Author: James Asher

I know, I know, everyone and their brother posted their SXSWi posts a week ago and I’m probably the only person who went who hasn’t finished posting, but eh. I mean, what else do I have to write about? 🙂

Behind the Scenes: Developing OS X and Longhorn

This was another instance where there wasn’t a whole lot of panels that interested me at this particular session. However, I say interested me, but I mean interested in terms of relating to my work. This panel certainly interested me, but more on a general nerd level. The panelists really illustrated the stark difference in design methodologies at Apple and Microsoft. Apple’s methodology was based on design first, develop later. Microsoft had the opposite methodology: develop first then design based on what your developers can accomplish. Being a nerd-conference, of sorts, there was an obvious audience bias towards Apple and I think that fact was visible in the facial expressions and general demeanor of the Microsoft panelist. Despite all that, I learned a lot about both companies. Interesting indeed.

Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps

This panel interested me simply because what I’ve been doing lately is web application development for our intranet at work. This panel was more of a discussion about current web apps, which was still better than What’s hot in web applications on Sunday. I really liked the visualizations that Eric Rodenbeck presented, however they kind of didn’t go with the flow of the other panelists. Cool nonetheless. A lot of the other discussion was about applications that I’ve heard of and know about like Flickr, LiveJournal, and ChicagoCrime.org. Incidentally, Chicago Crime was designed by Wilson Miner who went with Jeff and I. Neat huh? All in all, I really enjoyed this panel.

Burnie Burns Keynote

Caught this keynote late as well. Burnie Burns, whose name I had to look up to figure out who he was exactly, puts on Red Vs. Blue. Once I heard that, I immediately knew who he was. I caught up on web stuff while listening, but did listen quite a bit. I did a bit of explaining to Jeff about who he was and what Red Vs. Blue was. Neat.

Dogma Free Design

This panel was… alright. There was much talk about how when designing a site, you can’t tell “if you got it” just by checking things off of a list provided by upper management – it just doesn’t work like that. I think this panel had a lot of good stuff to say, it just came off convoluted. People would just sort of chime in about whatever, really. It’s hard to give a quick summary of what I learned because, well, I’m not sure that I can really contextualize what I did learn, if anything, for that matter. C’est la vie. Perhaps I should have gone to Secret Sex Lives of Video Games, sounds more interesting.

Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World

Everyone had talked about how Bruce Sterling always gave a great end-of-SXSWi-talk. Bruce pre-empted his esoteric tirade by saying that he was in a literary mood and not a very technical one, as of late. As such, he talked very abstactly about random things that, to me at least, made no sense whatsoever for him to be at SXSWi. I guess he had given great, relevant, talks in years past, but that was certainly not the case this year. Honestly he kept rambling on that I started to nod off. Maybe it’s because I was sort of tired and not really listening, but I really didn’t catch why he ended up reading poetry and crying at the end of the talk. Furthermore, I didn’t catch why everyone gave him a standing ovation at the end. Really, I just wanted dinner at that point. Meh.

So that was SXSWi, the next morning I caught a very early flight and headed back to Kansas. I want to apologize now to anyone who read all of these posts, I’m sure they were horrible, wrought with typographical errors and run-on sentences I’m sure. That’s the wonderment of the Intarweb, I don’t have to care. 🙂

Sunday we had a good time after all the panels; we attended the Flickr/Del.icio.us/Upcoming.org party and then went on to the web awards after party. I’m just happy I found out there was a back bar on the other side of the bar. 🙂

This post has been 75% done for a few days, but I’ve been busy with stuff. My appologies.

On to the panels!

CSS Problem Solving

I went to this panel becuase I had hoped it would basically give me some new CSS techniques I could use. They had some very good designers on the panel, most notably Dave Shea and Ethan Marcotte. Dave talked about having an image at the end of a link, vertical centering, and certain margin issues. Ethan talked about absolute and float positioning. Another speaker, Charles Wyke-Smith – someone I hadn’t heard of until I came to the panel, gave examples of different page layouts that can be attained through absolute positioning, floats, and negative margins. IA lot of useful information for any budding designer for sure.

Standard Deviation: Hacks and Dirty Tricks for the Web

Here is another panel that I was disappointed at. I thought the panel had so much potential, especially with people like Aaron Boodman in on the discussion. However, as I say, the panel was not as I expected it to be. It’s hard for me to sit in a panel where people advocate goinng back to using tables for layout simply because it’s a little bit easier than using CSS. I understand their argument that if things are too complex or fragile then you may look for the easy way out. However, it just seems to me like people aren’t trying hard enough. If there is a valid way of doing something, then by all means do it that way. I guess everything comes down to a sliding scale of when to deviate from standards. A lot of what they used as examples for when they deviated from standards were in terms of Web 2.0 applications that weren’t your standard web pages. Take for example Google Talk in GMail using undocumented ActiveX components. However, I will say that they did end on a poignant note: Always know what standards you are breaking and why.

Craig Newmark Keynote Interview

We got back from lunch kind of late so we sat in on this one in the overflow room. Quite honestly, I didn’t pay all that much attention. I have never used craigslist and I don’t really see myself doing it. I casually listened to his talk, but mainly I just got caught up with internet stuff.

Nothing

I took a nap. 🙂

Design Eye for the List Guy

The highlight panel of the day, really. This is the annual redesign panel and this year they tackled craigslist. Four of the five panelists made it to SXSW, apparently Andrei Herasimchuck (yes, I had to look up the spelling of the last name) was unable to make it physically, but was virtually there via iSight.

As for the topic of the actual panel, the redesign of craigslist. The common consensus was that craigslist was pretty good as it already is, it could just use a little tidding up. And, to that end, that’s just what they did; oh, and the listings page, too. I think their redesign, or realignment as I think they mentioned, was spot on. When displaying a lot of data like that on craigslist, you don’t want a very flashy kind of site, just something that is clean and easy to navigate.

One last note, Craig Newmark, the craig in craigslist, happened to be in the audience for this panel. During the Q & A he came up and sat with the panelists. To me, it seemed uncomfortable for Craig to be there – end of the first date kind of uncomfortable. He said he liked what they did, but that’s about it. He didn’t say much other than that. During his keynote speech and his short time with the panel, he mentioned that he wasn’t really in charge of craigslist nowadays. His CEO, I think it was his CEO, is really the one to talk to about these sort of things and that he would run it by him. Who knows. If I were a craigslist user, I’d be happy with the prospect of a redesign.

Again, sorry this was out so late!

The daytime on Sunday seemed a little less hectic. I think this is because I didn’t go to a panel at every offered session. One of my few criticisms of the SXSWi panels is that there are some sessions that are loaded with about 3 panels that I want to go to them all, but then on other days, I simply don’t go to any panels for that session because not a single one sounds all that interesting to me. Despite this criticism, I believe all of the panels are being podcast (available… somewhere?), though I’ve heard some or all of them will be just audio.

But now, on to the summary list of panels I went to that no one will read! Perhaps that last sentece could use some hyphenation… oh well.

What’s Hot in Web Applications

This panel was alright, I suppose. Coming into it, I had the impression that it would be about what it was titled. I was wrong. What this panel actually consisted of was three guys talking about their particular web app. The three companies that I’m referring to are YackPack which does a sort of social networking/voicemail thing, Meebo which is an online instant message client for the four major IM systems, and finally Zimbra which is a very AJAX-infused mail web client. At no point did they talk about any other web applications, which was really a let down. The only positive that I found was that I learned more about Zimbra which was nice because of my interest in Zimbra and more specifically their involvement in the Open AJAX Initiative.

Nothing at 11:30

Demystifying the Mobile Web

This panel reminded me of a advanced web technology class I took my senior year at Kansas State. We talked at great length about things like 3G and WiMax. So, because of that class, I felt I had a good understanding when panelist Kelly Goto talked about the more technical side of mobile technology. It was interesting to hear some numbers regarding the different types of mobile devices. All in all, I’d say this was an interesting talk, but at the same time didn’t really apply to any work I’m currently doing, or for that matter, planning on doing. I jsut don’t feel as though I create any content, be it for my work or for my own stuff, that necessitates specific alterations for mobile web. Things like XHTML-MP (mobile profile) or WAP-CSS just seem like overkill. I guess we’ll just wait and see what the future brings, you never know.

Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible

Talk about a wasted panel. This was the most unorganized panel of the entire trip. There was much discussion of the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and related recomendations. When someone says Don’t read the WCAG, read the Understanding the WCAG document, there is something flawed with the WCAG in the first place. Does that not seem obvious to anyone else? Accessibility, to me, is just like any other thing in web development, it all depends on your audience. If your goal is to publish your content such that the most amount of people can have access to it, then accessibility becomes a very significant issue. However, if you have a controled environment, say an intranet, then certain parts of the accessibility argument become moot points. But I digress, accessibility is great, but you have to know when it’s not worth it to deal with certain parts. This panel could have been much better if that would have been their message as opposed to “make it comply with the WCAG 2.0 or it’s not even worth doing” kind of attitude.

Holistic Web Design: Finding the Creative Balance in Multi-Disciplined Teams

Here was a fun panel, one I really enjoyed. The purpose of this panel was to demonstrate the usefulness of applying a holistic approach to your design process. The panel embarked on redesigning a site called Plazes. If I could find a link to their examples online, then I would link them but I can’t seem to find it. Because of this unattainable link, this paragraph about the panel just doesn’t do it justice. Basically, I’ll just sum up by saying they did a great job of redisigning and focusing the site. If I get a chance to find the online example, I’ll edit this post.Ah ha, the slides and actual pages are linked here.

Sorry for this being a late post, I… had stuff come up.

Update: I updated the post to reflect the link to the plazes information for the Holistic Web Design panel.

Despite the trials and tribulations of yesterday, things are going well. I woke up, got breakfast, showered, and took my nine dollar cab ride downtown.

The MondaySaturday panels were alright. Many were geared towards going into business for yourself, which I don’t really have any desire to do at this point in my life. Despite all that, I’ll detail the panels I went to.

Traditional Design and New Technology

This talk was was geared towards towards discussing the effects traditional design, read print design, has had on new design, read the web. This was a fairly interesting panel discussion, but didn’t really apply to me as I’ve never done any print design, nor do I really care to for that matter. It was interesting, though, prior to the start of the panel discussion the moderator said the opinionated one of the group would be Jason Santa Maria, however, the opinionated one ended up being Mark Boulton. We thought it was interesting at least.

How to Be A Web Design Superhero

I suppose I sort of went to this panel by mistake. I had originally listed Ajax: What Do I Need to Know? as my 11:30 choice, but I was under the impression that it was at a different time. C’est la vie. Despite that, this was still a fairly entertaining panel. I won’t say that it was the most interesting, but certainly entertaining. I will also say that they had the nicest slides I’ve seen so far.

The reason this panel wasn’t all that interesting was that they didn’t actually tell me anything I didn’t already know. It’s was basically just a bunch of analogies between web designers and super heroes.

Jim Coudal / Jason Fried Opening Remarks

This was an interesting session that I went to. Jim Coudal is the big cheese at Coudal Partiners and Jason Fried is the president of 37 Signals. It seemed more like it was about Jason’s opinions on everything, though. Jim mainly just sat in his chair and chimed in every once and a while.

The interesting part of this session was Jason’s opinions on development. Basically, he has the mindset that the faster you get to doing stuff, the better off you are. This contrasts many peoples’ idea that you should plan things out before hand. He believes you shouldn’t worry about things like functional specs and anything over a basic featureset for your product. I can’t say that I agreed with much of what he said. To a certain degree, he has a point. A lot of projects, particularly in larger companies or say the education sector, take a lot of time – too much time – to get off the ground and actually provide a product. So, on that wave of thinking, I do agree, but he just took the idea a little further than I would say is a practical idea.

How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting

This was an interesting panel, though a bit lower level than I would have liked. More or less it was a DOM Scripting 101 kind of panel. I don’t consider myself a JavaScript writer by any means, but to me, JavaScript is just another programming language. I know how to program, so it doesn’t seem all that hard to me. They did mention some things that I wasn’t directly aware of, such as using cloneNode() to create one basic node and use that cloned node as opposed to creating many of the same node. Despite the presentation being for more of an introduction to JavaScript, it was still good to go and get a sort of refresher on it.

Starting Small: Web Business for the Rest of Us

None of the 5pm set of panels seemed all that interesting to me, so I just went to the one that Jeff and Wilson went to. The panel was interesting enough, I suppose, but like I said initially, it was geared towards stuff, in this case starting your own business, that I wasn’t interested in. Furthermore, it seemed like it was just stuff you should already know before taking that huge leap of quitting your day job.

That was the quick rundown of the panels I attended. Afterwards we went to the Frog Design party located somewhere in the warehouse district. It was cool enough, I suppose, open bar, though all they had for beer was Foster’s and Miller Light. Also, they had no hard alcohol. Just wine and beer. Free is free though. We all left that party after a while and went to the South By Northwest party at the Iron Cactus bar. A quick tangent: we seem to always end up at the Iron Cactus for meals. That party was really packed, probably not all that many people, really, but mainly that it was such a small space.

I suppose that’s all for now, tomorrow I will update everything that happened on Sunday.

Friday was such a hellish day, let me tell you. Getting to Austin apparently is a huge task. Let’s quickly review what sucked about Friday:

• I missed my flight out of KC. I had a voice message Thursday night from American Airlines stating that my flight had been delayed two hours. Upon arrival at the airport, I was told that my flight was just leaving. Great. I then got put on standby and had to wait for the next no-show on a different flight. Thankfully that was a fairly short wait.
• Once I arrived in Dallas, my connecting city en route to Austin, and boarded the airplane, I was greeted with a 20 minute crying spree by a toddler, whose mother did nto seem to car one bit about the crying.
• Also, while awaiting take off, I was alerted by the flight attendents and pilot that there was a minor mechanical failure on the plane and we would be delayed. Great way to quelch flying anxiety.
• Once I arrived, I picked up my luggage and grabbed a taxi to my hotel. $27 dollars later, I realized I don’t like taxi’s.
• After checking in and relaxing for a bit, I called another taxi to take me downtown to Jeff/Wilson’s hotel, which is about two blocks from the Convention Center. After a 30+ minute wait in my hotel lobby, I again recalled my disdain for taxi services.
• The meet-n-greet we were going to a little later on required the SXSW badges to enter the bar, so I had to go over to the Convention Center to pick up my badge. After a good 10 minute hike around the Convention Center, I finally found the line. After 10 minutes, I realized I was in the wrong line. The real line was just a little further and I was out with my badge within 10 minutes.
• Jeff and Wilson headed off to the bar district, all of 6th street aparently, while I headed to the Convention Center. After I picked up my badge, I walked the few blocks over to 6th Street. I called Jeff on his cell to help me with directions to the bar they were at. Apparently, Jeff is not Magellan. Far from it in fact. So far from it, he could justifiably be called Magellan’s antithesis. 20 minutes later, I found the place.

After that bit of fun, the night was really spent meeting people at the bars. I met a lot of people, people who most likely won’t remember me. 🙂

Tomorrow I’ll post about the panels and such that I attended on Saturday.