become mentors and champions of UCD?”

“How do you get clients to go along with it [mentoring]?”

“How comfortable was the team with collaboration?”

“It’s unusual that the organisation would want to build up the skills of the team”

“Yeah but the problem is that once you train them up, they will leave and get an IA job”

I’ll roll these ideas into the next time I present on this topic, or indeed the next round of mentoring I do.

(Thanks to JJ for the photo.)

See what people are blogging about: ozia2007

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The first day of the second OZ-IA conference went pretty smoothly. There were some great presentations, really giving us something to think about. And the Mercure hotel is a pretty good venue, although the room layout could have been better (those damn columns got in the way!). I’ll write a proper review shortly.

And of course this afternoon I delivered my Collaborative Information Architecture presentation. It was quite daunting presenting to your peers, much more so than speaking to clients or people in fields other than your own. So I was a tad anxious, but I managed to cover the material I wanted…even if there were a few stumbles.

My slides are now available on SlideShare.

I decided to have an early night and spend some time at home, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow. There’s still plenty of people to catch up with!

(Thanks to James for the photo)

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This morning, whilst Jenn was at Yoga, I had a wander around Mort Bay, armed with my trusty camera phone. It was a great day for it and the scenery was ripe for some photos. I’m pretty happy with the results, which is not always the case with these phones.

The remnants of Balmain’s shipbuilding heritage are fascinating, and if nothing else it’s a pleasant spot to walk the dog or take baby for a stroll. I was pleased to find Ballast Point will be redeveloped to make more water-side parkland (as opposed to a Caltex grease facility). It’ll be a great place for New Year’s Eve and one less industrial blemish on our beautiful harbour.

At the moment, our favorite places are near the river/harbour and we’re looking forward to moving out of a flat and into a proper house somewhere like this, but I think we’ll be looking a little further down river :) Birchgrove and Balmain can be nice but way too expensive to get the space we want. But there are plenty of other great spots near the water.

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Don’t you just love the clever names people come up with for their businesses? I have taken note of some real beauties lately, including:

• Like Hart Spa – spa and beauty salon in Leichhardt
• Dough – pizza joint in Abbotsford
• Hair to Toe – beauty salon in Drummoyne
• Curl Up And Dye – another salon (can you see a pattern?), this time in Castle Hill
• Of course there’s the classic Dial-a-Dump, which I was surprised to learn is only a rubbish removal service :)
• Shu-Fiks – shoe repair store in Rhodes
• Free Stuff – additive free mini-mart in Five Dock

I’ve even thought of a few myself:

• Suds’n'Surf – combined laundromat and internet cafe
• KalashniCafe – even revolutionaries need good coffee. Note: it helps if you pronounce Cafe as “kaf” (like the Brits do) rather than “kafay”

Now that I’ve mentioned it you’ll probably notice them everywhere. It’s almost as infectious as ‘reading’ car license plates (eg IAM-26C = “I am too sexy”)…once you start you can’t not notice (but that’s a whole other story :)

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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg, in The New York Times

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Time for a big announcement folks. Jenn and I are very proud to announce that our little family will grow to three early next year. Yep, we’re pregnant and we’re just about to enter our second trimester! On the left you can see a photo of our twelve week scan.

Bubs will arrive in mid March 2008, not long before my birthday. We both have a feeling the bub is a girl, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Either way we have several names picked out already.

It’s been a bit of an emotional roller-coaster over the last year or so; trying to fall pregnant and dealing with disappointments along the way. In the end, I think the thing that made all the difference was Jenn taking time off work to relax and de-stress, not to mention a tropical holiday. When we were blessed with the good news we started yet another trip on the roller-coaster!

Mum-to-be is currently walking a tightrope of emotion; I never quite know how she will react to anything. However, it’s a beautiful transformation, and quite noticeable too. Besides the constant and severe tiredness and having to “make pee pee” every two minutes, Jenn is more relaxed and a bit more soft. It’s hard to describe and possibly only I can detect it but she looks, feels and smells more mum-like. Weird.

So now the news is out we can finish making preparations. We’ve been researching all manner of baby products for ages now, and in fact we bought a pram last weekend. Same with doctors and the like, I think we’ve been through the entire list of obstetricians in Sydney! We had chosen to go with the birthing centre at RPA but with a private obstetrician—for our first bub anyway—but after speaking with our chosen doctor we’ve decided to book into the RPA maternity ward as a private patient.

There’s so much to think about, just ask Jenn, I think she’s read every book ever written about giving birth. I wouldn’t want anyone else to be the mother of my children and she’s doing a great job. Besides coping pretty well with the tough first three months, she’s also budgeted for everything so we know we can afford it (what a woman!). No doubt there are going to be some challenges ahead, but nothing in this world makes me as happy as the thought of having a baby.

So getting the twelve week scan was quite exciting. We were a bit worried coming up to the scan but once we found out everything was ok we were so happy. Bubs was moving around heaps during the ultrasound and we could see her/him quite clearly. It was the most beautiful experience. Nothing like seeing your child for the first time to humble you in an instant.

Thanks to all those who have already sent their best wishes. We’ll have you over next year to see our new baby :)

Mazel, mazel. Good things!

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