a little drowsy, a little chilly. Bruce Sterling is a few chairs down from me, but I’m about used up of my store of fangirl moxie, so I just took his picture from a distance.
I’m mostly in this session to hear from the ginormous Veen about the uncannily addictive Measure Map.
Ev, Mena, Veen, eric r (map-based stuff for ????), somebody from flickr.
damn this session is fscking FULL. literally standing room only. glad I stayed where I was.
mappr, so that makes him from Stamen Design. visualization of IRC channel here. stoney. animated cab data, speed as color. whoa. C would FREAK out on this. project for exploratorium. “invisible dynamics”…okay, it’s time to plan a trip to SF.
mena doesn’t have anything beautiful to show. (except her own cutie-pie self.) iteration based on multiple products. “comment”? new product. looks/feels like livejournal, sharing with groups (friends/family) to key to getting next 300 million (?!!!!) blogging. APIs for internal use, unglamorous stuff like common billing, etc.
splashblog, acquired by 6A. the phone, instead of the computer.
“flickr is a big weird messy place”
instead of trying to think like your user, talk to them directly. funny quote from forum, what flickr is for.
UI improvments for the new. show don’t tell, again.
straightforward feedback cycle.
organizr. (I like it for sets.) she doesn’t use it herself, but probably will later. (y’know, I think I prefer the old version, because it is a space where I can see a lot of photos at once.)
Ev. “we work on audio stuff” — with the very femme up-tone! “I don’t remember my password”
hey, I wonder if C would be more likely to audio-blog than to text-blog. (he seems to love gtalk phone calls, and the phone in general.) or if Elizabeth might like it?
interesting discussion of how the tool effects the format, re: Odeo. shortform vs. longform; radio show vs. voicemail.
Veen on measure map. no use of pageviews. mixup of flash & ajax. it is damn pretty and quasi-magical. started with design, working very fast, multiple releases per week.
“the way to maximize user experience is unquestionably through iteration” — something to think about with book exchange? oddreview?
mena, something about a husband & a wife talking in a bedroom. :)? good laugh line.
now they are 125 people…how do you go from 1 engineer & 1 designer to a group like that.? partially by breaking into teams.? learning, sharing with other teams.
can’t learn until people start using something.? (not necessarily the public, but somebody!)
working with “enterprises” with MT vs. working with drunken Brad on LJ.? speed, caution.
MM slowed down updates to Monday/Thursday only, once they got users.
flickr releases stuff 14/20x per day.? any developers could deploy any tweak at any time.? hail mary mother of jeebus.
one of veen’s frustration as a consultant was not being able to do lots of little iterations.
kewl graphs.? not just crazy/wacky for wacky’s state…it’s a question of not knowing what the end state is going to look like exactly.? solutions may change the problem.? (hrm, 2nd quasi-quantum mention this week.)
scrub methodology?? from Ev, 2 week iterations.? scrum?? helpful in cutting down the decisions, not getting derailed by discussion, because you know what you’re going to do for the next week.
architecture of participation.
how many people talked to a human to book their travel here?? (maybe 10?)
clay shirky quote: basically, writing isn’t worth paying for.? ::sigh::
no difference between consumers & producers.
blog reading as gateway drug?
wisdom of crowds.? she’s worried, deeply, about being misquoted (mena).
selecting audiences.? some people at 6A were happier blogging to a smaller, selected audience, plus getting livejournal info.
odeo default recording status is private.? increased people’s willingness.
flickr, veen: live on stage! what’s up with interesting?
russian genius who saw patterns in data.? capturing activity around any given photo.
no photos on linkedin so it wouldn’t become a dating site. no emoticons in MT to keep it more of a CMS instead of a community site.
designing w/out stuff, or around stuff.? designing for flow.
veen: bottom-up semantic web?? indeed.
chicagocrime.org.
damn, I want to start doing interesting things again!? what does that mean for how I run my life??!!?!?!?!
mena doesn’t use greeking.
time for questions in the last 10 mins.
is that Meri again?? I heart her.? thinks important to design for the blank/newbie state.
eric: don’t need the word “just” — design is a container!? and that’s fun, exciting, etc.? I GET to design for something that flows, breathes, has life.
missed some stuff because I was chatting with c.? flipside to incrementalism?? can only get so far until you need punctuated equilibrium.? damn veen has a sexy brain. 😉
q: how do you build ethical standards into applications?
mena: export is big.? should be a requirement.? you have to accept that people evolve and not hold data hostage.
veen: example of feedburner: a big committment! right up front they tell you how you can quit if you want.? huh.? vs. outlook designed to never let you leave.
understanding the value of various kinds of feedback.? kinda like knowing enough about who gives writing feedback in a group to be able to filter it through your own goals.
what about release and “oh jeez that was stupid”?? and how do you get to the thing that’s entirely different?? things people don’t know they want.
innovation!
research as a foundation from which you innovate; rules of English as a foundation from which you write great stuff.? nice analogy.
mention of pattern language.? where are you getting inspirations?
books, magazines.? mena got her design training from just looking around.? another english major! abstracting craft.? (book to look up.)
it’s 12:30 so I should probably bail.
digital craft as a potter’s wheel instead of as a discrete set of steps.? spiffy.
how many people talked to a human to book their travel here? (maybe 10?)
Hell, I didn’t even talk to anyone to check in, never mind to book the flight. If I’d had a printer with me, I would have printed my boarding pass for the return flight at the hotel the way I did for my flight out at home.
damn, I want to start doing interesting things again! what does that mean for how I run my life??!!?!?!?!
Heh. I’m feeling much the same. So many ideas swimming around in my brain. I had breakfast with Elizabeth Perry this morning (ran into her in the elevator at my hotel). She was encouraging me to take my upcoming free time and work on a project I have in mind. It’s tempting. I also talked briefly to Molly (she only needs one name at this point, just like Cher or Bjork) about possibly volunteering for WaSP. I’d like to hang on to this fire.
(Flight home is delayed. Wish I’d known that before I booked out of the convention center so quickly….)
Hell, I didn’t even talk to anyone to check in, never mind to book the flight.
me neither. the funny thing on that count is that I did talk to someone during the process, to see about the AA flight discount for sxsw…only it turns out there’s a fee to buy a ticket by phone, so it cancelled out the discount entirely.
thanks for the link to Elizabeth Perry…that’s cool stuff!
I’ve had that kind of conversation with Kermit a few times; we both have these ideas and never quite get them going.
I wish wish wish somebody would call Mena out on 6A’s stranglehold on TypePad designs. Sure, you can export data from TP — but not in archivable form!
Being digital archivist, am SLIGHTLY FRUSTRATED ABOUT THIS.