Day one at Microsoft Remix UK 08

Firstly I should state that I come from a Microsoft background, developing both Windows and web based solutions using a variety of their products, attending their conferences, doing their qualifications etc etc etc.  However over the years I have come to think that although their products are very impressive, my experience has shown that in many cases the bells and whistles their products are launched with are soon followed by disappointment and frustration as you start to use them.

That said it was with an open mind that I attended Remix UK yesterday in Brighton UK.  This event, aimed predominantly at designers has 4 tracks covering developer, design, business and usability topics.  It was interesting to see Microsoft trying to engage with the design community, which before the launch of their Expression range of products, they generally ignored.

The main Microsoft presentations still had the feel of being preached at in church but the topic range was very good, with two presentations providing an introduction to Silverlight and a technical overview of the new ADO Data services available in .NET.  Bill Buxton gave two talks and sat on a design panel, where he discussed the importance of design and the use of sketching in this process.  For those familiar with user centric design this approach won’t be new but it was interesting to see an influential Microsoft…

Posted on September 18, 2008 20:15 / 0 Comments / Read article in full ...

The best till last at dConstruct

Well it was definately a case of leaving the best till last at dconstruct today. The final session kicked off with a dopplr double act from Matt Biddulph & Matt Jones, two of the main players at travel focussed app/network Dopplr.

With a great blend of jokes and retro tv videos this was entertaining while still being informative Looking at extending the boundries of your app by identifying and utilisng cross overs with other applications, this was definately the highlight of the conference for me.

The final slot fell to Jeremy Keith from Clearleft, the conference organisers. Usually this session would see a conference slowly emptying as people head off for an early train home. However Jeremy’s reputation went before him and the auditorium sat gripped as he took us on an in depth exploration of the system of the world and how the behaviours of ant colonies and bee hives can be mapped to human interaction. Countless examples demonstrated the sense of the masses and like many in the audience, I was left with much to ponder.

All in all a great conference, with a good list of speakers covering a variety of topics around the social web. Highlights were Jeremy’s and Josh’s presentations but the top award definately goes to “the boys from Dopplr”. Now it’s onto the post conference party before a very early train home tomorrow.

And blogging on the iPhone? Well its pretty straight forward and after a sluggish start I really got into it.…

Posted on September 05, 2008 20:17 / 0 Comments / Read article in full ...

dConstruct08 and the post lunch lull

So after lunch we had an excellent presentation from Daniel Burka, chief designer for Digg & Pownce on Designing for Interaction (link to follow). Lots of good examples for designing with users in mind, some pretty obvious but then these are always the ones you overlook in the rush to realise. Definately lots we can use in our projects going forward.

Dan was followed by Tantrk Çelik who talked about microformats and the need for social networks to be able to share a common profile. He demonstrated some good examples and hopefully these standards will be the answer to the age old problem of how to update my photo on 15+ networks.

Posted on September 05, 2008 20:15 / 0 Comments / Read article in full ...

Morning sessions at dConstruct08

This blogging lark is pretty time consuming and there has to be a more efficient way if doing this than I am following.

Blogging during the presentations is a none starter as you end up missing details. So for the morning I’ve decided to leave it until the lunch break and then do a summary of the first 3 sessions. So let’s go ......

We started with an interesting talk by Steven Johnson on the urban web. The first 15 min were about cholera outbreaks in London, which as you can imagine was a real ice breaker. However what he demonstrated was the similarities between research done into the source of the outbreak and that done with social networks, sounds strange I know but it did work. He then went on to talk about the need to be able to find content by location and the benefit location aware devices like the iphone can bring to the web and our social interactions online.

Next up was Aleks Krotoski of Guardian Tech Weekly fame. She discussed the common grounds between game and web designers and the lessons that we could learn from each other. Aleks was her usual enthusiastic self and had some useful observations, even managing to make some of the more academic elements pretty entertaining.

Finally we had Joshua Porter who continued on from Aleks talk to discuss leveraging cognitive bias in social design. This was my favourite presentation of the morning session with Joshua making some interesting points…

Posted on September 05, 2008 20:13 / 0 Comments / Read article in full ...

Good buzz around the room

Well here we are, we managed to get here without getting soaked. As last year there us a good general buzz around the conference. Looking forward to finding out more about Silverback, clearlefts new usability app. Looks like a def option for OLs usability offering.

The sub title of this years conference is “designing the social web”. So here we go with the keynote .....

Posted on September 05, 2008 20:12 / 0 Comments / Read article in full ...