vortex dot net dot en zed

the third webstock has come and gone, leaving me feeling bereft (as the passing of all great things do).

when we left auckland wednesday night i felt exhausted, a frazzled string of christmas lights.  i don’t think i was the only one. over the 2 days of the conference it was as if each section of cord and each bulb slowly untangled itself and re-lit.  by friday night i was tired but energised.

webstock is often a time of excitement just for the fact that personal or potential heroes attend.  i met derek powazek and gave him a copy of my art zine, skeleton.  for long time readers (or anyone who isn’t blind) i’ve often quoted derek and have always held his words on personal websites to be a manifesto of sorts. the unfortunate thing is that often in these situations one can’t think of much more to impart than gratitude for what the person does.  sometimes it just doesn’t seem enough.  

webstock is many things to many people but it is more than just a web conference. darren compares it to TED; it is more about concepts, creativity and inspiration than just demonstrations of technique by top players (though there is a bit of that in there too for those who are looking for that).  

the presentations were fantastic and artfully segued between topics & the creation of themes; many carefully balanced between teaching and dangling questions, opening up ideas and pushing the audience to make their own choices.  for many presenters i typed as fast as i possibly could; for others there was the chance to reflect and absorb their message.  

i feel like this year i left with a sense of being able to now choose my own adventure more than ever before.  many speakers touched on what’s happening in the world right now - many things won’t last &  won’t hold but i think more than destruction it has to push us to be more, do more & make more.  complacence just isn’t workable.  criticism has to be a spark, not a dead end.  both ze frank’s session and tash hall’s closing words brought me to tears - there is so much that happens online that can almost be discounted or overlooked but in so many ways it’s a big, beautiful, chaotic cathedral.

we have the capability to make positive change and now more than ever, the internet has to help save the world.

Webstock 2008 was an event and a half, as expected - amazing speakers, a list of books to search out and read, new friends, new and/or improved ideas. It has taken me a few days to process the intense days (2 workshops, 2 days of conference proper) I had last week. I have been a Webstock evangelist for the past 2 years, and the second time is just a big fat double underscore to support that.

One of the things that I always enjoy about Webstock is feeling like I am part of something bigger than just the individual projects, a team of people and a single organisation. Webstock makes it possible to feel like a part of something larger and more important.

The first time I went to Webstock was in 2006. It was a REVELATION about why I do what I do, that New Zealand isn’t as far away as it can be and that what we do matters. It was a textbook illustration of a situation where you have no expectation of what something will be like. You then have such a great experience that you are shocked and awed. Webstock 06 probably even went ABOVE that.

Webstock 2008 had a lot to live up to. While I think it was a better conference in a lot of ways, it was different because I am different and it couldn’t still be that first over the top experience. It is harder to maintain excellence than to do it just the once, and I give a standing ovation to Webstock for being able to, not only operate, but inspire people at such a high level.

Webstock in 2008 inspired me to improve the way I do my job and to keep on loving the internet as much as I do. It also showed me though that the talent that we have in New Zealand is rapidly closing the gap on the international “experts” - perhaps soon enough my friends will be the ones taking to the conference circuit rather than the other way around. At the close of the conference I decided to mark this by asking both international and local web-lebrities to sign my lanyard programme - some of the people I asked to sign are also people I count among my friends.

If you are reading this and you decide who gets to attend this in 2010 - SEND MORE ACCOUNT SERVICE STAFF. Support the people who support and lead your teams right through the project. Don’t just get stuck on the studio - think about the project managers, account managers and account directors who are the “face” of your company in those boardrooms and on those phones and in email every day.

Inspire them and you will see the benefit in team performance, high quality output and that extra % lift - and if you don’t, figure out why you have people on your team who don’t love the internet.

Webstock is not just about web standards or data or achieving great design. Webstock sessions are not just about web standards, CSS and liquid layours. There are sessions about content, project management and about trends / ways of working (data, rich media, managing design, not being “stuck”). It’s also about usability and lolcats and how people learn - all applicable completely across the board.

There is talk and requests of Webstock becoming a yearly event. I actually think as awesome as it would be to attend something like this every year that there are several reasons for keeping it happening every other year. It’s a huge event to put on and of extremely high quality - it’s hard to say if it would be as special or as high quality if it was on every year. A week out for staff (or even 2 days for the conference multiplied by many staff) is a high cost to a business with lost time, conference fees, airfares, etc etc. I also wonder if our industry really has enough solid movement to talk about changes (not just passing trends/issues) every year…maybe we do but 2 years is a really good benchmark to see how far we’ve come (especially with teh mini Webstocks they run periodically in between). Unless the quality can remain as high or the venue can alternate between locations in the country I think that Webstock is awesome as a two yearly event.

I can’t end this post without the rundown of some highs and lows:

WIN

• Speakers - in fact, this was triple win, especially scott berkun and michael lopp.
• New friends.
• Inspiration.
• Craftstock - such a cute idea.
• The amazing sign language translators.
• The organising team - I don’t know how you do it.
• Swag.
• Venue, food, branding.

LOSE

• The wifi - hideous and I’m sure quite stressful for the organising team.
• Sessions running late (people need to stick to their allocated times and get off the damn stage).
• Name tags with names too small to read well from a polite distance.
• Stalls which don’t actually promote companies so you can’t tell who they are (though the photobooth was cool, I didn’t know until after the conference what Verb do - and was their URL on their stand? Also I thought the Scoop chillout space was Wanda Harland’s…)

The inaugural Auckland BarCamp was organised by Ludwig Wendzich, a 16 year old high school student. I really admire him for getting on and sorting it out (which none of us had done as professionals in the industry).

I attended five sessions & the final session was a demo/short intro full of quick introductions to several subjects, such as the eee laptop and Mukuna’s gig guide by text. I also blogged as much as I could of the day and took lots of photos.

• Charles, by Karl von Randow
• Spaghetti or Meatball: a discussion on the BarCamp Tshirt Design Process, by Mat Allen
• DIY CSS Frameworks, by Darren Wood
• Tales from the Scrum, by Andrew Hedges
• Credit Where Credit is Due: crediting work in a production environment, by Che Tamahori

Other presentations I couldn’t see as they clashed with the sessions above were Robert O’Callahan’s talks on web standards and Firexfox 3.

In a larger community like Auckland we do have the UPA and Auckland Web Meetup meetings already but those are invitation-only speaking which is projected with less conversation than this format allows. I think this really filled a niche that hadn’t been attended to, without taking anything away from the other groups.

I did see a couple of people speak that I have heard before, and as usual did wonder where the project managers, business analysts and designers (to broadly refer to these groups) were. There were a few representatives from each group but essentially it’s a geek thing which would be nice to see change. I know I start to sound like a broken record but for those who don’t attend because there’s nothing for them - talk about what you want to hear!

The food was awesome and to top it all off, we all got tshirts designed by the talented Mata. Thanks to the sponsors and to everyone who came - I really hope we can do this again next year! I’ll even present, I promise!

I came into work this morning to some bad news: due to personal reasons, my internet heroes Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek Champ will not be able to make it to Webstock. This means no photo workshop with them and no speaking spots during the conference.

Derek and Heather have long been heroes for a number of reasons - their involvement in projects like the Mirror Project, JPG, Fray and Flickr. Since 2002, I’ve had a quote of Derek’s linked on vortex, which I feel isn’t just limited to the topic it describes:

My advice to anyone running a personal website: Put your head down and don’t listen to anything anyone says about it. Ignore any dire pronouncements that include the words “genre,” “medium,” or “revolution.” Avoid referer logs, popularity rankings, and vanity searches at all costs.

Use whatever tool makes sense to you. Write your code by hand or not. Distrust all political parties. Never put a label on yourself unless you’re sure it’s really what you are, and even then don’t. Avoid cults of personality, even when they’re your own.

Remember that a personal website’s only defining characteristic is that it’s personal. And, as such, no one has to “get it” but you. It doesn’t have to “advance the medium” or “make the world a better place.” It just has to make your world a better place. It has to fill some need in your life. It has to make you happy.

Do what you love, baby. And don’t stop doing it for anybody.

I just hope that whatever has prevented them from coming to New Zealand sorts itself out (and hopefully for the better). We’ll miss you Derek and Heather - but the onus will be on the other speakers now to work that bit harder to make Webstock as amazing as it would have been.

EDIT: I suggested to Tash and Mike from Webstock that we have a photo meetup anyway…they seem keen to organise something around that idea, so stay tuned if you were booked for Derek and Heather’s workshop.

If you haven’t already heard, Auckland will have the inaugural Auckland BarCamp on December 15th - I know, I know, you’ll have a hangover from your work Christmas party, right? Well, drink some water before bed and come on along.

BarCamp is a web community ‘un-conference‘, where there is no set list of speakers or seminars. Instead, the people attending become the speakers and generate the content. The more people who attend, the more ideas for great content - and the more successful the day becomes.

Everyone is an expert at something. BarCamp allows creatives, technologists, scientists, programmers, and bloggers the chance to gather together and share new ideas…. At a traditional conference the best ideas originate in the hallways and corridors. BarCamp is all corridor.

I am hoping that this will be the first of many rockin events, but with all things like this future events rely on this one. Help us build our community here in Auckland and register for BarCamp Auckland now.

Yesterday I attended the 2007 Semi-Permanent event with a bunch of my workmates & design-y friends.

The thing I really enjoy about SP is being inspired by people who are working at the top of the industry - but who are also about sharing inspiration & thoughts about design / creativity in general. I think it’s important to show work so everyone can see how they translate their ideas into practice, though some people don’t seem to get across their philosophy that well & it turns more into “this is my portfolio”.

I was really disappointed by two things this year:

• No interactive / web presenters. Last year there was Tokyo Plastic, this year…only a few mentions of there being websites to support campaigns. No actual focus on either of these areas. I’d be really interested to know the reason for this because there are so many things that could be spoken about. Potentially they were concerned that websites are not that interesting to present in that forum (?) but I’d disagree with that. I would hope that they didn’t feel that there weren’t people who could have been asked to speak from New Zealand or from Australia/the UK (which are the two other countries they tend to draw from).
• Not enough discussion about working in industry/with clients/translating briefs, etc. A lot of the audience for SP are students - & who more needs an idea or overview of what it is going to be like working with clients, budgets, all sorts of things. A few of the speakers touched on it but this was less mentioned than last year . It’s all wonderful to see the amazing creations that people can create with time & care but the fact that a couple of them mentioned that they burnt on those projects is almost as important as the work itself in some ways - learning to be commercial as well as creating really quality work is a fine balance but one that people need to work towards if they want to eat when they start working. There are so many challenges in the types of briefs clients provide as well, & on discussing it with some of the designers, it’s something we’re quite interested in: what the brief was, how that developed & how it became the end product.

It’s always a full on day - they get as much packed in as they can - and there were 7 speakers. My favourites were:

• Alt - a New Zealand company, who have been doing a lot of work with NZTE & had some awesome ideas about creativity & design to share. I actually got the most personally out of this one - especially as he spoke about some more abstract creative ideas, referencing Spike Milligan & Greer Twiss (who is one of my favourite NZ sculptors).
• Glue Society -showed some great stuff & really seemed to have a great sense of humour around that they were trying to do as well. I love the idea of creative collectives - I don’t know if anyone remembers that idea I submitted a few years ago for funding around a creative collaboration space to be formed in Auckland??
• United Visual Artists - showed a lot of installation and concert work they have done with LED lights & computer systems. Amazing scale of production which all seemed to be very well done.

Overall, it’s a good day & you always take from these things what you’re after, in a lot of ways. I’m glad they mentioned that they are going to split it into two days next year, because it’s quite full on to see 7 x 1 hour sessions all in one day - especially as they dim the lights in the auditorium for the speakers presentations to show better.

Last night at the Auckland UPA meeting, Neil Jarvis from the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind spoke. Neil provided very eloquent & useful demonstration of how three well-used websites differ in their levels of accessibility, using JAWS, a well-known screen reader.

The demonstration was similar to one I saw at Webstock last year by Darren Fittler which served a similar purpose. For those who have never seen JAWS or similar in operation (especially used by someone who is an expert user), it’s a very very worthwhile thing to see.

To summarise Neil’s points:

• Tools only show you how good or bad your code is. You can run as many tools over your code & hypothesise about your usability/accessibility as much as you like but the end user will tell you how good it is
• Assistive technologies differentiate between information - they can pull out the essential, the good and the “who cares” content - it does help users prioritise information
• Screen readers are not a new technology - they were being developed and in use back in the days of bulletin boards. They’re always trying to catch up and even though penetration of new versions can be slow if people are using standards it really helps.

JAWS

• JAWS is a $2000 extra cost above the outlay for a normal PC - upgrades are a couple of hundred dollars each time, so don’t always expect that users are going to have JAWS, and if they have JAWS, that it will be the most up-to-date version
• Users can get a “headings list” dialogue, which will list the headings in the page out, e.g. H2, H3, H4 etc - not that I would think that many people would have an issue understanding that this kind of hierarchy is important!
• JAWS also allows an “HTML features” list, so using the right element for the job is important - more users of assistive technologies understand these than the general population. Sometimes browsing this way can help Neil jump to where forms are, for example.
• JAWS can read to you in different voices for different elements like headings and links - you can change the speed, pitch & sex of the voice. You can also have sounds to represent different elements.

Examples

• Neil showcased the Radio NZ site as an excellent example of an accessible site,
  • He pulled up a list of the links in a dialogue box there were several “find out more” links with no surrounding context. Which “find out more” would you choose?
  • I know that a lot of content management systems do put in things like “find out more” automatically - how to do this kind of thing for a sighted person and not have it be useless for someone needing assistive technology? For example, on sites I’ve worked on we’ve linked the full name of an article but then after the abstract there is often a “read more” or similar. How to get around this?

• CDnow.com was Neil’s medium example - though it’s machine generated image names were completely useless on the homepage.
  • If it’s important enough to showcase on your homepage, why would you let the identifier be something like PVB0000R12WW_01_PE32_0401_SCTZZZZZZZZZZ_V180697172_?
  • This is also what comes up as a browse link in JAWS - how would you choose what to use?

• The Burger King site was an example of a bad experience - it comes back with the text “no links on the homepage! It’s a site for the sighted only as the Flash isn’t accessible either. Apparently there is a way you can export code for embedding Flash which is more accessible but developers do need to seek it out.

Accessible AJAX?

• Screen readers can’t deal with AJAX yet as tt’s a relatively new technology (and who knows if it will be lasting)
• Neil and a colleague have written pages which ARE accessible so there are ways forward with this
• Again, whether it can be accessible going forwards relies on developers as much as any assistive technology

Neil summed up by pointing out that creativity without responsibility is not necessary - you can be creative with your web work AND still be accessible.

As always, the most recent Great Blend had a range of thought-provoking topics and speakers. It was a little more TV-focussed compared to others I’ve been to, but Russell always manages to keep it really relevant and interesting.

In a lot of ways, I don’t find discourse around TV that interesting. It seems like a one-way conversation a lot of the time, or at least one in which response (i.e. programming or new shows) is very delayed. I watch TV that we download (gasp!), borrow on DVD or record on MySky. I hardly ever watch live television and mostly when I do I’m so used to my on demand viewing style, I get irritated and stop watching.

There was talk about user-generated content, and about the interactive TV that the BBC and assumedly other British broadcasters use but how limiting is this still? Am I completely spoilt by the internet and the sheer amount of video available whenever i want? TV is simply not as accessible for users to get involved with - the means of production are costly and limited, require specialist skill (seen a blogger type app for editing a TV show? don’t think so)

I’m not even that interested in user-generated content on my TV screen because I CAN get it online. I do believe that organisations like Sky should be using the fact that they can track what I like and what I watch to target ads to me if they want me to watch them - and definitely targetting some internal advertising to me. I have never watched a child-rearing or a wife-swapping show - so don’t show me those ads! However, I watch a lot of Law & Order - so know that and show me things related, like Dexter for example - though, wait, will their commercial interests always truly stop them from being useful to me as they push the network’s advertising agendas?

Ultimately what is likely to make or break conventional television is where it goes from here. Will the networks hook into things like Joost and Apple TV - and in turn, will those be hooking into a last.fm type sharing thing to get some more useful community communications around the television content rather than just whinging about the Sopranos finale? I’ll be watching with one eye - but only because I don’t want to see less of the shows I enjoy being produced because the industry couldn’t compete.