Posts Tagged “conference”

Links from An Event Apart 2008 – Day Two

Stephanie • 19th Aug 2008 • webdesign • aea, aea08, aeasf08, bookmarks, conference, link, links

Edenbee: Social networking and carbon footprints by Clearleft.
A Dao of Web Design: Jeremy Keith says everyone must read this. It talks about giving up pixel perfect control of the display of your websites.
Google social graph API: Traces XFN and hCard references to connect your different profiles and find out who you are connected to.
SCRUM: Replacement for the waterfall development method. It’s agile. Recommended by Kelly Goto.
Trulia Snapshot: Data visualization by Stamen – using real estate in San Francisco.
Rescue Time: Track what you spend time doing on your computer.

Links from An Event Apart 2008 – Day One

Stephanie • 18th Aug 2008 • webdesign • aea, aea08, aeasf08, aneventapart, bookmarks, conference, interesting, links

Bobulate: Can’t remember why it was mentioned but it is about IA and looks interesting.
Wired: Apparently half the people in the room read it. Jason used it as an example of how print can be very cool looking but the web is missing that pizzaz for individual articles.
NY Times articles about Trolls: Don’t feed the trolls. One of the trials of community managers.
Flickr Colouring Contest: Making lemonaid out or error messages as part of community management.
Improve Everywhere: Organizers of no pants day.
A Brief Message: 200 word articles on design.
Iced or Hot: The example website from Dan Cedarholm’s talk. The code is good but the data is not live.
http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/: It doesn’t look the same in all browsers.
Adobe Labs.: Dreamweaver CS4 Beta.

Also, Jeremy Keith live blogged the whole works from the front row.

Web Directions North 2008

Stephanie • 21st Feb 2008 • webdesign • conference, summary, trends, WDN, WDN08, webdesign

Just like last year I thought I’d post my summary of the conference that I distributed to my department. If I have any regular readers at all, it’s probably a little too general to do you any good but I’m happy to answer questions:

Web Directions North is an internationally respected conference for web professionals. This year’s conference was a good high level overview of the new trends and technologies online. Some of these trends are emerging organically and we need to react to them and others are good ideas which need the support of developers to be adopted.

While the talks covered a variety of subjects there was a lot of overlap on these main themes:

Open data: Open data formats like XFN, microformats, and APIs are encouraging sites to share data between them. This allows sites to combine data for display in new ways, to make new connections between data, and to formulate it is more user friendly ways. Users may one day be able to manage their profiles, passwords, and social networks from one central account.
Mobile & Accessible Interfaces: In a few years there will be more people in the world with the ability to access the web with a mobile device than with a computer. Designing for browsing devices challenges designers to consider different contexts and device capabilities. Bright sunlight makes low contrast sites hard to read, common input devices like a keyboard and mouse may not be available. These are the same challenges developers face making interfaces accessible and there are over lapping.
Dynamic User Interfaces: Many websites are providing their users with the ability to customize what information is displayed to them and how. Many more sites which don’t provide these services are being altered by users anyway using special browser add-ons or websites which take data from existing websites and find new ways to display it.

There are also ties between these three trends – open and accessible data is easier to gather for customization with a different user interfaces which take into account different user needs like mobility or accessibility. Some examples:

Ironfeathers: This site uses Google Maps API to display running routes but it has removed the inaccessible Google Map controls and replaced them with their own custom accessible buttons. Try zooming in on the map in Google Maps using only your keyboard – then try it on Ironfeathers.
Everyblock: This site brings together data from government websites for the police and city hall, commercial sites like craigslist and social sites like Flickr in one place where it customizes it to make it more accessible, searchable, and explorable.
Twitter: This site has an open API and presents all its data as microformats. It has made it super easy for spin off sites like foamee. Foamee doesn’t require you to create a new username, password and profile – it just makes use of your twitter one. You don’t login and update foamee from your computer you just text message it.

I also had good conversations with the Microsoft representatives about the version meta tag they are planning on introducing in IE8, the BBC team about CMSs and centralized CSS (we’ve got it easy), and several free lance designers about client management strategies.

It was encouraging to see that BCIT is headed in the right direction with the incorporation of microformats into contacts and VTcal, to get confirmation that standards are still the leading industry concern, and know that our work on the Marqui templates will be moving us in the right direction to create a mobile version of the site.

@media links to check out

Stephanie • 26th May 2007 • webdesign • atmedia, atmedia07, atmedia2007, bookmarks, conference, todo

This is a list consisting of all the websites and books recommended during the course of the conference that interested me enough to warrant writing down for later evaluation (including links to most of the presentations):

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@media: Day Two

Stephanie • 26th May 2007 • webdesign • accomplishment, atmedia, atmedia07, atmedia2007, conference

Today I got two free books, Jeremy signed Bullet Proof Ajax for me and I snagged an extra Microformats cheat sheet for Brandon. All in all a success.

@media: Day One

Stephanie • 25th May 2007 • webdesign • atmedia, atmedia07, atmedia2007, conference, excited, fun

One day I’d like to be able to make the same kind of contribution to the web design world that these speakers have. Trying to find a way to do that is as intimidating as the idea of writing a Master’s thesis. How does one come up with new ideas?

The speakers have all been excellent so far. I always need a few days to process information though so I don’t have much to say at this point other than: Andy Clarke remembered me from Web Directions North! I was flattered.

A few sessions feel like the same information I got at WDN which makes me question just how many of these conferences one needs to go to in a year and makes me feel better about the fact that I won’t be able to attend An Event Apart, mind you I haven’t heard most of their speakers… Are conferences addictive? Either way I’m out of funding sources and would have to pay for that one myself. Since I’m on the market for a new computer that’s not likely.

CADE/AMTECH Conference

Stephanie • 24th May 2007 • webdesign • accomplishment, bcit, CADE, Catt-Trax2, conference, hockey, presentation, Terry, travel, work

I was in Winnipeg speaking at the CADE/AMTECH Conference last week. The weather was beautiful and I saw an excellent hockey game in which the Manitoba Moose (the Vancouver Canucks’ farm team) played spectacularly only to to be knocked out of the AHL playoffs in a very Canucks way (up 2-0 at the end of the first, lost 2-3 in OT).

As part of the Technology Enabled Knowledge (TEK) initiative at BCIT Danny Catt, one of the faculty, was sponsored to take a trip around South America and Antarctica studying local research and responses to sustainability and environmental issues. Throughout the journey he used blogging, digital photography, virtual lecture software, shared file storage space, and of course e-mail to keep in touch which his students and communicate with the world.

Terry Fuller, the instructional development coordinator that was helping Danny with the project submitted a paper to CADE to talk about “Using the Internet to make Meaningful Global Connections in the Classroom.” I was involved in creating the web page and blog that was the highlight of the project and Terry asked me to talk about the “technical” side of designing the website.

Rather than boring the crowd with PHP, HTML, CSS, CMS and other TLAs. I talked about the rest of the stuff that goes into the design process: user needs, site objectives, functional specifications, content requirements, information architecture, navigation design, visual design, and all that good stuff but for those of you who care the site was driven by Drupal and included a XML driven flash photo gallery, a Google map mashup, and some video and audio recordings, though not as many as we’d hoped – apparently it’s tough to upload media files from the middle of the Amazon – who knew?

The project was a lot of fun and very different my usual daily duties. I’ll post a summary and the slides soon.

If you can’t say something nicely…

Stephanie • 7th May 2007 • webdesign • busy, CADE, conference, css, excited, metablogging, nervous, presentation, work

I have lots to say but trouble finding the time and words to say it.

Blog posts I hope to make in the next two weeks:

Taking credit where credit is due – in response to a discussion about women in IT at zeldman.com.
My thoughts on the hiring process and the job market and why I do what I do where I do for the pay I get.
Some of the steps we’re taking to convert our templates from tables within tables within tables to just… one table, well it’s an improvement.
Highlights of our presentation at CADE and my thoughts on the rest of the conference.

Until then, if you think of yourself as a web designer – go take A List Apart’s Web Designer survey.