While catching up on my RSS feeds via Google Reader, I saw that Google has greatly expanded the theme options for their personalized homepage called iGoogle. I really like iGoogle for a couple of reasons:
- it’s cross browser/platform so it works fine on my work PC running Firefox or (shudder) IE or any of my Apples (iPhone/Mac/etc).
- it lets me keep track of a bunch of key feeds, email, weather, etc all in one page while also having a Google search box
- I can easily scroll through all my ‘must read’ feeds in single box
It’s been theme-able for awhile now but I was never too fond of the themes they had. They now have a huge directory of themes, some guest artist themes and a developer guide on how to make your own. They are pretty simple to put together since they are just CSS and any images you’d like to incorporate.
Currently, I’m fond of this theme but will most likely make my own very soon.
I really wanted to do a proper, long and detailed wrapup post for SXSWi but I’m not going to because there was just so much going on and it’s still digesting in my mind what transpired in Austin. That and I’m really tired due to a day at the airport, flight delays and BBQ withdrawal.
So in no particular order, here’s some thoughts on what happened in Austin over the past week:
- this year was way bigger than last year - lots of people guessing on the numbers so take this with a grain of salt but it’s ’supposably’ 50% bigger than last year. So that puts it somewhere between 5000 and 10000 geeks in one place. This was especially evident since previously, you’d always run into people you know but this year, I know there were people I knew in Austin and yet I never managed to see them in the halls/panels
- I wished I made it to the I Can Haz Cheeseburger panel - they were actually giving out hamburgers to the audience
- 12 sessions per time slot does not work
- 10am panels are very hard to attend
- there needs to be more technical panels. Of all the ones I attended, only two could be considered (by me) technical and they were incredibly well attended - as in standing-room-only-geeks-sitting-in-the-aisles-fire-hazard kind of well attended. Of course since there was 12 sessions in every timeslot (plus other stuff in and around the convention center), it’s entirely possible there were more technical sessions.
- the panel rooms need to be reworked (again). Nothing sucks more than having to go from room 18ABCD to Room C - it’s like walking to Surrey from North Vancouver. I’m all for the walking but when you consider that a panel ends at say 11am and the next one starts at 11:30am, it doesn’t give you much time to actually talk to the panelists afterword, or with friends about the panel before you have to start hoofing it to the other end of the convention center to get a decent seat for the next session
- Twitter stayed up during the whole conference which is a huge deal since it was probably the number one web site talked about (yes, even more than Facebook and the infamous interview). Impromptu ‘Tweetups’ happened everywhere and were awesome. Your twitter name should be printed on the badge next year (everyone just wrote it on theirs this year)
- Internet access generally seemed better this year…except at my hotel which crawled. The convention center’s wifi was much more robust this year and they had a 802.11n access point which was great. Also more and more venues had free wifi so it made using Twitter and checking Google maps a breeze. My prepaid AT&T sim also got a good workout and thanks to some flaky hotel access, ended up costing more than it should have - see my $12 flickr photo for one example:
- Apple should have sponsored a shuttle to the Apple Store…there was a convoy of cabs there from the convention center on a daily basis.
- Canadians showed up in force this year. Not just the 20-30 Vancouverites I knew were going either….great folks from across this great land came down and had a great time
- Once again, the Raincity Studios crew had the best, most coveted t-shirts (read about it in the L.A. Times) and hosted the best party at the Iron Cactus. My second favorite shirt (after the Space Invaders RCS shirt) is the “Hacking is not a crime” shirt I picked up from the MAKE booth
- in Austin (and probably just for SXSW) the term ‘Ranch’ can mean many things. What I didn’t expect it to mean at the Pure Volume Ranch (home of the huge Digg party among others) is dirt floors covered in wood chips and port-o-lets. Moby and Kevin Rose didn’t seem to mind.
- Finally had a chance to visit the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas (outside of Austin)…been coming to SXSW for three years and always heard about it but never had the chance to make it out there. It lives up to the hype
- you can buy iPods at the Houston Airport from a vending machine
- iPhones were everywhere and mine at least was indispensable during the trip. From the wifi that was available everywhere, to the Google Maps locate me feature, it was easily the most used item I brought. Using the sched.org tool to make a customized calendar of sessions/events/parties to attend, it was easy to see where to go next or what our options were if we decided to change our minds.
- I was able to get a tag for my camera that I should have exploited more. Strangely, I saw all kinds of cameras (not just DSLRs) with the tag, including a tiny little lipstick-sized webcam. There also seemed to be some discrepancy as to who should get a tag as Peter was denied just minutes after I got mine.
- If you don’t like Rockband, be glad you weren’t at SXSWi….every second booth in the Trade Show had it setup and many events used it as a focal point
- Adobe had a sneak peak of their new Adobe Media Player in a bar with a live band and a skateboard halfpipe. Nothing kills a party faster than trying to demo your software on a projector in the middle of a bar AFTER a decent local band played while skateboarders used the halfpipe in front of the stage. Still surprised about the presentation’s inappropriateness and the fact they thought they had to explain RSS feeds to a room full of geeks. The Media player actually looks decent (if not a little iTunes-ish) but they really need to work on the promotion side of things and figure out who the people that attend Southby are
- Most heard/overused word/phrase I heard this year: ‘Fail!’ or used in a sentence: ‘Epic Fail!’. #2 was ‘iPhone’. #3 was “I’ll have another Shiner Bock”.
- There wasn’t as many MacBook Air’s there as I would have expected. Consensus from those I talked to about it was they were hoping for more from Apple - or technically less as they wanted a true replacement for the 12″ Powerbook in screen size (or even smaller). It definitely got a lot of looks and was asked to hold it many times. There were a ton of eeePC’s in attendence which was cool to see.
- I managed to head over to BarCamp Austin between sessions at the convention center and sit in (briefly) on the iPhone DevCamp. As if the fact there was too much concurrent content at SXSWi, the fact that an awesome BarCamp AND iPhone camp was going on at the same time. Too much to do, not enough time to take it all in.
- As if you aren’t already tired of me talking about the BBQ, all the food was amazing…well except maybe not that late night pizza from 6th street
- as I write this post, there are over 12,000 SXSW related photos on Flickr. I have about 200 in there.
That’s pretty much it for me and this post…as I said at the beginning, there is still a lot of digesting to do (bbq and otherwise) so I may add to this once I’ve had time to take it all in.
See you next year, Austin!
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of being one of the first people to get a sneak peak at something that has been in the works for a long time now. I’ve come to know a few of the people working on this project over the past year and have been patiently waiting to find out what they’ve been up to over at Strutta.com. They have been dropping little hints all along and now that I’ve seen what they’ve been working on, many of those little hints start making a lot more sense…like a big puzzle finally coming together as something recognizable.
I had my own thoughts as to what Strutta was. Given it’s name, the clever taglines on T-shirts (”What, ou think you’re better than me?”) that have been popping up at various events around town and the kinds of things people working inside do and don’t hide, I was beginning to piece together what was going on.
So what the hell is it?
Without giving away all the secrets that I’ve been sworn to keep, Strutta is a place where people that have ANY kind of skill (that can be captured on video) can compete with others to be the best at that skill.
Using a lot of cool technology, people will be able to upload (or link to) their videos and others will vote on them using a number of different methods. Videos will be grouped into ‘games’ which you then play by ranking the entries in that game.
What impressed me the most wasn’t this basic premise (which I’m over simplifying), but rather the myriad number of ways you’ll be able to participate in the ‘games’ without other stuff getting in the way. I won’t get into detail here (mostly because I’m not completely sure how descriptive I can be without Jordan busting down my door), but suffice to say, you won’t be able to miss Strutta when they take off. They’ve thought about this a lot and have all the bases covered. They also have a pretty kick ass team working on it too.
This has the potential to get huge because it appeals to people’s competitive nature in a way where you don’t necessarily have to be an uber-athlete to compete and the gameplay mechanisms are quite intuitive. Anyone with a skill or something they (think) are the best at can play. I’ve been racking my brain to think of something I can do. I’m sure I’ll think of something you can make fun of me over later.
Here’s the official, Jordan Approved™ screenshot of what the site currently looks like which I think doesn’t do it justice since you really have to play with it to get a feel for it….and I’m told you’ll get a chance to do that very soon.
Of course, the screenshot features Alexa as the ‘Best Guitar Hero Player’ - which is totally unfair because Strutta has a dedicated room for her to play GH in during work hours. She is so hardcore, she even dresses like the characters in the game while she plays. Their team meetings must be fun.
I’m looking forward to seeing the full Strutta unveiling over the coming weeks and months and people starting to use it. Great job so far and thanks for giving me a sneak peak!
If you’re planning on heading to Austin in early March to attend South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi), here’s a few tips that might be helpful to you. I’ve been twice before and this year will be my third trip to Texas. Every year it’s gotten bigger than the last and I expect this year to be no exception.
SXSWi is actually only one part of the whole South by Southwest conference. Interactive happens the same time as the Film conference with the Music one starting when the film/web geeks vacate the hotels. Judging from the pictures I’ve seen, the music part is pretty amazing but I’ve never been able to stay for the full run of both conferences.
1. Pack light and bring a big suitcase.
You WILL get a lot of swag (or at least offered it) so be prepared to bring a bunch of stuff home and give it to your friends/coworkers that didn’t get to go (unless it’s cool).
Since it’s usually very warm in Austin so you can wear shorts and a t-shirt most of the time and a light jacket at night. You can even just wear the swag you get to save even more luggage space….last year I came home with about 15 t-shirts. Last year was a little cooler and it rained but it was still shorts weather.
2. Bring/wear comfortable shoes
You’ll be doing a LOT of walking between the panels, parties and your hotel so bring a good pair (or two) of comfortable shoes. Hopefully they’ve changed the panel layout this year after last year’s craziness of having a panel end at one end of the convention center and the next one begin at the other end. It is Texas and the convention center is easily the size of a small Alberta town.
3. Don’t stress about note taking
This event is easily one of most blogged/photographed/podcasted events and since you can’t expect to be everywhere at all times, you should have no problem getting the full scoop from someone else. SXSWi also publishes videos and podcasts of many panels. Although these seem to be posted over a very long period of time (like months) and not right after the event.
4. Get your DSLR tagged
kk+ gave me this tip last year (unfortunately before I had my Nikon) - if you have a ‘pro camera’ (or something that resembles one) you may be asked (but do it if not) to get your camera tagged by the Event staff. This lets people know you’re taking event photos….however they didn’t seem to care about my little Casio point and shoot. This also has the added benefit of helping you get into some places you may not normally (think Press Pass) when combined with your SXSWi lanyard. YMMV on this one.
5. Plan your power usage
EVERYONE brings a laptop to SXSWi and there are so many Apple computers there, you’d think that you were at MacWorld. Plan on charging your laptop at night for the next day. As long as your battery is decent, you should be able to last through most of the day unless you’re Twittering the whole time. If that’s the case, expect to have to share the power outlets that are strewn throughout the place with a bunch of others. Forgot your power adapter in the hotel room? No worries, as someone is bound to have the same device as you and I also witnessed some of the event staff lending cords to forgetful attendees (again it was Apple adaptors as most of the event is powered by Macs).
6. Stay in touch
If you are going to SXSWi by yourself, be prepared to meet a ton of people - you WILL leave with new friends. Chances are there are already a few people that you know going. You can find out by stalking the Online Registrants Directory, and watching Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce for SXSW messages. You might also want to get some Moo cards and be prepared to go through them all. As March draws closer, there will be a ton of online services to help attendees get organized. Panel schedules, party planners and more will be everywhere. If you want to get a head start, check out the SXSW Insider.
You’ll also want to find out about your mobile situation. Depending on your plan, make sure you understand the implications of using your cellphone in Texas. If you’re from Canada like me, prepare to get screwed on roaming charges. Even if you forward your phone to voicemail, you may be charged the roaming fees if it rings through in Austin. A better bet is picking up a disposable (don’t really throw it out when you’re done) cellphone or pay as you go SIM card if you rock the GSM. AT&T has a cheap phone you can pickup almost anywhere south of the border for $10-20 that will give you a cheap local number while down south. I got my phone/sim from Radio Shack for $10 with a $10 credit (free+tax) then added a $25 card. T-Mobile also has SIM cards you can get from ebay but they apparently don’t let you use data on the prepaid SIMs unlike AT&T. Make sure if you do get a phone down there that you can find additional add on cards for it…the first year I took a US Virgin Mobile phone with me and couldn’t find the cards anywhere and they didn’t accept my Canadian credit card to top up online or over the phone.
Unless your company is paying (and doesn’t care), the pay as you go route will be infinitely cheaper than anything a Canadian provider will charge you. Don’t forget to change/disable/reroute your Twitter/Jaiku/Facebook mobile notifications as well as those can get costly when roaming depending on your plan.
That’s all for now….more as SXSWi gets closer!
Tomorrow, Friday, September 21st is the last day for voting on the submissions for panels at the 2008 South by Southwest Interactive Conference.
If you have a moment, it would be great if you could vote for Frank and I. It just takes a few moments to register and vote. See my previous post for the full scoop and panel background.
While you are there voting for us, why don’t you drop a couple of nice 5 star votes for Anne and Sande’s panels. They want to help make videogames more compelling as well as making games based on films that don’t suck! Check out their full details here.
Thanks for your support! We’ll find out in October if we’re in.
or something like that.
Just a reminder to check out my submission for a SXSW Interactive 2008 panel/presentation….every vote helps make it happen!
Get the full scoop here! Thanks for your support!
While you’re at it, why not give Anne and Sande a vote too! They have two sessions up for voting and which look interesting.
As SXSW 2007 was winding down, Frank and I were discussing the possibility of presentating at next years conference. We even talked to a number of panelists to get some insight into the process (special thank you to Jonathon Snook for the extended chat at the Iron Cactus!).
Once we got back home, we gave a number of presentations to various groups around the office to share the wealth of information we got from attending. This was also a good primer for us to see if we could give a presentation to larger groups as well as being the first time we had presented together.
We *think* we came up with a good topic to have a panel on and were able to get the submission in before the door closed (just barely).
Here’s the pitch we sent Hugh (the conference organizer):
Developers are From Mars and the Business is From Venus
During project development, the lines of business and web developers can often have differences of opinions due to the different ways these groups approach projects. Tensions can end up occurring amongst team members as unreasonable demands are made by the lines of business and developers provide excessive time frames & costs.
Find out how to iron out the differences between these two groups and see what career opportunities lie ahead in hybrid positions.
Frank Sandrin and John Biehler are both Web Analysts from one of North America’s largest auto insurers, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. They share their thoughts on how to bridge the gap between these two worlds and also provide some insight on what the future holds for job positions that federate the groups.
The panel details are somewhat abbreviated in the panel picker so this will hopefully give you a little more information.
If you are planning on attending (or even think you want to attend), I’d love it if you visited the SXSW Panel Picker (direct link to our panel) and voted for Frank and I (it’s in Frank’s name) as there are more panel submissions (683!) than available session slots (120) so every vote counts!
This year, anyone can vote too, not just alumni or registrants. You do have to register to vote but it just takes a minute.
The Panel Picker is currently getting hammered so try again if you have any trouble connecting.
A few weeks ago, I attended the organizing meeting for Third Tuesday Vancouver organized by Joseph Thornley. I had heard about the Third Tuesday events in Toronto and Ottawa and thought it would be interesting to get involved in the local version myself instead of just being an attendee.
I got to meet a bunch of great people (seems to be my theme lately) and even convinced Tod that he needed to get an iPhone (which he did shortly thereafter). Joseph has a summary post about the meeting as well as an interview with Tod explaining how Third Tuesday will work.
This coming Tuesday (August 21st) is the Inaugural Vancouver Meeting at the Soho Club in Yaletown (1283 Hamilton Street) from 6pm-8:30pm (thanks to Christine for making the arrangements). This also happens to be the actual Third Tuesday of the month which apparently doesn’t happen all that often due to the schedules of the speakers that attend. Tuesday’s meeting will be more of a ‘get to you know you’ gathering to kick off Third Tuesday in Vancouver.
Here’s the event description on the Facebook Event page from which you can RSVP if you are interested in attending:
Third Tuesday is a group of people interested in discussing social media — from podcasts to blogs, Facebook to Plaxo. Bring your ideas, gripes, half-baked thoughts, and business cards.
See you on Tuesday!
The 2007 BarCamp Vancouver is over and it was a lot of fun. This was my first BarCamp and wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
Friday night was the ‘bar’ part of BarCamp which comes before the main event all day Saturday. Got to meet and talk to a ton of cool people, some of whom I’ve only known via their online presence so it nice to actually chat over a drink with everyone…although it was unbearably hot in there.
You can check out this episode Tod Maffin’s Todbits.tv video show (direct video link) which he broadcast live from the bar….I make a brief appearance around the 8 minute point with my iPhone.
I stumbled home after the open bar closed up and got a good night sleep.
Saturday morning came pretty fast and I decided once I arrived that I’d try my hand at giving a presentation. The spirit of BarCamp is that everyone that attends should contribute to the event. I knew from the night before at the bar that there was a lot of interest in the iPhone and specifically how it can be used in Canada, not to mention the hacks that I had done to it - this is after all a pretty geeky crowd.
So I threw my name into the ring (actually onto a post-it note on the board).
You need to give your presentation a title and choose a room size (small, medium or large). I titled mine “Hacking the iPhone in Canada” and chose the small room. Then each potential presenter has 30 seconds to pitch their idea to the crowd and they determine where it should fall in the schedule and helps decide the room based on level of interest. When it was my turn to pitch the session, I just said my name, held up the iPhone and was barely able to say my session title, there was more than a few ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ from the crowd and then Kris said I was done and that I’d be in the large room. I figured it would be a topic of interest but was actually surprised at the level….well, maybe not surprised….I know how I was after seeing/using one the first time.
Now I had to put together a presentation (or least flesh out the idea beyond a title) in short order. I decided to just put together a Keynote presentation of the screenshots I had taken of the various apps and hacks and would just wing the speaking part.
Once again, Rebecca did a great job of liveblogging the event so check her site for the play by play of the other sessions. I spent most of the morning splitting my attention between preparing for my session, taking some pictures and soaking up the morning presentations.
I was glad to finally get to meet and chat with Lee Lefever on Friday night as I’ve been a big fan of the amazingly clever Common Craft videos he does with his wife Sachi. Lee gave a talk about the process they go through making the videos and some behind the scenes stuff. They should totally put out a dvd of all their shorts. His session is particularly interesting to me as I’m working on some similar video projects trying to help explain some of the complex insurance systems to others outside my team at work.
My session was on right after lunch and it was pretty well attended. I basically detailed the steps I went through to activate and use it along with the more recent hacking parts which definitely interested more than a couple of people. I expect at least a few new iPhones in the Vancouver area soon - let me know if you get one and need help or just want to geek out with our iPhones (this means you Robert and Tod!).
(Thanks for the pic, Duane!)
The session immediately following mine was PhotoCamp put on by Kris. I was actually worried that the schedule would have my talk happen at the same time as Kris’ as it was the session I most wanted to see.
I didn’t know that Duane was going to talk about his HDR photos and it was cool to see him go through the steps to end up with his great shots. Check out his HDR tutorial to see what I mean.
Next up was David Drucker’s talk on Effective Animation in User Interfaces which was very interesting. He compared different approaches Apple and Microsoft took in designing some of their on screen effects as well as a number of third party applications. Great discussion from the other attendees as well. I had dinner with David after BarCamp and we talked about different ways for him to post his presentation online (with lots of embedded video) so when it’s available, I’ll link it here (or you can/should subscribe to his site feed).
The last block of the day was all about Facebook. First Phillip Jeffrey gave a talk on customizing Facebook, privicy issues and related topics from the audience. Then Greg Andrews spoke about developing applications for Facebook and the upcoming Facebook Developer Garage which i might be attending if I’m settled enough from my upcoming move.
After BarCamp ended, David and I had dinner and then I met up with John (who had to work so missed BarCamp but was rockin his shirt from last year in support) and Rebecca to finally catch The Simpsons Movie which was a great way to wrap up a couple days of geeking out. Of course, we had to have a post-BarCamp/pre-movie beverage:
Thanks to all the organizers and sponsors that make great events like this happen.
As usual I have a pile of photos of the event and you can view the Flickr stream of everyone’s photos with the barcampvancouver07 tag.
While vacationing in Sunnyvale last week, I took some time out to attend WordCamp 2007 in downtown San Francisco. It was about the only thing I had planned to do while down there as I mostly just wanted to hang out with my friend Jason who recently started working at my personal mecca, Apple. The rest of my time was seemingly spent roaming around the Apple campus in Mac-geek heaven…but that’ll be another post.
Charles over at Bloggingpro.com has one of the best recaps of Day 2 of WordCamp (the day I attended) I’ve seen so I thought I’d share it. I’m always amazed when people can take notes with this level of detail while attending a conference….I certainly can’t unless I videotape it or something. Matt Mullenweg also mentioned that another great resource for notes from the event is the in the trackbacks on each session in the schedule as each one is a separate post.
While I found all the events of the day interesting and useful, here are a few of my highlights as Charles and others have covered everything very well already:
- Barry and Matt talking about HyperDB and High Performance WordPress - install WP-Cache even if you don’t think you’ll need it - this prepares the system for seemingly infinite scalability and as Charles wrote in his post, the benefits equal something in the realm of being able to handle 25 million pageviews per day - all on an untuned (off the shelf) server setup
- the efforts currently underway by Happy Cog shows that WordPress (Automattic) is serious about improving itself and is willing to spend the necessary time and effort to really take it to the next level. A number of the screens that were shown during Liz Danzico’s presentation on WP Usability were very impressive and addressed a number of long standing ‘wishlist’ items for me as a WP user.
- Matt’s State of the Word talk was also very interesting. There’s nothing better than hearing what’s going on in something you use all the time directly from the source. Plus Matt’s presentation style is entertaining and inspiring
- the BBQ lunch from Memphis Minnies was great…reminded me of the great bbq I had in Austin at SXSW.
- I wish the event was longer as one day (4-5 hours really) just isn’t long enough to get deep into some of the developer topics. This may have been better if I was in San Francisco longer as there were a number of events and gatherings outside of the actual event that would have been fun and probably useful to attend
Not sure if I’ll be able to make it next year but if the planets align, I’d definitely like to go again.
Check out all my photos from WordCamp 2007 - many taken with my iPhone and uploaded to Flickr during the event which I guess sort of makes me a live blogger like Rebecca.
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