Ooochie: A Ruby Developer’s Journal

It's official, I'll be attending RailsConf this year in Baltimore! I didn't get to go last year since I was out of the country, so I'm looking forward to getting back in touch this year. (And being a student certainly pays off... the student discount was a very pleasant surprise!) I also plan on checking out the Ignite RailsConf event which looks like an interesting addition to the program this year. Hope to see you there! :)

So Day 2 at Webstock was just as fab as Day 1. As promised, I put together a few of my favorites from Day 2.

Derek Featherstone - Madame Butterfly

Derek's talk was about accessibility. It was a great session, and it made me realize that accessibility is not something I really think about, but it definitely should be. One thing he said that I really liked was this: "Just because something is compliant doesn't mean it's easy to use." I think this statement applies to so much more than accessibility. We need to focus on user experience as well as standards compliance. In addition to that, Derek totally wowed me with some of the things he's working on using Ubiquity to improve accessibility.

Joshua Porter - Designing Sign Up Screens & Flows

After hearing this talk, Joshua Porter's book, Designing for the Social Web, went directly onto my wish list. He had so many valuable tips about signup processes, most notably the fact that the form is not the problem with signup - the problem is changing peoples minds about your software. While the form can certainly be an obstacle, the process is much more important. Specifically, I liked the way Josh described the three types of people you should design for: the people who already know they want to sign up, the people who want more information to make sure your product is for them, and the skeptics. It was quite interesting to think about a signup process in this 3-tiered manner.

Bruce Sterling - The Short but Glorious Life of Web 2.0, And What Comes Afterward

I'll let you read the transcript and draw your own conclusions about this one. :)

Damian Conway - Web 2.0.1.

I thought this was a great way to end Webstock. Damian Conway sent us forth with a mission to implement the "Theory of Hippocratic Web Design". He said that we can collectively change our ideals and become people who really care about those we serve. The practices for Damian's theory seem so simple, but often they get overlooked. These things should be part of how we work everyday.

• Learn and share good practices
• Do your best work
• Know your own limitations - don't pretend you're an expert in technologies that you're not.
• Work in your client's best interest - don't screw them over!
• Be professional

So by now I think I have sufficiently convinced you that Webstock contained heaps (as the kiwis say) of awesomeness. I'm so glad I went and I hope to get the chance to attend future Webstocks. Thanks to all the speakers and all the fun people that took the time to chat with me!

Well friends, Webstock is over and it turned out to be totally awesome. It was well-planned, well-executed, and loaded with high-quality content. I had the opportunity to meet/chat with one of the organizers, Mike Brown, and he is not only an all-star conference planner, but a genuinely nice dude. There was so much awesomeness from the speakers that I'm going to split my overview into two posts: one for each day of the conference. My highlights from the presentations on Day 1 are as follows:

Jane McGonigal - Gaming Reality

First of all, Jane is just an incredibly cool person. She's fun to chat with and, quite frankly, cookies make me happy too. :) Her talk made some great points about how games really optimize human experience by appealing directly to the things that humans crave:

• having satisfying work to do
• being good at something
• spending time with people we like
• having the chance to be a part of something bigger

One of the points she made toward the end really stuck with me. She said that considering the current state of our world (climate change, sucky economy, etc.), we all need to become "game developers" and apply these things to all of the software we create. We should be thinking about how to structure user experience to make people happier, and how to develop systems that really make people awesome.

Matt Biddulph - Made of Messages

In this talk Matt discussed background processing and said that we should perform only the most basic calculations up front and show the user only what effects their world at that moment. The complex calculations can be put on a queue to be processed later. One of the things Matt mentioned really made me think. What does background processing do to interaction design? Now, I'm no designer, but I've never really thought to mention to the designer that I'm working with that some process is happening in the background and the information may not be available immediately. It seems now like something they should definitely know about in order to not mislead the user or create confusion.

Heather Champ - Shepherding Passionate Communities

Heather Champ, of Flickr, gave an insightful talk about 7 lessons she learned while managing the passionate flickr community. She had a lot of good stuff to say, but there were two that I liked best. First, Heather said that feedback has a lifecycle. The feedback you get in the first 48 hours is usually full of gut reactions to change, whereas over a 2 week period you get more thoughtful feedback. The second one I liked was this: Own your failure. If you screw up, tell your users you screwed up without making excuses. Then turn it into something fun.

Michael Lopp - Being Geek

This was a really fun talk and affirmed my suspicion that I am a total nerd/geek. But definitely not a dork. :) He talked about the cliches of being geek and what they mean about our personalities. Nerds are supposedly good with computers, obsessive, and awkward. But in actuality we just love puzzles, don't want you touching our stuff, and are always trying to figure out how people fit into our system. :)

The rest of the speakers from Day 1 were just as good: Nat Torkington, Cameron Adams, Derek Powazek, Adrian Holovaty, and the ever-hilarious Ze Frank. For the sake of keeping this less than a zillion words, I won't summarize them all, but I was truly impressed with the quality of the speakers as well as their content.

Stay tuned for thoughts on Day 2.

I realized that I haven't written yet about some of the events I've been to in Wellington, so I thought I'd give y'all an idea of what I've been doing for the past 3 months. I've been trying to infiltrate the nerd community here and meet as many people as I can, so here's a few of the events I've attended and what I thought of them.

WellRailed (November)

WellRailed is the Ruby on Rails group in Wellington. I've been subscribed to the mailing list for a while now, and it was cool to meet some of the people that I see writing on the list all the time. I liked the style of the meeting and I thought it was productive. It started with drinks, pizza, and socializing, and then moved into two short talks by Paul Flewelling (i18n in Rails 2) and Will Bryant (submitting a patch to Rails on github). I'm looking forward to attending more of these meetings before I leave NZ.

Tweet-Up (November)

This one is pretty self-explanatory. I thought this was a great event for meeting people, and following new people on twitter helps me keep up with what's going on in Wellington.

Women in Technology (December)

I happened to stumble across the Women in Technology website one day and was quite intrigued. I emailed and asked if I could attend one of their meetings just to see what it was about. When I got there, I quickly realized that their idea of 'technology' was not quite the same as mine - i.e. it was not a room full of programmers, but women who use any type of technology in the workplace. I did, however, really enjoy the presentation. A woman from Auckland talked to us about how to properly give a presentation. It's really amazing to learn from someone while they demonstrate just how much they know about their subject. She was an excellent presenter.

Girl Geeks (December)

Last year Erica and I attended a Girl Geek Dinner Event in San Francisco, so when I saw that Wellington had a Girl Geek Community I was pretty excited. I went to their Girl Geek Drinks event and there was a great turnout! It was so nice to meet a bunch of girl geeks in Wellington. I hope to be able to attend more of these events while I'm here.

Webstock (February)

Next month I'll be attending Webstock! I am really looking forward it, and will surely post here about my Webstock experience. Hope to see you there!

P.S. In other news, Dan and I had a lovely holiday traveling around NZ's South Island. You can check out the photos on my flickr.

This past week I had the opportunity to attend Edward Tufte's one-day course in San Diego, CA. The course was on presenting data and information, and it turned out to be really interesting stuff. I took some notes, which certainly do not do it justice, but I thought I'd post them here anyway.

Some tips on presenting information in charts:

• Annotate lines in charts (bring character to the linking lines) - give them meaning, otherwise they are all the same and don't really mean anything.
• The nouns should also be annotated - the detail is what gives the credibility and character.
• "Clutter and confusion are not attributes of detail - they are failures in design." Replace the "chart-chunk" with information.
• Keep in mind that the audience has to understand your story and decide whether they believe you or not - it depends on the quality of your presentation and sources.
• "You should have an open mind about alternatives, but not an empty head" - Your information is accurate at least until better evidence or alternative explanations come along.

Using a "Super Graphic:"

• High resolution displays are genuinely interactive - Use a high resolution display, like an aerial photograph, to open your presentation.
• PowerPoint presenters usually control and manipulate the cognitive actions of the audience - they have a monopoly over the display of information. You should give handouts and let people use their own cognitive style.

The principles of analytical design:

• Show comparisons
• Show causality, explanation
• Show multivariate data
• Integration of information - "Never segregate information by its mode of production."
• Documentation - give links/credibility. Show people where the information came from. ("This is what 6pt font is for - it should be small but it should be there.")

At the end of the course, Tufte gave a few simple tips for giving a presentation:

• You can make the big gains in improving your presentation by getting better content. Improve relevance and integrity of content.
• Rehearsal improves performance. Rehearse to a friend or watch a video of your performance.
• Show up early to your own presentation.
• In your introduction, never apologize.
• Finish early. People will be delighted.

Tufte stresses that humans can process much more information than is usually presented to them. All of his methods for presenting data strive to increase the "information throughput." Tufte also said, "No matter how beautiful your interface is, it would be better if there were less of it." We should be trying to maximize the time that the audience spends reasoning with content, and minimizing the time they spend figuring out the design.

I'm really looking forward to reading Tufte's four books now that I've seen him speak. He was engaging and had a lot of great points, and I would recommend going to see him if he comes to a place near you.

P.S. Matt's notes are also online, in all their handwritten glory.