BarCamp is a (geek) conference built like a wiki, we can have a democratic schedule built on the fly.  Want to discuss a topic?  Any topic at all?  Come to BarCamp and paste your topic and name in one of the many timeslots.  At first I decided to be a fly on the wall and sort of take it all in, but then I changed my mind and decided to join up with Bram Piyoto and be an “assistant” presenter where design meets tech.  Hopefully I come across as being less of a jackass than I really am, here’s to hope.

And then came Sunday, while sitting in on a panel discussing hacking existing WordPress themes I decided to address a need of how to build a theme from scratch. Because I once wrote a post detailing how to simply build a wordpress theme, I decided to build on the basic idea.  But instead of discussing building Eleven3, I discussed my most recent project, HomeSkillet Records.  As I did it last minute, I had a little tiny room with about 8 guests, it may have been light, but it sure was a captive audience! You’re sort of forced to listen with numbers that small – but I hope it was useful for people.

Mmmm Brain Power

Anytime a bunch of geeks get together there is a lot of brain power getting kicked around, so that’s pretty awesome.  What’s great is the general goodwill everyone has.  People are happy to be here and love a chance to have their thoughts and ideas expressed or learn new ones.  Traditionally, other conferences are a little bit idol worshippy feeling, which is fine (cause I am so into Shaun Inman and Jon Hicks), but this one is the opposite.  There are a few “names” here, but generally speaking everyone here is just here to geek out, prettttty awesome.

I had a blast and met many people who I have seen on Twitter – it’s always good to meet people in real life. I am not a stalker.

Jeff and I got back to our room and I use the words “passed out” here, although it was somewhere between passing out and going to bed – do you know the difference? Anyhow, the alarm came quickly and we got up, showered, and headed down to the complimentary continental breakfast. We’re staying at the Hampton – shitty wi-fi, fantastic continental, take your pick. One more good thing about the Hampton is it attracts a lot of the industry “rockstars.” Shit, Jeff and I were there, and we’re pretty important. I jest, but the highly talented Shaun Inman was there and I did get to pick up the size medium American Apparel Mint T-shirts he brought. Thank you Shaun – it was an awkward moment, but it was never dull – my name is George.

After all this we made our way to the conference, what follows are my notes from the different panels/presentations, enjoy.

Design is in the Details

Naz Hamid started with many quotes, “Less is more”, and “God is in the details/Design is in the Details” Showed examples of design in details in many fields, cooking, industrial design, etc… Overall I think his presentation was really entry level. I wanted to be blown away and I was just kind of left with a, “well yea…” taste in my mouth. Oh well, not a bad presentation by any means, but definitely light on theory.

The one real world practice I took away was his use of different comps for different components of the site – this is something I will definitely try.

Checklist and Guide

• Experiment – Playing around with things in a few PSD files. Use the source files of the client. Play with color. Logo in one comp, background in another, navigation in another – don’t commit. Then start mashing up.
• Choices – Making choices on client needs, your styles, typefaces, and colors. Pick the things that are simple, most logical choices.
• Stay Consistent – Make sure homepages and subpages reflect eachother. Avoid minutae with clients.
• Completeness – Finish the comp and get it done done.
• Step In, Step Out, Step Back: Balance – Walk away for awhile – take notes when you get back about what is striking you – first impressions.
• Be your own critic – Address the things you may feel the people signing off will have issues with – compromise just a bit, it will go a long way.
• Complexity is Simplicity
• Obsession is Healthy – Dedication to the design, we put in long hours.

Thoughts, Breakthroughs, & Revelations – Let a design sit in your head and think about it. Not Billable Time.

Weird Turn Pro: Crowdsourcing for Creatives

Derek Powazek comes across as very genuine. His presentation was pretty fun and he provided some great examples of the good and bad sides of crowdsourcing. Now following him on twitter – he seems like a seasoned pro of “growing communities.”

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” – Hunter S. Thompsen

Three lies people who don’t get crowdsourcing tell:

• Lie 1: Everyone on the net is an idiot – well they’re are some idiots, but some really smart people doing some really good stuff.
• Lie 2: Good stuff is too hard to find – traditionally has been human editors. It’s gone from traditional, to non-traditional, to moderators. Or it’s computers, text search, and Google. Now the interesting method is the hybrid model, Digg, flickr. Discussing leaderboards and how it encourages users to game the system. Show a random swath of “good results” to avoid the bad results of the game caused by leaderboards.Wisdom of Crowd – Selfish interests that increase the overall good. Says that if we all guessed numbers of beans in a jar, 99% of us would be wrong, but averaged out, we would be 99% right. Simple answers are the correct place for using the wisdom of crowds. Also needs to have diversity of viewpoints. Design for selfishness.Learning from Assignment Zero – Started by Jeff How – “Here everyone, write stories.” Nothing worked because nobody wrote anything. But increase the selfish motivation.

“Using crowdsourcings as a cost-saving measure doesn’t work. Communities must be cultivated, respected, and managed if they are to create economic value.” – Jeff Howe, who coined the term, “Crowdsourcing.”

• Lie 3: You can’t make any money. Threadless example – be the trusted middle man. How do they do it?
  • Contests – Ego, Winning, and Money
  • Fun thing on buyer end – The golden tag on a tshirt, Alumni Club.

Cautionary Tales:

• Yahoo Games Wii Sites: They pulled in flickr feeds tagged, “wii.” Flickr users rebelled and put in tons of “yahoo sucks” type images.
• GM Tahoe Apprentice Campaign: “Hey who wants to help us make a commercial for our SUV.” To make the commercial, all you could do was use their video and pictures and change the text. Chaos insued. “The Earth is now your Bitch”, “MURDER YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY.” They put the participants in a very narrow box. GM was greedy with their content – you couldn’t export it anywhere else, it could only work on the site. But it actually worked – drove more traffic to gm.com than google and yahoo combined.

Community is Grown, Not Built

1. Give people tools they want
2. Trust them to do good
3. Reward Good Contributions
4. Punish bad contributions
5. Expect the unexpected – Flickr Geotagging the word “Fuck” over iceland.

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts

And this is where the crappy web connection killed my notes. I guess it isn’t so smart to post notes inside of WordPress while having an unstable connection. Either way – this panel was great.

First was Michael Lopp from Apple, he’s a product manager and seems to be a damn good one at that. He started off with some keynote issues, which was ironic, being from Apple. He proceeded to talk about Apple building everything like a present. From OSX being inside of their computers being inside of great packaging being sold at a great store being debuted by a great leader – yea, I could listen to someone from Apple talk about this stuff all day. He had some great anecdotes, which I wrote down – but alas they are deleted.

Are you comfortable being an asshole for the integrity of your design?

Then came John Gruber of the Daring Fireball fame. I read his blog pretty frequently and he’s always on point with thoughts on Apple. He continued to talk about the “blood, sweat, and fear” that goes into great design. In the end he stated that it’s ok to be an asshole as a designer – it means your more dedicated to your vision. Thank you John we all need that.

All in all this was a great presentation and I got to sit on the floor the whole time, which means it was a packed house.

A General Theory of Creative Relativity

You know how when you’re watching Die Hard and you just know that everything is going to be ok because badass John McClaine is on the job? You know, the bad guys are toast, he took a beating but won, and the girl who was in his life but couldn’t handle his badassnes when he wasn’t saving the world, comes back into his life? That’s like Jim Coudal – except he’s saving the world from shitty creative work.

“He’s a man’s designer.”

I would work for Jim Coudal, as Jeff said, “He’s a man’s designer.”

He framed his general theory as a spark between the known and the unknown, the variable or the constant – it was slow to start but then once he got going, he was on fire. I must say that his booking the band exercise was perfect for his concept.

At the end of his talk people had a Q/A round – this is where I decided how much of a badass Jim Coudal was. Again, I lost my notes, so I am going from memory. Small teams are better and meetings are bad news. That’s pretty much all I remember – sad.

Conclusion

First day wrapped up and it was unbelievable, each panel progressively better than the last. I must say with this year’s SXSW and the whole working for myself thing – I definitely feel a lot more happier in where I am at, it’s been a great year. I have also learned I need to take more pics at panels, doh!

Anyhow – I’m staying at the Hampton Inn with my good friend Jeff Reynolds – we will be kicking ass in one way or another (but mostly just representing the up and coming group, We The Media). I’m also looking to get invited to some really pretentious, exclusive parties – like I would be ok being the only one that is allowed to enter the room. That would rock. If you’re staying in the Hampton Inn or close – let’s greet up – it’s time to meet some geeks baby! Oh yea, be sure to get our grey (purple) buttons – they are pretty much fresh to death.

If you aren’t going to SXSW and are disgruntled, sulk the entire week at your current job so that your employer really knows how badly you want to go for next year – or – come to this site and I will be posting daily updates and pictures of all the crazy happenings.

Hope the world is treating you well.

Another question people (me) asked was “Is this your first time here?” This wasn’t so much of the giveaway as the previously mentioned, but it still is a subtle detector of a person’s conference going experiences. A more relaxed approach to this question is, “How many times have you been to SXSW?” This isn’t as assuming in a negative way as the first question and can be answered with a, oh this is my first time. And usually a conversation can be engaged after that.

Just a few surface level tips, from a surface level guy.

The Takeaways – In no particular order

Standards
We all have to set standards for ourselves and live by them. While lowering ones standard price to get that client may seem like a good idea up front (how else will you get the business) it has the adverse effect of lowering your perceived value. That means clients won’t EVER give you what you want. Whereas maintaining ones standard not only gets you what you want monetarily, it also allows you to have more influence over the direction of the project. Currently there is a project on my plate where this topic resonates heavily. You are worth how much you accept for, not how much you ask for. This was a very insightful message that I am all too happy to gain.

It’s about the conversations
In my opinion, 75% of attending SXSW is about the people you meet and the conversations you have. Everything discussed is relevant to either the job one is experiencing or the panel one attends. Many of the discussions I have with coworkers about the issues in our industry get discussed the entire conference. I can’t even describe the value of this type of intense discussion. I walked away feeling like I had the inspiration to conquer those things that bug me most.

** Colin Devroe from Viddler says it’s 100% the conversations (Reads -> Free Alcohol)

Balance
As with anything, balance is most important. The internet industry is no different. I attended a really good panel that discussed the merits of having a balanced business. The three balancing points described were; Business, Development, and Users. To launch anything successful, there has to be a balance of all these levels. Too much of any results in a friction that doesn’t need to be there. One needs to be really objective when analyzing whether or not they are achieving this goal. This is another topic that resonates heavily with some recent experience I gained.

We woke up to a sunny Austin morning and wished we had a few more days to stay, but work called, so we had to get all we could out of that day. It turns out chance favored us.

The Panels

Scaling Your Community
Jeff and I both arrived late into the first round of panels, this one was the second of the day. We are both very glad we made it as this was our favorite panel of the conference. It wasn’t so much of a panel as it was a speech. Matt Mullenweg, of the WordPress fame, talked about scaling a community. His talk covered four main points; starting simple, bootstrapping, letting go, and embracing it. No better person to give this discussion as his WordPress software is used by thousands of people around the world. Oh, and Matt is 23, which means he was developing WordPress while most of us were boozing in college. The good thing though is that Matt comes across as an old soul. He was the most comfortable speaker we saw and by the end of the presentation, the audience was eating out of his hand. I think I cried a little.

Dan Rather Keynote Interview
This panel consisted of Dan Rather being interviewed by Jane Hamsher. Essentially Dan Rather thinks the problem with journalism today is it’s lack of spine. I agree. It was really interesting to see such a prominent media figure in a room packed with geeks. Especially the fact that everyone walked out of there saying how good it was. Geeks are hard to please, and in doing that, Dan Rather proved his cross-generation appeal. Not a bad for a last panel.

So hazy in fact that I was supposed to call my girlfriend, and when I woke up in the morning I called her to apologize for not calling, and it turns out I did call her. Oops. Now she’s onto just how much I was drinking. You can take the kid out of Alaska, but you can’t take Alaska out of the kid.

The cool part about this whole SXSW thing is all the conversations that occur away from the event itself. I had no idea how much value would come from just meeting and talking to people. Last night I got to meet some of the people whom I respect and follow on the web. Welcome to Geek’s Paradise.

Anyhow, on to the panels.

Design Workflows of Work: How Top Designers Work Their Magic
This panel had all the necessary components to be really really good, but it seemed there wasn’t much depth to the questions. That being said, I am a big fan of Veerle and I had met Bryan Veloso the night before while in line for the Frog Design party, so it was cool to see them do their thing. I had no idea who Bryan was when I met him, but he was super friendly and invited me to come join him with some people he knew. That’s how my night got started. The panelists did confirm my suspicions that we creatives are a different breed.

Deadlines, Clients, and Cashflow: The Business Side of Web Design
This was a good panel to attend for understanding how to manage clients and manage teams. It was one of the thirty minute presentations that goes by really fast. For the most part it was a big long nodding my head in agreement session. It was nice to see all of this useful information in one place. An overarching theme which I think really resonates with me is the fact you have to have standards for yourself. A standard price, a standard in design, and a standard way you work. In not sticking to standards, clients can control the relationship which is detrimental in the goal of doing good quality work.

Ten (er 7) Ways to Run a Startup Like Ghengis Khan
I’m not sure if it was the timeslot, or if the speaker wasn’t prepared, or what, but this one should have been titled “7 Ways Ghengis Khan Conquered Asia and Europe.” I had a really hard time drawing the parallels between the what the speaker was saying and how it tied to starting a business. Maybe I just don’t have the experience. And I have to admit that spelling errors in a PowerPoint really make me question the professionalism of the speaker (I have really high expectations for these people, they are supposed to represent the elite). He could have been hungover, as was I, which would have made it extremely difficult to get through a presentation, THAT I can forgive. Sooooo I signed up for a Twitter account after step 3.

Uniting the Holy Trinity of Web Design
I think this came out as being my favorite panel of the day. The speakers were diverse in their personalities, but all had some really great things to say. I had the privilege of meeting Jonathan Snook last night (fortunately I spoke to him today as well, and he confirmed my reluctance to accept “You were putting them back” he said. ) and it was good to see him up there delivering his points with clarity. He’s a really approachable guy and I am happy because I got to ask him some questions one on one, which to me is much more appealing than the after panel sessions.

This panel really gave me some good insights on how I may restore the balance of power in the projects I am involved in. The holy trinity consisted of Development (me), Business, and the Users. Any time those get out of whack, a project can suffer. When they do get out of whack, politics come into play, so all of the panelists also gave suggestions on how to ease tensions or eliminate sed politics and tension.

There were five panels I attended. Each of them offered a different insight into the topic they were covering. More than anything they made me inspired, warm, and fuzzy. I think SXSW draws all of the rockstars in the industry and they do as good of job being in the audience as they do on their panels. It’s refreshing to know that they are still out there seeking knowledge from their peers.

Panel 1 – A Decade of Style
I particularly enjoyed this panel because it was really relevant to what I do. The people on it were all seasoned CSS vets and were able to give a perspective that many of us lack; history.

One of the panelists, Chris Wilson, works for Microsoft and he talked about some of the things he fights for with Microsoft. I have a habit of cutting down MS quite often just because it seems as if there is a complete disregard for standards. It was interesting to hear his perspective and the concerns he has, working on the team that builds the world’s most popular browser. Ultimately he worries about backwards compatibility. I still hold my grudge, but he seemed like he was fighting for the right things internally.

Another panelist, whom I had heard of, but only that was Molly Holzschlag. I saw her on this panel and also on the last panel of the day. I think I identify with her most out of anyone at the day. Likes a lot on her plate, is rebellious, and is very individualistic. She also has an energy about her that seems to help bring up the quality of the panel. I really enjoyed what she had to say.

Panel 2 – After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration
This was the panel that I think will be the most beneficial to me in the long run. Initially I decided to go to this one because I really wanted to see Cameron Moll, unfortunately he came down with the flu and wasn’t able to attend. However, the other two panelists, Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychart did a fantastic job of alleviating my initial disappointment. These two guys have been friends for a long time and their dynamic was really entertaining. They covered not only how to find inspiration, but how to maintain it and foster it. In doing so, they really helped me understand on how to become a thinking designer versus just a doing designer, a downfall I know I have, but haven’t understood how to change it.

Panel 3 – Kathy Sierra: Opening Remarks
Kathy is from Creating Passionate Users and did an excellent job of explaining how to humanize what we do. She gave a good presentation and unfortunately I watched it on a video screen, so it didn’t have the same effect. Either way, she highlighted on many things, including the common differences between the audience that FAQs are written for and the audience that actually needs real help.

Panel 4 – TV: The Next Generation
This panel was really interesting because it was the first I went to that pulled in some of my “other” background I don’t get to use too much, business. How do the new distribution channels, advertising models, and content providers mix up? Ultimately it’s a complex topic and it sounds like the linear model of watching TVShows at a set time is on the way out, but it’s a matter of when. I agree with this up to the point that some people don’t want to think about what they’re watching, they just want to come home and turn on the TV, no choice required. Some people do not care what they’re watching, as long as they’re watching something. You can’t channel surf through choice.

The other point they were making was that some content providers were to small to garner any kind of advertising dollars. While this is true for traditional advertising relationships, the internet provide a solution similar to what google adsense did for websites, would do for the web. Anyone want to talk? Overall it was a great panel and really got me thinking about the industry.

Panel 5 – From to Riches: Life After Code
This panel had Molly Holzschlag as well. It was mildy entertaining, relevant, but by this time in the day I was pretty drained and not sure if my attention span could handle it. There was a lot of discussion on if I am a designer, should I learn to code, and vice versus. Since I am a fan of doing it all, some of the suggestions were lost on me. Another thing I pulled was that you can’t be a hotshot coder and a manager…ughhh.

Until then.

Today we started off with breakfast at a Mexican Cafe. I got some chorizo, very good stuff. We then walked up to the capital building and checked out how Texas does it. It was a trip going to the place where GW got his start. I sat on a bench right under his portrait. Jeff took pictures of kids. Leslie wanted to go on a tour and I wouldn’t do it. Probably the first of many of my shooting down the poor girl. What can I say, I am grouchy.

Next up was the actual registration for SXSW. A really long line, a schwag bag, and a walk back to the room had us going through the schedule and deciding which panel we wanted to attend. Each day is broken up to around five slots, each slot has about five panels. Considering I wanted to go to about three panels in each slot, I am going to have to make sacrifices. I can’t complain. I definitely am going to miss some of the folks I would really like to see, such as Kevin Rose from Digg and Shaun Inman from Shaun Inman.

Around 5pm we headed up to sixth street to a barbecue joint and got some dinner. I had seen a belt buckle that I wanted on the way there that I decided couldn’t go any longer without being in my possession. It’s loud and obnoxious and Leslie says it fits me well, I also couldn’t let Jeff be the only one who purchased a “Southern” hat and got myself as well. No buyer’s remorse here, I am styling.

Jeff and I sit here, it’s been twenty-four hours since we have felt the light blue glow of the computers on our faces. We like Austin. Leslie had enough of us and went on a walk. Looking forward to tomorrow.

The other conference I signed up for is the RailsConf 2007. Now I would be the first person to admit that I am a Rails n00b, even a programming n00b. But the quickness in which stuff seems to get off the ground and the design-minded development community have me bound and determined to add it to my webdesign batbelt. RailsConf is here in Portland which happens to be very convenient for me. I think I can hit the conference center with a stone from where I sit typing this.

Now if only all conferences were in Portland, then I could attend them all. Just kidding, I want to visit the Austins of the world. My professional development budget has now been capped out. Wahoo.

I went and saw four different speakers. From the four that I went to, nothing groundbreaking, or new to me was presented. However, I think it was a huge value to the majority of the audience there. Out of the four I attended, I got ideas for more posts, found I was thinking in the right direction, and thoroughly enjoyed the celebration of geekdom that is webvisions.

What follows is my account of the minority of speakers I saw.

I have to admit, this is all from memory. I didn’t take notes in school and I am afraid I don’t take notes now.

“Rapid DOM/AJAX Development” – Jonathan Snook

Aside from my A.D.D., Jonathan’s presentation at WebVisions helped clear up whether or not the plethora of libraries available on the web are a good or bad thing. Ultimately he said something along the lines of, there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Hence, I have decided I am going to take on Prototype as it’s somewhere in the middle of potential and file size. Now where were those resources?

“Ruby on Rails” – Michael Buffington

I wasn’t lost in any of the other presentations as much as I was lost in this one. Staring at an unfamiliar coding language is a bit of a “deer in the headlights” experience for me. I am by no means, even good at server-side coding. But for some reason, when Michael showed us all how to create a game, he made it look easy.

Part of his advice was to download textmate for macOSX (recent switcher) so I will gladly oblige. I really need a simple language to turn the ideas in my head into actual applications. I know this will be no fast ride, but I am definitely jumping on the bandwagon.

He also made a, “who cares about internet explorer users,” comment which is something I have been thinking myself (having some eleven3.com IE issues). I chuckled.

Thank you Michael.

“Tagging in the Real Web World” – Thomas Vander Wal

It was a trip watching Thomas Vander Wal speak, I kept thinking, “this is the guy who coined folksonomy.” He’s a bit of a celebrity in my industry. I also couldn’t believe I didn’t bring a notepad, a laptop, or a camera. And then it came to me, “CELLPHONE!” Hence the grainy photo you see here.

The topic of his speech was tagging. I find myself thinking a lot about tagging and the outright awesomeness that encompasses it. I freak out a bit when trying to tell people why they should use del.icio.us or some other social bookmarking service. It’s relevant data, and it’s a lot of it.

Thomas also brought up the two sides of the coin that I have often explained to people, why users are doing it for themselves (which makes it useful), and the fruits they reap (tag-based rss feeds). Of course he went more in depth to the how’s and why’s, but for me it affirmed many of my suspicions (like the fact tag clouds suck), and it was really nice to hear it dissected by someone as prominent as him.

** As the memory comes closer to present time, the posts get longer. Imagine that.

“Social Metadata and the Relevance Revolution” – Gene Smith

Gene is from the middle of nowhere, Canada, and being from the middle of nowhere Alaska, I felt like we should play hockey or get drunk and fight. None of that happened, but I was entertained by some audience participation and discussion of socially constructed information architectures (as he said, fancy websites).

Essentially he discussed certain elements of highly trafficked websites, elements that were created by the site for visitors to use. At some point in the process the visitors take over and the elements become useful.

He had a graph that explained surfer actions, from personal to participatory on the y-axis, and low to high engagement on the x-axis. This activity I am doing right now? Half selfish, half social good, and my engagement is very high. Cool, a paradigm to explain why we do all of this internet stuff, and how ego-centric it all is.

He went on, I am done giving his presentation an injustice, the rest of it can be view here (PDF).

–

So what did I think? I think WebVisions was very cool. Granted my conference experience is very limited. But I just can’t help but love a salesguy-less conference about the internet. It was the real issues presented by real people. Thanks to all of the speakers and the folks at WebVisions. I will definitely be there next year.