SXSW Notes

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1130

Bryan Veloso, Avalonstar
Jeff Croft, Web Designer, World Online
Veerle Pieters, CEO/Graphic/Web Designer, Duoh! nv
Kelsey Ruger, Dir Tech & Creative Svcs, The Moleskin

Playing Unreal Tournament at work focuses your design acumen.
Veerle has a great accent.

[I left this panel because it was lame (at least in the beginning) as they were just talking about what they personally found to be good work environs – not methods, tricks, hints, etc.]

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1000

Ben Combee, Sr Software Developer, Palm Inc
David Richard, Pres, Design For Use LLC
Adam Zbar, CEO, Zannel
Jeff Beckham, Sr Business Mgr-Strategy, AT&T
Denise Burton, Principal Designer, Frog Design

Design considerations: control, branding, standards, and trust

Figure out how .mobi works. Do they just proxy sites or host unique copies or is it merely another domain?

User expectations: From device environment to environment, users expectations change and are dependent upon which direction they are traveling.

Since input limitations differ from device to device, try to minimize the amount of data the user needs to input. For example, pull as much (or assume) information from context. Example: Steve Jobs sending the image to the friend he is on the phone with.

Asking for information should have immediate and visible value for the user. If you ask for a mobile number, the user should know why and how this information will be benefitting her/him.

Europe and Asia are ahead of North America on this.

Sunday, March 11th 5:00 pm

Gina Trapani
Molly Ditmore  Molly Bloom
Matthew Haughey  MetaFilter
Annalee Newitz   Freelance Writer
Penelope Trunk  Brazen Careerist 

Shouldn’t my work sell itself? I don’t want to become a spammer.

If you want to be able to support yourself, you need to make the intellectual leap that what you look like and present yourself matters. You don’t have to go over the top, but you still need to have some sort of plan. You need to be a sales person – don’t call it sales, it is networking. You need to be able to get your work in front of the ppl that need to see it or need it.

It is hard (as a nerd) to go up to ppl and sell yourself or your stuff. It’s hard because it is you vs. selling some other company product that isn’t you.

Really important in marketing yourself – “The Elevator Pitch” – What do you do?
Concise carefully practiced statement about what you do. What is it you do – not what you don’t do. Your mother should be able to understand it. Practicing it is important.

Takes time to get your name out there.

Just as important to be a good listener as it is to talk about yourself – don’t be the creepy person that just keeps talking about their website. Avoid backash.

random cool site: http://www.videosift.com/

You need to find that level where it isn’t simply self-promotion, but finding places relevant to post your stuff. Rule of thumb: more than one or two venues is probably too much.

Getting to the right ppl is the most important.

Play a little hard to get – some allure to being busy.

Important to chose jobs that take you on the right career path.
You don’t have to put EVERYTHING on your resume. The crap stuff doesn’t need to show up.

Much fear and hunger when starting. Create a plan for the inbetween. Think about goals and find a way to balance it out and who you need to market to to do that. Where do I want to go with this and how do I spend my time? 2 yrs 5 yrs

If you can’t get that dream job, do it yourself. Create your own site and create that track record.

50% of your time should be promotion and marketing – need to be patient.

Need to be ready for rejection.

Sunday, March 11th @ 3:30 pm 

Steven Champeon   CTO,   hesketh.com Inc 

Antisocial networking – dealing with online abuse

http://hesketh.com/presentation/sxsw/2007

Spam: uncolicited bule e-mail
About CONSENT not content – i don’t care who you are, i didn’t give you permimssion to send to me
Better title: messaging abuse
Did I ask for this?

Why does it matter?
10 to 1 spam to legit email
splogs also rising
419 scams

Whose to blame?
criminal gangs virus writers
pornographers
illegal pharm
mainsleaze – commercial mailers

Where does spam come from?
botnets
static networks
companies w/bad list management (oops)
open proxies and relays

At any moment in time there are 10’s of thousands of botnet computers out there

Trackback and Comment Spam
trying to get message out
piggyback on your openness
can deliver payloads
creates barrier to entry for newbies

What to do
secure your computer
spam filter
content filter (doomed to fail)
ISP outbound filters
lawsuits – criminal charges against spammers

don’t abandone email addresses or blogs

Sunday, March 11th @ 2:00 pm

Brian Fling   Dir of Strategy,   Blue Flavor 

http://www.blueflavor.com/sxsw2007 (presentation slides available)

http://mobiledesign.org

Why Mobile Web?

Mobile Web: The collective term for wesites designed for viewing on a mobile device. Websites are published and accessed via the Internet just like a regular desktop website.

How big is the mobile web?
mobile subscribers = 1/3 of the planet
mobile web access = 1/5 of the planet
more ppl have access to mobile web vs. actual desktop web

By 2010 1/2 of planet will have access to mobile web
60% of mobile users use their device to access the internet at least 1x/month

“Mobile will revolutionize the way we gather and interact with information in the next few years – mobile has the ability to meet any people through any medium”

LBS – location based services
the ability for a mobile device to provide info that is relevant to it’s physical locations via GPS
Prepare for truly contextual web.

Creating a Mobile Web Strategy

-Cost – if you don’t develp your mobile site responsibly the user could get stuck with a big bill to view your content
-Content – issues like navigation image size pg weight are very important

Mobile Information Architecture
keep it simple!
-limit categories to 5
-limit links to 10
-no more than 5 levels deep
-at least one content item/catetory
-prioritize content

Clickstreams for users are required by many mobile service providers and very important for mobiel design

Mobile Web Design
more compatible (simple) to richer experiences (pretty)
More complex you get the fewer devices you can support
Best place to live is right in the middle (xhtml & css)
provide good user experience and suport max number of devices

many more barriers to get to your site on a mobile (device ui -> app ui -> gatewate design -> content design_

Many screen sizes – find the medium leve and design to it

Three types of phone – feature phones, smart phones, pda’s
feature phones have largest market share – do NOT design for smart phones and pda’s

pay attention to directional orienation – down often times goes scroll down and select next link

“The canvas migh not be as robust, but there is still a need for designers.”

Understanding Mobile Web Standards
XHTML-MP – subset of xhtml basic and html. Used as a primary markup language for WAP 2.0 protocol

XHTML-MP and XHTML are virtually indistinguisable
predominant language for mobiel web
possible to use standard tools to create pages
transition to mobile web is easy
supported by all mobile service providers

Wireless CSS
wireless CSS suppports most CSS attributes, but not ALL of them
more advanced styling techniques won’t likely work across multiple mobile browsers
keep your CSS as simple as possible
use document styles vs. style sheets

WC3
Mobile Web Best Practices
MobileOK
Device Description

“One Web” principle of making the same info and services to users regardless of the device used. – This is a very misunderstood, misused and commonly debated concept.

Getting Started w/XHTML-MP
correct encoding (slightly different)
use well-formed code (check mobile web browsers)
avoid tables for layout
put navigation into content body
use accesskey in primary navigation (phone number buttons)
use ordered lists for navigation (helpful w/accesskeys)
doc styles no external styles – because of the order that things are loaded on a mobile device (don’t have to wait for style to load)
link phone numbers <a href=”tel:1234567″>
forms tricky – must dictate what type of data goes into a field

Mobile Publishing
options: mobile stylesheets or create a mobile specific site
-mobile styles aren’t always the way to go because it relies on hiding content that the user needs to download anyway

Devices and Browsers
500 devices sold each yr.
over 50 mobile browsers

Focus on Five devices and you’ll be fine
Nokia series 40 – Razr – LG/Samsung freeby phone – Treo or smartphone

Publishing methods
mobile-specific URL
detect mobile device automatically & redirect to location
use mobile TLD (.mobi)
SMS query that returns a url called WAP push.

Device Detection
keep it simple! only one mobile spec – then ramp up if necessary

Testing
desktop test – best place to start
Browser tools (UA switcher)
Emulators
http://deviceanywhere.com

http://mr.dev.mobi – very helpful site giving info about sites and if they comply etc.

Sunday, March 11th @ 11:30 am

Bryan Veloso  Avalonstar
Jeff Croft   Web Designer,   World Online
Veerle Pieters   CEO/Graphic/Web Designer,   Duoh! nv
Kelsey Ruger   Dir Tech & Creative Svcs,   The Moleskin 

http://designworkflows.campfirenow.com/70269 – session chat (?)

Anatomy of a web design
no formula for this
designers have diverse set of skillsets that help you work

Have to have fun at what you do and have a life outside of what you do!

Typical day:
Most need music playing when doing design
Different environments to work – depends on you.

What influenced how you work and get through the day?
Veerle: previously print designer so internet changed everything

GTD – Getting Things Done – must stick to it for task management

Use basecamp to manage projects and set milestones sketchbooks

When working at home pretend like they don’t work at home (get dressed go to “work”)

Veerle: Culture comes into play – americans are better about feedback – warmer. Time difference makes it harder.

People Influence
Anyone around you influences design
————————————
Left Session Early

Sunday, March 11th @ 10:00 am

Rodney Gibbs  Amaze Entertainment (acquired by Foundation 9 Entertainment)
Rich LeGrand   Pres,   Charmed Labs
Bob Sabiston   Pres,   Flat Black Films
Paul Slocum  Tree Wave 

Le Grand – Charmed Labs Robotics
Hacking the gameboy
Why? Wanted to build a robot, needed cheap computer to run it (motors controls etc.)
Nobody would make a computer for <$100
GBA fit the bill

Created the Xport to get info out of the GBA
The Xport took reverse engineering of the game port.
Possible issues in selling the device (patents, copyright, etc.)

Contracted with botball.org – nonprofit robotics competition for high school students

Slocum – 3Wave (band)
Uses old computer equipment and video game equipment (atari, printers, commodore) from the 80’s to make music
Epson from 1985 reprogrammed firmware, sound generated from print head hitting the paper

Atari 2600 used to make sound/video (game: Combat)

Sabiston
Nintendo DS Homebrew App
Paint animation software for DS.
Can save drawings/animations straight to website w/DS wifi
Use DS mic for recording audio for animations

Uses app to make large prints of pixel images

GBAdev.org – DSdev.org