Clearleft has been running dConstruct since 2005. You can still visit the site for each year: 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Right from the first event, we recorded and released a podcast of the talks—thanks to Drew ’s l33t audio skillz—and all of those audio files are still online. That’s quite a collection of aural goodies. So we decided to put them all together in one place. I give you… The dConstruct Audio Archive . … Read the rest here
There’s a lot of nonsense being written about conferences at the moment; so as a regular speaker, organiser and attendee of both free and paid for events, I thought I’d redress the balance. First off there is a big difference between community driven events and professional conferences. I started a free monthly event called SkillSwap way back in the early naughties and know a stack of people who run similar events now. These FREE events tend to rely on local speakers (who typically don’t charge), community organisers (who work for free), venue donations (usually from companies or community groups) and the occasional spot of sponsorship to pay for beer and pizza. These FREE events have grown from small local happenings into large community events like HackDay , BarCamp and Design Jam … Read the rest here
dConstruct is over for another year. It was, once again, a day packed full of far-reaching ideas and thought-provoking presentations. Even if you didn’t necessarily agree with everything a speaker had to say, you certainly got plenty of food for thought. I was playing compere for the day, which was an absolute pleasure. I thoroughly enjoyed every talk, though some of them polarised the audience. It was interesting to see some people rate a talk as their favourite—Don Norman’s or Kelly’s, for example—only to have the very same talks dismissed by other people… Read the rest here
I’m living inside Keynote these days. I’ve got a string of speaking engagements coming up and I’m freaking out about all of them. The big one is the full-day dConstruct workshop I’ll be leading called Responsive Enhancement . I’ve been working on it solidly for the last month and I hope that it’s all going to come together this week. I’m quite excited about it. … Read the rest here
Tickets for dConstruct 2011 went on sale last Tuesday. Tickets for dConstruct 2011 also sold out last Tuesday. That’s kinda crazy: a conference for almost 800 people selling out in one day! I think it’s partly down to the great reputation that dConstruct has established for itself over the year’s as the thinking geek’s gathering. But I think it must mostly be down to the fantastic line-up of speakers : Don Norman , Frank Chimero , Kevin Slavin …it’s going to be quite a day! If you didn’t manage to get a ticket, don’t despair. Technically, there are still some tickets available… Read the rest here
June was a busy month. I went to Newcastle for the DIBI conference , which was quite excellent. I was very pleased with the talk I gave—called “ One Web ”. I think the talks were recorded on video so I hope they’ll be showing up on a video-sharing site before too long. I spoke on the Using Blue podcast about all sorts of design- and development-related topics. … Read the rest here
PaintbrushJS Playground : I
In a fantastically timed bit of linkbait, Ryan Carson called bullshit on the title of “UX Professional” while attending the dConstruct conference we organise in Brighton. At the conference we announced that we were hiring a Senior User Experience Designer so it would be easy to put two and two together and assume that he was calling us out. However I actually understand where he’s coming from. I don’t agree with him mind, but I do understand. Back in the early days of the web you just had web designers… Read the rest here
In just over seven weeks
I’m extremely proud to say that two weeks ago Fontdeck opened its doors to the type-loving public. It’s been a long time in coming – too long I’d admit – but Fontdeck is now live and I’m hugely excited about what’s to come. To the uninitiated, Fontdeck is a webfont service, that is to say it hosts fonts licensed for use with @font-face font linking. This means is that web designers finally have an alternative to the standard web fonts of Georgia, Verdana, Arial et al, and can now safely choose from hundreds of fonts to use as real text on a website; no images, no Flash, no JavaScript required. Jon Tan and I had the idea for Fontdeck back in early 2009. Speaking together at a SkillSwap in Brighton, it transpired we shared the same notions on how webfonts might be delivered. … Read the rest here
dConstruct 2010 : Having spoken at this conference before, I can vouch for a quality conference put on by Clearleft each year. And the design of this year
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
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
During the short time that I was at dConstruct , I nipped out with Paul and Marcus to record a quick interview about HTML5. That interview has now been published in the latest episode of Boagworld , complete with transcript. Just to show how fast HTML5 can move, on the very day that we were chatting about the content model of the footer element , the spec was duly updated. Boagworld 184: html5 on Huffduffer Speaking of podcasting and dConstruct… Thanks to always excellent Drew , the audio recordings from the day are starting to roll in. You can keep an eye on the podcast page or simply subscribe to the podcast to get all the aural goodness. … Read the rest here
During the short time that I was at dConstruct , I nipped out with Paul and Marcus to record a quick interview about HTML5. That interview has now been published in the latest episode of Boagworld , complete with transcript. Just to show how fast HTML5 can move, on the very day that we were chatting about the content model of the footer element , the spec was duly updated. Boagworld 184: html5 on Huffduffer Speaking of podcasting and dConstruct… Thanks to always excellent Drew , the audio recordings from the day are starting to roll in. You can keep an eye on the podcast page or simply subscribe to the podcast to get all the aural goodness. … Read the rest here
dConstruct 2009 took place in the Brighton Dome on Friday, September 4th. By all accounts , it was excellent this year. I saw less than a quarter of it. I arrived bright and early with my suitcase in tow, ready to make a quick exit. My flight to Vancouver was leaving Heathrow shortly after 5pm and I was going to be making the two hour bus ride from Brighton. I watched Richard open the show, listened to Adam Greenfield melt people’s brains (in a good way), did a quick podcast recording for Boagworld , caught a bit of Mike and Ben ’s talk and then I was out of there; dragging my suitcase over to the bus station to catch the 12:30 to Heathrow via Gatwick. … Read the rest here
dConstruct week is in full swing. The conference itself is tomorrow. Remy and Brian are doing their workshops today. Myself, Rich and Nat did our HTML5 and CSS3 Wizardry workshop yesterday. I was handling the HTML5 side of things and had quite a bit of fun with it. … Read the rest here
You have just two more days to enter the dConstruct Time Capsule competition which could win you a VIP ticket to the conference, including dinner with the speakers at a swish restaurant and two nights at a fancy-pants hotel in Brighton. Tickets to the conference are very, very near to selling out so winning might be your only chance to get to dConstruct this year. How do you enter? Well, the theme of this year’s dConstruct is Designing for Tomorrow so that got us thinking about what we would preserve for the future in a time capsule. So take a look around you… Read the rest here
As is now traditional, there will be a BarCamp in Brighton straight after dConstruct . This year it
The theme for dConstruct this year is “designing for tomorrow”. This got us thinking about what cultural objects or experiences may not be around in the future. The kind of things that future digital archeologists may uncover and showcase in museums or write hypothesis about their place in naughties culture. We had our own ideas, ranging from obvious things like Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone, to slightly more obscure things like the mass of wires and adapters than plague our digital lives, or the fact that you have to carry a piece of card on a train to prove your right to travel. However we wanted to hear from you, so we started the dConstruct Time Capsule Project … Read the rest here