I didn’t go to as many tech meetings this year as last, which was good and bad. I’m glad I got to go to a variety of sessions, but the few tech sessions I attended left me wanting more. This may point out that I need to go to a more tech heavy conference sometime in the future.

The State of Browser Developer Tools

Brandon Satrom, Garann Means, Joe Stagner, Mike Taylor, Paul Irish

The gist of this session was: browser developer tools have come a long way in a short while, and it is worth checking out what each browser has to offer.

Chrome: Offers a new color picker, and some subtle but nice UI changes that makes the dev tools much more useful. You can also save the CSS out to a new file. Both Firefox and chrome have very nice CSS tools in this regard, and if they come just a bit further (some auto completion, better color coding) they could make it so I don’t need to find a replacement for my long in the tooth and no longer made CSS Edit 2.

Chrome for android: Plug in via USB, run the dev tools from the device.

Firefox: When viewing a page, go to Tools -> Web Developer (different from the web developer toolbar) -> Inspect and then click on “3D” in the bottom right. It’s called “Tilt” and it made the room collectively gasp.

Opera: Offers remote device debugging and great emulators.

IE 9 & 10: let you emulate older versions of IE. (I have found this to be a tad off- I’ll use the IE7 emulator and then view the page in IE7 and they’ll be different- but it is pretty close.)

What’s coming:

Adobe Shadow: Multi device checking (Here now, will get better)

Usability for styles. HTML tidy-like features.

CSS for Grown Ups: Maturing Best Practices

Andy Hume

Web standards can become an obsession. We get ridiculous code to keep content and session separate, but managing complexity is important too. Complexity raises the barrier to entry.

We need to optimize for change. Most of all, we need to let go of the idea that we will write HTML which we will never touch again, and do everything on the CSS side. We will ALWAYS have to revamp the HTML along with the CSS.

Bullet points:

• Check out stuff like: OOCSS, SMACSS, CSS Lint – advocating a new set of best practices.
• Should have layers of CSS: Layout styles – Module styles – base styles on top of the HTML
• Come up with classes that describe the presentation. headline, subheadline, byline, etc.
• The important thing is to do what is best for your local situation, and not to hold to outdated dogma for the sake of dogma. You have to strike a balance between performance, maintainability, and readability.
• Use presentational class names and surgical layout helpers.
• Document your code in code, NOT a PDF! Twitter bootstrap is a good example of this.
• Write a complete style guide. Use it consistently for your organization. Include interaction.
• Think in terms of modules, not pages. Have a style module library.

Creating Responsive HTML5 Touch Interfaces

Stephen Woods

Switching to thinking about devices rather than interfaces is hard. Interfaces should feel good in addition to looking good.

Some advice:

• Prioritize user feedback.
• Use hardware acceleration
• manage memory – devices are always low on memory
• Do not load during gestures – hold it till the end
• Treat the DOM as write only, do your own math. “If you just do the math, you’ll be happier in the long run.”
• Use matrix transforms.
• Use CSS transitions. Use transitions with easing to snap back, good enough in most cases.
• Feature detect and add as devices support. Disable things per user agent.
• Simulators and emulators are basically useless.
• Div’s with background images load quicker than embedded images. It’s not semantically correct, but it’s OK.

Frustrating limitations:

• The retina screen is huge, device memory is small
• Hardware acceleration is a crash festival.
• You are always finding devices that want to “optimize” your carefully designed sites.

The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?

Buzz Andersen, Jacob Bijani, Majd Taby, Matthew Delaney, Tom Dale

Software, a brief history: Web browsers ushered in a dramatic abstraction in computing. “The web browser is one of humanities’ greatest achievements.” Javascript is the word’s most popular programming language.

The age of apps: A return to the native, device centric programming we had before. For the first time since netscape, native dev is leading the way. Foursquare/square/instagram -> native first!

Native Cons:

• Networking
• Linking/ cross platform distribution
• Rich text – browsers handle it much better
• Layout
• Caching
• Fast is difficult
• You lose all the “free stuff” you get with browser abstraction
• When dealing with ios, have to deal with apple: “Apple has started asking ‘What’s better for apple’ instead of ‘what’s better for the user.’”
• Multi device is hard
• App stores are horrible places to actually find anything

Native Pros:

• More direct influence
• More primitives are available to you
• Monetization (maybe)
• Access to hardware – may be necessary, depending on app
• Faster when done right
• Good Documentation (sometimes)

Stuff to keep in mind

• Got to rng.io to see your devices capabilities.
• Check out the Financial Times (on your device) for a web HTML5 app that does it right. (Or switch user agent to fake it)
• If you build a hybrid native/mobile app, you have to work extra hard to make sure they stay in sync/don’t contradict each other
• Avoid creating an app just so you can say “we have an iPhone app!”
• Avoid “The uncanny valley of web apps” – don’t try to emulate the native look on mobile apps. Emulating native UI is a moving target and rarely worth it.

The design sessions, along with the tech sessions, energized me as to the possibilities of design and made me excited to try new things in this area.

Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator?

Jane Leibrock, Laurel Hechanova, Naz Hamid, Phil Coffman, William Couch

The bulk of this session was summed up in the very first question tweet that came in:

“Is “intuition” in fact a result of accumulated life experience, which is essentially both intentional and unintentional research?” -@justinc

In short: yup.

It was interesting hearing that designers at big startups with a lot of money still do a lot of gut designing. It would have been interesting to get someone from, say, Google on the panel, since they are known for testing every choice rather than doing much “gut” designing. I think this is changing, though, as Google Plus launched with some features that don’t seem so obsessively tested as many Google products (like the drag and drop circle organization.)

From the session:

• “gut” is a weird term. An experienced designer’s gut is different, and going to make different (presumably better) decisions than a newbie.
• You could also call this experienced based design.
• While usability testing is great, it is not always economically feasible. A support network is invaluable.
• Networks are great, but “don’t get feedback from the choir.” Find people outside your usual circle, outside your company.
• The client doesn’t really care about research or gut designing – you have to make the best decisions and then sell your design, whatever way you do it.

Getting Good: Practical Tips for New Designers

Allison Wagner, Yesenia Perez-Cruz

The advice:

• Write it down
• Keep inspirations
  • Use a tagging system. Pinterest can be good for this, or any system that can tag/organize pictures into albums (like Picasa desktop).
  • Diversify your inspiration. Find things everywhere, record it.
• Streamline your workflow
  • Use text expansion, keyboard shortcuts
  • Be efficient
  • Streamline with apps – find ones that work well with each other, your OS, and your process.
  • Check out The Setup to see what other professionals use.
  • I didn’t hear this mentioned in the session, but I think it is important to walk a line between streamlining your process and actually working on things. It is easy to get stuck in a loop where all you are doing is consuming productivity porn and not doing any actual work. Also: It is worth paying for good tools that will save you time.
• Be aware of the creative gap. “For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. … But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.” -Ira Glass
  • Keep the stuff you make so you can track your improvement.
  • Or delete and focus on the future.
  • Sometimes stuff isn’t as good as you would like: you’re just not there yet in terms of skill, you have to make compromises due to client demand. You don’t have to put this stuff in your portfolio, just finish it and move on.
• Work rough in the beginning.
• Ask for feedback
  • Find people who will give honest feedback, and foster it in your organization.
  • I think it is important to let people know your feelings won’t be hurt if they don’t like something. This seems to be a design specific problem, people just don’t like giving honest feedback on design.
• Use style tiles to present design elements separate from the structure, especially in web/interactive design. This can be a way to get feedback from reluctant clients.
• Find the time and motivation to keep learning.
  • Techniques like timeboxing may help.
  • Find resources to help your keep up on tech, such as Think Vitamin’s Treehouse.
  • Teach your skills to someone else, it helps you internalize.
  • Find places with good articles, or follow trusted content aggregators.
  • View source!
  • Partner with someone and give each other assignments

Making eBooks Smarter: Responsive Page Design

Peter Meyers

Like the above, this session was a “core conversation,” Which means the presenters acted as moderators to spark discussion and gather advice from the audience. The moderator was especially good, and the discussion was energetic and inspiring. I classified this session under design because of the thoughts it inspired in me: we work with a lot of book like content at work (including many actual books) and this session made me think of ways to present that content in new ways. I hope to start a project or two soon that will make use of these ideas.

The moderator, Peter Meyers, started off with three scenarios to think about – I think of them as personas:

1. User is reading The Great Gatsby and wants to go back to where Daisy’s character is first introduced. Not where she was first mentioned, but where she is first described.
2. User wants to browse the book The Power of Habit in a half hour.
3. User has a travel book on Brazil, but is not going during Carnival, so doesn’t need that part.

Paper books don’t handle these things well, but right now ebooks are only marginally better. If we can solve these problems, the digital book becomes more valuable than the paper book.

Ways to make ebooks better:

Comprehension: Help the user, include dictionaries, but go beyond. There may be some things specific to a book not available in a generic dictionary.

Memory: Help the user answer the question “Who is Edith?” Especially useful when a work is not consumed all at once.

Interpretation: Some users might need help with interpretation. Cliff notes were designed, at least in part, with comprehension in mind. Example: Bret Victor’s design for Al Gore’s Our Choice ebook. Examples could be interacted with, values changed, which helped interpretation. Also see Bret Victor’s website, worrydream.org.

Time constraints: (mostly for non-fiction) Could we have accordion like content, small, medium and large versions for the user dependent on time and interest?

Relevance: (mostly for non-fiction) Example: How to Cook Everything app, could the user constrain entries to only options that reflect what they have in the cupboard, or exclude certain ingredients?

Discovery: How to help users discover new media and new things about the media they are using? This is where the social element could come in.

At his point, Peter opened up the discussion to the group at large.

We talked about social integration in ebooks and imagined how it might be integrated into a book. There was no consensus, but some of the ideas were to include existing networks as the basis, to include emotional annotation, to change the “lens” the social content the content could be seen through depending on the type of user. Examples included:

• Wreck This Book app – the app becomes a personal object, no longer only by the author. Social in this case means including the reader as well as the author.
• BOLD – how to be brave in business and win ipad app – the user answers a quiz, and the book adjusts itself.

Managing user content continues to be a problem. Adding a social layer could help by only showing content by trusted sources, or giving preference to that content. Moderation will still probably be needed for public content, which can slow down this implementation with orgs (like us!) that don’t have a person to handle ongoing moderation. In the end, the best way to handle might be to allow others to have conversations elsewhere, which is enabled by linking. (More on that when I type up my tech notes).

Extra content should have a way to toggle off, so as not to distract the reader. Ebooks are different from the web, and it is important to keep a pure reading experience. One way to do this is to layer content, and make the layers toggle. Epub3 with HTML5 should introduce lots of exciting opportunities to do this.

Examples of enhanced content ebooks:

• Alice in wonderland
• The Hobbit
• Inkling textbooks- include things like quizzes to test comprehension.
  • Note: When I looked this up later, I was excited to see the ebook Living with Art until I saw the price – $100 for an ipad only ebook. I would love to have content like this for art, why is it always so expensive?

One of the questions was: how much extra content is too much? My feeling is that if the design is right, you can include an almost endless amount of extra content. The question, is, how many users will access all that extra content? Enhancements for ebooks is a small market, not many people are willing to pay extra. In a non profit sector, price isn’t an object, but spending lots of time on enhanced content only of interest to a few may not be the best use of always scant resources.

One more example:

• Welcome to Pine Point – an interactive web book.

This session left me most excited with the possibilities of providing free, downloadable ebooks of scholarly content. the question now is: how? and in what format? More on that when I write up my tech notes…

• #sxswLAM = Librar* + Archiv* + Museum* facebook group
• Librarians Swarm Austin! A Handy SXSW Interactive Primer – Naomi House
• Temporary autonomous librarian zone – SXSWLAM recap – Jessamyn West
• Rowdy Librarians at SxSWi Days One Two Three Four – Paul Vinelli
• Photos by Mona T. Brooks Photography (on facebook, sorry if it requires login)
• SXSW: The Fate of Libraries – Article on Carson Block’s presentation at time.com

I am afraid I am not a very good rowdy librarian. Or a rowdy anything, really. But I did really enjoy seeing and talking with fellow librarians, all of whom had fascinating job titles.

In terms of the talks and discussions, there was more of an emphasis on the librarian or archivist than the library or archive at SXSW. Some of the librarians were free agents, freelancing for libraries or corporations. Some of them were the sole tech person at their library. All of them were smart and passionate about technology. I thought of my fellow librarians when listening to Jennifer Pahlka’s keynote “Coding the Next Chapter of American History”. She implored all of us to be good citizens, and I think librarians already do this, and are always eager to do more – either inside or outside a library.

SXSW has a lot of social justice/social good sessions, but I think they can tend to get lost in the constant talk of monetization. The librarian/archivist presence at SXSW helps to remind people that there are other important things besides finding investors.

Sessions:

LIS Meetup

This wasn’t an actual session that was on the schedule, and I only heard about it on twitter. There was a SXSWLam (librar* + archiv* + museum*) facebook group, but since I am seldom on facebook, I missed it. The meetup was great, and was a fantastic way to kick off the conference. The talk was lead by Lisa Carlucci Thomas, and was mostly about why we were at SXSW, what we hoped to get out of it, and what we could do to make the conference successful.

I’m just going to list some of the responses I found interesting, and sorry I wasn’t great about noting who said what. This session was recorded, though, and will be the basis of a future article by Lisa Carlucci Thomas.

Librarians come to SXSW to:

• Try and branch out.
• To develop a brand strategy, and to learn about best practices for doing so.
  • Parts of our brand: content/access, curating information. Not necessarily books.
• To keep up with what we should be doing to support entrepreneurs by talking to them. They are important parts of our communities.
  • Some entrepreneurs may rightly ask what we can do, and one of them is to assist in the upward mobility of the community, which will enable more people to buy their product. We are in it for the long game.
  • A core message talked about was “We care about your success.” That goes for everyone in the community.
• To ask everyone: How would you like to use your local library?

Making Stories: Libraries & Community Publishing #libstory

Nate Hill, Char Booth, Amy Buckland, and Michael Porter

This is a particularly interesting topic for me, since what I am mostly involved in is publishing content. The idea of libraries as publisher seems to be gaining traction, and it will be exciting to see what new directions librarians take it.

You can view the slides for this presentation on slideshare (ps, all the presenters had awesome slides, highly recommended. Also the audio is already up @ the SXSW site, so you can follow along).

Again, some brief notes, because I am not the best note taker:

Nate Hill presented on a fascinating use case of helping local authors find an audience by not only adding their books to the library catalog, but adding them while they are in progress and enabling the community at large to participate in the creation. I love this idea, but wonder if smaller communities would have the critical mass to allow this kind of matchup between content creator/consumer.

He also talked about a concept library lab, which would enable community to publish multimedia works in the library.

MIchael Porter at libraryrenewal.org talked about the need for libraries to create new, practical solutions for their patrons’ increasingly digital lifestyles.

Char Booth talked about how student publications tend to get lost, and remain invisible – leading students to create work they don’t really care about. “Scholarship is public, but student work isn’t.” She laid out efforts to get student work published so that they can point to and be proud of their work.

The first way to do that is to encourage students to deposit their work in an institutional repository, and to help them get their work ready to publish. The goal is to get them to create work good enough that they are excited about sharing it. Another way was to teach them how to write for wikipedia.

Amy Buckland showed some examples of how libraries are taking over the functions newspapers provided in small communities by providing community workshops on writing, photography, and publishing. Ideally, libraries can finish this off by having an espresso book machine to publish community member’s work, but that may be out of reach of some libraries. (One of the questions from the audience addressed this by saying there are businesses that can do printing on a case by case basis, lowering the initial cost to the library.)

Another example Amy gave was libraries helping community members publish histories of their communities, and partnering with local design students to make it look professional.

The Great Library Swindle: Your Rights Are at Risk #libswin

Carson Block

A presentation on the continuing importance of libraries.

Libraries are in trouble because their old brand – books – isn’t going to work as well anymore. An ebook is not a book, and in the world of the digital, libraries lose the first sale rights that have enabled them to provide this kind of content. They are left to take what content aggregators give them, or to try to negotiate their own deals with publishers.

Meanwhile, the content superstores (amazon, apple) are squeezing us out. They don’t consider the library a worthwhile market.

Brian pointed to what smart people say about libraries:

Brian Cooley from Cnet saying “Libraries are for the very old and the very unemployed.” (I was left wondering, what’s so bad about that? Should these people just get ignored… more than they already are?)

Bill Maher saying “We have the Internet. We don’t need a library at all.”

We obviously have a problem with public perception.

Carson then went over some of the things that are at stake:

• Libraries hold on to information that would be lost otherwise, like beer recipes.
• Public good! This is the big one for me. I don’t mind my taxes paying for food stamps for people who can’t afford food, or the library to meet the information needs of those that can’t afford constant amazon/apple purchases.
• “The public library is the great equalizer.” -Keith Richards

Why are libraries important?

• They care about your confidentiality.
• Librarians are trusted
• Librarians like to help people
• Libraries are a community anchor and a quality of life indicator.
• Librarians care about your success.

What is our brand? (Hint: not books)

• Access
• Physical and virtual connection

Preserving the Creative Culture of the Web #digiprsrv

Jason Scott, Kari Kraus, Nick Hasty

Nick Hasty presented about how Rhizome Art Base, hosted in the New Museum, preserves internet works of art. A couple of examples:

• Lev Manovich, Little Movies
• Petra Cortright VVEBCAM

Rhizome seeks artists’ permission to include their work. Some artists have said no, citing that impermanence is a part of the work.

Can only preserve things to a point, the medium (in VVEBCAM’s case, youtube) and even the deletion is part of the artwork.

Kari Kraus talked about her work on researching how to preserve virtual worlds.

Kari, like Nick, stressed that everything cannot be preserved. We don’t for instance, have access to the source code in most cases. The purpose of her research is to determine the salient interactions in games and save these.

Check out the Preserving Virtual Worlds Final Report for more.

Jason Scott describes himself as a “rogue archivist” and champions what he calls “Curatorial Activists,” people who archive first and ask questions later. You can find many of them at archiveteam.org

One project was a massive effort to archive Geocities once yahoo announced it was shutting it down. We should save it because it is a 15 year anthropological study. They archived as much as they could and released it as a torrent on the pirate bay.

Jason implored webapp creators to add an export function as soon as you add an import function – if your service is good, it won’t matter. Think about shut down.

As for users, think of where you put your data and what will happen if that company goes away or decides to deny you access. “Facebook is a very sociopathic company.”

Questions

? – What about the right to be forgotten?

Answer from panelist – We often think of archivists as saving everything, but part of their job is deaccessioning.

My thoughts on this is that we live in a society, and in so living we create things and converse with others. If you want to keep things totally out of the hands of others, you will have to burn everything you create and not talk to other people. But we are human, and what we say, do, and create becomes part of the whole. You can’t ever fully control what becomes of your past self.

I had a great time at SXSW. I learned a lot. I got to visit family while in Austin, and I didn’t really party much at all – a fact I appreciated when I got back. Instead of feeling sleep deprived and zombie like, I came back full of ideas an inspiration.

I’ve finally given in to the fact that I just can’t get by on no sleep and still be a functioning human being.

I am dividing the presentations I attended into the following categories for my blog posts, and am going to be more selective about what I post. SXSW posts the audio of all the sessions online, so if it is not up yet, look for it later.

Libraries and Archives (4 sessions):

• LIS Meetup (informal, no schedule entry)
• Making Stories: Libraries & Community Publishing – Nate Hill, Char Booth, Amy Buckland, and Michael Porter
• The Great Library Swindle: Your Rights Are at Risk – Carson Block
• Preserving the Creative Culture of the Web – Jason Scott, Kari Kraus, Nick Hasty

Design (3 sessions):

• Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator? – Jane Leibrock, Laurel Hechanova, Naz Hamid, Phil Coffman, William Couch
• Getting Good: Practical Tips for New Designers – Allison Wagner, Yesenia Perez-Cruz
• Making eBooks Smarter: Responsive Page Design – Peter Meyers

Technology (4 sessions):

• The State of Browser Developer Tools – Brandon Satrom, Garann Means, Joe Stagner, Mike Taylor, Paul Irish
• CSS for Grown Ups: Maturing Best Practices – Andy Hume
• Creating Responsive HTML5 Touch Interfaces – Stephen Woods
• The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web? – Buzz Andersen, Jacob Bijani, Majd Taby, Matthew Delaney, Tom Dale

Storytelling/Art (4 sessions):

• Mother Goose Got Punked: Next Gen Visual Stories – Aaron Bramley, Ben Henretig, Cara Jones, Kivi Leroux Miller, Nancy Farese
• Maps of Time: Data As Narrative – Alex Graul, Burt Herman, Drew Harry, Jenn Thom, Nicola Hughes
• Performance and Technology: Keeping Arts Alive – Alyce Myatt, Asa Kalama, Beth Burns, Conor Roche, Robert Matney
• Birth of Interactive Entertainment: Avatar to Björk – Scott Snibbe

Other (3 sessions):

• Big Data: Privacy Threat or Business Model? – Declan Mccullagh, Jay Stanley, Lillie Coney, Molly Wood, Will DeVries
• Juggalos: Rabid Branding, a Case Study – Jenny Benevento
• Coding the Next Chapter of American History – Jennifer Pahlka

More to come soon!

Bruce Lawson was a great presenter, and is the author of Introducing HTML5

Much of the world is not using smart browsers, they are using browsers for their feature phones. Opera mini is a popular browser on feature phones around the world.

Radically different places access the same information.

People say mobile users are task focused- this is half true. Everyone is task focused. You don’t need a separate mobile site, just consider your content.

Three ways to handle mobile users:

1. Special mobile site
   • Almost always not the right way, but sometimes the quickest cheapest way.
   • You do not know what the user wants. If you do provide a separate mobile site, provide a way to get out!
   • No browser sniffing! – you can’t detect everything, browsers can lie.
2. Do nothing, serve up the same site to mobile and desktop
   • Use web standards
   • You can use new javascript methods, touchstart, touchmove, listen to touch events in addition to click.
   • CSS3/ graceful degradation
   • HTML5 – useful for webapps
   • Canvas/SVG – consider carefully, use SVG when possible. Canvas obscures information, SVG is more accessible. Don’t use canvas for UI elements. SVG can keep a DOM, so you can query/undo if necessary.
   • Geolocation – use for progressive enhancement, you won’t always have it available
   • HTML5 forms – < input type=”email” > other types, url, tel. These will give a different keyboard for input on the iphone, and they gracefully degrade.
   • Offline support – detect state, save the day by using local/session storage. Way easier than storing in cookies.
   • Web socket communication – sending information this way saves battery life
3. Optimise for Mobile
   • CSS Media queries – making sites that respond. “Can you do this?” “What’s your DPI?” “Landscape or portrait?” Responsive web development. See mediaqueri.es.
   • If you are using media queries, set the viewport.
   • Content should take center stage!
   • Give dimensions of images in HTMl. This makes sure the content doesn’t move after the images are downloaded, which can be annoying – especially for mobile users, because the content they were reading may get pushed off the screen.
   • Consider < a href=”tel:555.555.5555″ > because this will let phone users dial easily.
   • Make accessibility a priority. Follow accessibility guidelines.
   • Minimise HTTP requests. Combine CSS and javascript whenever possible. Use SVG or canvas for images if possible.
   • ems rather than pixels – pixels can fail on high resolution screens
   • fluid layouts
   • use CSS background-size property
   • turn off fancy backgrounds, shadows, etc. for mobile devices (using media queries) – they require processing power and are battery killers
   • Occasional use of data URL’s can be useful
   • Put javascript at the bottom of the page, or, if it must be in the head, put it after CSS so you don’t get a page flash
   • Use feature detection js like Modernizr

No web apps! laziness is wise

Widgets – zip file containing web standard goodness – uses the browser platform. Gives you a downloadable app, uses the browser widget engine, but has no chrome – installation through the start menu.

Of course, you can only get certain things through a native app. Access to the camera and mic, for instance. Soon, though, you will be able to do things comparable to what you can do with a native app – access things like: contacts, calendar, media, messaging, accelerometer. HTML5 < device > – access to camera and microphone in a specific device.

Lawson demonstrated an experimental app which detects where you are, your direction, and your speed, all in the browser.

Grids make sense of the world. Paper size – A1-A6 paper size system, each smaller size is half of the last.

The Grid = Harmony

The grid helps the user predict where the new information they seek will be found.

The simpler the grid, the more effective it is.

Steps in the design process:

• Research
  • Understand the constraints
• Wireframes or another activity that helps you figure out functionality and build agreement on whet needs to be to be built.
• Preparatory design Sketches, calculations, page sketches
  • Sketch throughout the project.
  • Problem solving should come before the aesthetics.
• Visual Design
• Code

On the golden rectangle

It is sometimes useful to divide things by 1.618, but in practice Vinh has never seen someone use the golden rectangle extensively when designing a website. The rule of thirds is more important.

Constructing the grid

• A viewport of 960×650 is still a good size to shoot for. (This talk focused on a fixed grid).
• Units in multiples of 8 are useful. People are most comfortable processing between 60 and 80 characters per line, so keep this in mind when laying out page.
• The grid is about constraint, and adding constraint can help with design.
• Use the grid to design a stream of information.

Responsive web design is really good, but a little showy. What is really important is satisfying what the user expects. What they want is access and speed, usefulness, and great content.

This session was sadly under attended. Majora Carter is an inspirational and upbeat speaker, and well worth seeing. I talked to some people afterwards who had purchased the SXSW ticket and drove from Houston just to see her talk!

You can see a couple of Majora Carter’s talks at TED.com, including her widely viewed talk on “Greening the Ghetto.”

You don’t have to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one

The first part of the talk was bio information, read more at Majora Carter’s wikipedia page.

Carter grew up and lived in the Bronx, freeways were built over thriving working class communities. Red lining – red lines were built around area code no one would invest in. Landlords found it more profitable to burn their buildings than improve. This created something like a war zone. Carter’s brother Lenny spent two tours in Vietnam only to be gunned down in a nearby neighborhood. New York decides to place a sewage treatment plant in the area which would process 60% of NY’s sewage. Wealthier and largely white neighborhoods pushing onto the poorer ones. Young people who live near fossil fuel emissions are impacted – suffer learning disabilities.

The lower income neighborhood was targeted, because they had no political power or influence.

How do you create a more sustainable solid waste process?

What Majora has done

• Started the first green roof company run by a community organization
  • Working with plants reduces stress levels- plants require patience
• created the apparatus to create the kinds of jobs the community needed

Created Home(town) Security

Homeland security is about fear. Home(town) security is not based on fear.

People want to see things happen in their own home towns.

People see development and all they see is gentrification. How will they afford the change? (Karin’s note – I think the difference here is whether the change comes from inside or outside – gentrification is led by outside developers, productive neighborhood development comes from community initiative and involvement.)

Several examples:

In syracuse, the mayor put in blue lights in the dangerous neighborhoods, but what does that feel like to the people who live there? This is the drama of local community development, and it will make good TV.

Tree People – Andy Lipkus is unpaving paradise

Coal Mountain Watch – Judy Bonds died of cancer from breathing in the toxicity after mountain top removal mining. Worked to turn these areas into wind farms.

I missed a couple of other examples.

Carter saying “I should be advising president obama” was met with applause.

Question: (From AARP representative) – How can we get state offices to fund services which will help older americans stay in their homes – transportation, walkable neighborhoods, etc, instead of packing up and moving to florida?
Answer: The nice thing about older americans is they vote. Livable cities are the kind of thing which will keep people around.

Question: Would grant writing workshops be useful?
Answer: Probably not. There are already community organizations, we don’t need more of them, we need to build up the ones that are there.

Question: How to engage community? Would social media be effective?
Answer: This is one of the reasons to start with community based development, it is easier to build support around. Also, “feed them and they will come.”

Question: (I missed this question!)
Answer: Work a bit by bit, pursue market based solutions. A lot of our tax money is used for social services. If we can turn expensive people receiving social benefits into working taxpayers, everyone wins. Most people want to work.

Question: How to be involved locally when one can’t afford to live local? This is from someone who moved out to the suburbs because he didn’t feel safe raising his children where he lived.
Answer: Community Policing can be very useful. Working with the police to identify areas which could use more foot patrols. Job creation is key as well – sometimes people would rather have a job than sell weed.

Question: How to address criticism that [community development] is not realistic or too idealistic?
Answer: Follow the money. They can’t argue with results. The world has enough pessimists. (karin’s note: And ignore them! Who cares what they say?)

I am working on a series of posts of my notes from SXSW. Interspaced with those will be posts about what I learned in general and the value I see in SXSW.

I took 47 pages of handwritten notes. It’s gonna take a while to type them all up.

I will be headed to SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX next week, the 11th-16th. If you are going and would like to meet up, email me (karin at nirak dot net or nirak on twitter).

I’m pretty excited to go to SXSW, having listened to many of the podcasts and for a couple of years, sans visuals, and following the conversations. I’m sure I will learn a lot, and from what I hear, I will also be staying up way too late.

[awkward segue]

I had a long post written up once (one of many posts I have written which will probably stay in “draft” form) about why libraries should fund conference expenses for staff as well as faculty. I still think that is the case, but recognize that, with budgets being what they are, it probably is difficult to fund faculty travel to conferences right now, let alone staff. However, there is some advantage to paying my own way, which I neglected to mention in that post.

An excerpt from that post, written almost a year ago:

“The employee, and in turn the employer, gets much more from staff attendance at a conference besides continuing education. They get new professional contacts, new ways to solve problems, new resources to check, and, most importantly, an renewed excitement for the work they do. If a conference results in an employee that returns with new excitement and commitment to the work they are doing, everyone benefits.”

The nice thing about paying my own way to conferences (which I have done several times a year), is that since I don’t have to worry about publishing papers or giving presentations, I can choose the conferences that excite me rather than the ones that are likely to advance me towards tenure. I come back to work super exhausted and super excited about the work I am privileged to be able to do. I’m very lucky to have both the money and the available time off to be able to attend conferences.

Not really sure of my point here, except to say WOOO SXSW!!!!!

(Expect a few more awkward blog posts while I get back into this whole blogging thing).

Colors of San Pedro by my hovercraft is full of eels

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur. Various house issues, preparing for vacation and ALA Annual, work, school, and life have been keeping me very busy. All my poor blogs are neglected. :(

I’m not going to post an ALA schedule yet, because I learned last year that it will just change anyway as ALA draws closer. I will probably post a few tentative plans next week, and will hopefully blog some sessions. Of course I will go to the sessions Cory Doctorow is at.

As for social activities, I will go to the Scholarship Bash Saturday night, and then some of us are trekking to San Pedro for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I will go to the Blog Salon and the NMRT Social (I’m sad they’re not in the same hotel this year) most likely.

I’m heading for vacation in California before Annual- so if you are there beforehand too and want to do something, email me (karin@nirak.net.) If you want my cell phone # to contact me during Annual, just email me.

I will likely be posting vacation related stuff to my blog at os-agnostic, so check there if you want to read any of that. I’m also going to bring a painting to LA so I can give away a painting during my trip – hopefully to someone at the conference. It worked well at THATCamp.

I think that’s it. If you’re going to Annual, I’ll see you there, and if not, I hope I don’t annoy you too much with my conference postings and tweets. :)