It’s been a week since I got back from An Event Apart Seattle 2010 , and I’m still aglow about it. I know it’s something a cliché for conference organizers to say “it was the best show we ever done did!” but damn . It really was. That’s down to the speakers, of course. … Read the rest here
Every instantiation of An Event Apart is a joy to attend, but it was particularly enjoyable to be back in Seattle . It’s where my brother-in-law Jeb lives so I had the opportunity to hang out with him, his wife Anne and their oh-so-cute dog, Mesa —owning a cute dog seems to be mandatory in the Seattle suburb of Green Lake . After a couple of days with Jeb and co. , I upped sticks to the centre of town; the Edgewater Hotel, erstwhile host to The Beatles and Led Zeppelin—the origin of the infamous Shark episode , which currently enjoys a Snopes status of sort of . … Read the rest here
We’ve added a third job type to Authentic Jobs , specifically for contract positions. You can read more about the hows and whys over at the Authentic Jobs blog . I’m repeating the screencast video here merely to give me a chance to talk about the making of it. Surprisingly, this is only the second screencast I’ve done throughout 11 years of doing web stuff. I’ve still got plenty to learn… Read the rest here
I’ll confess: Every year, I’m one of those guys that gripes about SXSWi being too big, about the content being poor, and about the assumption that this year is finally the peak year and things will die off next year. Well, this year, I was pleasantly mistaken. I’ve attended and spoken at a number of web conferences here in the U.S. and abroad. Not quite enough to conclusively state the following with 100% certainty, but pretty close: There’s simply no other web conference like SXSW on the planet. Undeniably, there’s an atmosphere of excitement that surrounds SXSW that’s hard to find anywhere else. … Read the rest here
“The Future of Publishing” by DK (UK) : The original description on YouTube reads as follows: This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. We hope you enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there’s a surprise!). I echo Monoscope : This is genius copywriting. … Read the rest here
There are many reasons to go to South by Southwest Interactive: meeting up with friends old and new being the primary one. Then there’s the motivational factor. I always end up feeling very inspired by what I see. This year, that feeling of inspiration was front and centre. … Read the rest here
This year’s HOW Design Conference resumes in Denver, Colorado beginning June 9. Some of the brightest minds in the design industry, including Debbie Millman , Armin Vit , and Von Glitschka , will speak on topics that cover design inspiration, making the leap from print to web, copywriting, business plans, Photoshop tips, and much more. I’ll be giving a reprise of Good vs. Great Design. … Read the rest here
I’m about to head off to Austin for South by Southwest , the annual Bacchanalian geek festival. I’m speaking on a panel again, but this year, the emphasis is very squarely on having fun. MJ very kindly asked me to represent the British contingent on her How to Rawk SXSW panel. It will be a fun, if somewhat bittersweet affair: Brad Graham was also going to be on the panel. Ol’ bastard Death has put paid to that. … Read the rest here
HOW Conference Early Bird Discount Ends March 12 : I’ll be speaking, along with a host of incredible speakers . Use promo code CM10 and save $50 on the individual full-conference rate. … Read the rest here
One of the things you discover as a speaker and, especially, a conference organizer is this: Keynote generates really frickin’ enormous PDFs. Seriously. Much like Miles O’Keefe, they’re huge . We had one speaker last year whose lovingly crafted and beautifully designed 151-slide deck resulted in a 175MB PDF. Now, hard drives and bandwidth may be cheap, but when you have four hundred plus attendees all trying to download the same 175MB PDF at the same time, the venue’s conference manager will drop by to find out what the bleeding eyestalks your attendees are doing and why it’s taking down the entire outbound pipe. Not to mention the network will grind to a nearly complete halt… Read the rest here
I’m a bad conference organizer. Why? Because we opened the An Event Apart 2010 schedule for sales back in, um, flippin’ November , and I never mentioned it here. Cripes, I never even posted when we announced the lineup of cities. I could go through the great big long sob-story list of reasons why 2009 was really tough and blah blah blah, but when you get right down to it, I fell down on my job. Okay… Read the rest here
In order to get more people in the design scene speaking at events like SillSwap , BarCamp and even dConstruct or UX London , I’ve been toying with the idea of organising a free public speaking course. It would be held on a yet-to-be-determined Saturday at the Clearleft offices in Brighton and would focus on practical, hands-on tuition. We would start with how to plan, research and design a talk that delights your audience, paying special attention to story telling and narrative. We would then move onto the delivery and performance side of things; teaching people how to project their voice, vary their tone, use the stage and work the audience. It’s all basic stuff, but it’s these rookie errors that can damage an otherwise excellent presentation. To ensure everybody gets the individual attention they need, the even will be for a limited number of people… Read the rest here
This year will be a busy one in terms of speaking events. I’m currently crafting a brand new talk titled, “The CSS3 Experience”. It’ll focus on enriching the experience layer with advanced CSS and CSS3. Everyone can easily add enhancements to to their designs when focusing on the interactions and events that happen on the page. And by targeting the user experience with these new and evolving standards, you can start using these flexible techniques now, on any site, with less worry. Well damn, that sounded rather pitchy, didn’t it… Read the rest here
This is the last week during which you can grab a ticket for UX London at the early bird price. From February 1st, the price goes up by a hundred squid (and from April 1st, the price goes up by another hundred squid—no joke). In case you’re wondering whether or not you should go, wonder no more. Just check out the line-up of speakers and imagine three solid days of inspirational talks and hands-on workshops in their company. If attended last year’s event, you know what a great gathering it is. If you didn’t attend last year, talk to someone who did. … Read the rest here
Of the many things we do well as creative professionals, we often forget to think for ourselves, relying on thought leaders to determine what works for us and what doesn’t. Paramount in this failure to think for one’s self is the fact that these thought leaders often struggle to encourage others to explore new thinking without belittling their methods–or worse, ostracizing them–in the process. Whether or not the title of thought leader can be applied to myself, I’m just as guilty as anyone else. In ” 20 tips for better conference speaking “, I offer this short-sighted observation: There is absolutely no reason in the world you should use anything other than Keynote. … Read the rest here
It’s so easy to wallow in self-pity when things don’t go right. As much as 2009 sucked on all levels, it wasn’t all bad. As much as I want to sulk, the fact remains that I live a charmed life. Through some karmic luck of the draw, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Personal Projects This past year was a year of simplication and basically had me letting go of all my personal projects—at least for the time being. … Read the rest here
It’s so easy to wallow in self-pity when things don’t go right. As much as 2009 sucked on all levels, it wasn’t all bad. As much as I want to sulk, the fact remains that I live a charmed life. Through some karmic luck of the draw, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Personal Projects This past year was a year of simplication and basically had me letting go of all my personal projects—at least for the time being. I shut down SidebarAds, I never worked on Snitter, and I never finished Haylia, FontSmack or any number of other personal projects that I wanted to work on… Read the rest here
As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I’ve probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I’ve got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, UX London and dConstruct I’m really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I’ve put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. Most of these tips aren’t new, but you’ll be surprised how few people actually follow them. … Read the rest here
As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I’ve probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I’ve got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, UX London and dConstruct I’m really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I’ve put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. … Read the rest here
Tickets for the UK ’s premier user experience conference are now on sale . The great thing about putting together a conference like UX London is that, as a user experience consultancy ourselves, Clearleft gets to set up exactly the conference that we would want to go to. And yet again I’m massively excited about who we’ve lined-up for 2010: Bill Moggridge, Scott McCloud, Peter Morville, Liz Danzico, Josh Porter, Kristina Halvorson, Whitney Hess and Jesse James Garrett to name but a few. Details of the workshops are still being finalised, but you can expect to learn more about running Agile UX teams, using comics as design tools, understanding patterns for discovery, designing to influence behaviour, using metrics effectively, applying psychology to interaction design and loads more. UX London is designed to be the conference we at Clearleft want to go to, and that’s probably why it was so successful last year… Read the rest here