You’re Leaving?! Where are you going?

Seems to be the most common reaction and immediate question – not why, but where I’m going to being as important an issue as the fact I’m leaving at all. Well, I’m not going anywhere specific, but many places all at once. After 2 Years, 9 months (according to LinkedIn) I’ve decided to make the move away from the security of full time employment and back to freelance, albeit with a slightly different tack to that which I’ve taken before.

Having run my own web design business (nice to be your own boss, but hard to market, manage and grow on your own) and spent a few years contracting around the country (rewarding, varied, but too much time away from home, or travelling)… I am going freelance in the more traditional sense, hiring/pimping out my skills and experience to those who need them, on a more ad-hoc basis, and with hopefully greater control over my clients, and the old work-life balance.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make “in the current climate”, as everyone keeps referring to it… but in any permanent role, you ultimately reach the point where one has to say the equivalent of “I think we should see other people” or “it’s not you, it’s me” and put up or shut up.

I’d just like to thank…

It’s fair to say that I wouldn’t be so confident in making the move if it hadn’t been for all the knowledge I’ve gained and the opportunities afforded to me during my time at Synetrix. Years of contracting gave me a pretty good CV and a focussed skill set but no sense of belonging or ownership. One of the reasons I was so keen to work with the guys at i2Q when I joined back in 2007 was the sense of working with people who were passionate about the company they were building, the work they were producing, and the feeling that I was going to have to run to keep up with these people.

Two and a half years on, and while that has been the case at times – I have also been given plenty of opportunities to stretch my own legs, and stand up on my own two feet (that noise is the sound of an analogy being stretched to breaking point :) while occasionally sprinting towards a deadline (twang!).

Fade to montage

So I’ll sign this off by looking back at some of my favourite memories and achievements over the last 2 and a half years…

EMBC deployment

The project I was hired initially to lead the interface design for – a custom skinned SharePoint portal (plus all the other services – email, broadband, filtering etc) to over 600k users in the East Midlands of the UK. One of the largest SharePoint deployments around, and a contract recently renewed until 2012

Microsoft Case Study of Synetrix Learning Platform: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000003435

Attollo VLE

Following that we embarked on the largest, longest development of my tenure, and perhaps the most demanding and rewarding as we battled to learn Silverlight v2 while still in Beta, and delivered a solid application which remains one of the most complex Silverlight deployments I have seen.

MIX09

While at MIX09 in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to demo the Attollo application to anyone who was interested (or not), meet a load of people I’d only just begun to connect with on twitter, and get ambushed for a couple of interviews.

Insight

The next major project was our inline parental reporting application – this was a challenge in terms of the difficulty of presenting a lot of information in a way that could be easily navigated.  I’m very pleased with how tight and solid an application this turned out.

Silverlight 3 Launch talk

As a result of the work we’d done with Silverlight 2, and our early adoption of Silverlight 3 for our Online reporting application – we were invited to talk at the UK launch of Silverlight 3.  An enjoyable experience for us to be able to give some exposure to our applications usually only seen from behind firewalls.

An interview with Jason our MD and myself discussing our use of Microsoft products to develop applications like Attollo and Insight: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/mtaulty/Silverlight-3-UK-Launch-Interview-with-I2Q/

OPENHIVE Branding

Working to help define a brand for our suite of products, and defining the visual language and user interface across them all.  Very rewarding to be involved from the very beginning of the product development process to seeing the brand launched at the world’s biggest educational technology show at Olympia in January this year.

MIX10

Finally this year, I again got the chance to visit the Microsoft MIX event in Las Vegas.  Great people, fun town, cool tech, no sleep.

See me here at about 04:35 - http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Psychlist1972/Pete-at-MIX10-Your-Favorite-Things-at-MIX/

…

Thanks again to everyone I’ve worked with at i2Q / Synetrix – it’s been a blast!

Watch this space…

Announcements & Keynotes

The subjects were largely a given – the keynote speakers rather giving away what the main items on the agenda would be. It was in the details the real interest lay…

Windows Phone 7 Series Developer platform

Silverlight, Silverlight, Silverlight. That’s all you need to know. Well, kinda. There’s some XNA in the mix too, allowing something of a cross-over route for games developers and there were some great demos of 3D gameplay and the like.

Silverlight 4

A real cross-platform story now with Silverlight providing a common development platform for the ’3 screens and the cloud’ metaphor. The focus was very much on the ease of transferring existing Silverlight skills, code and practices to the new platform.

IE9

HTML5 and SVG support… we hoped, but didn’t quite expect to see that level of progress and evidence of commitment from Microsoft. While it was great to see the degree of implementation, its worth remembering that the actual release date of IE9 is likely some 12 months off. On the positive side, the IE team have released their platform preview, making available to the dev community a more recent build, more regularly. Hopefully by the time it reaches RTW, it should be full featured enough, and the HTML5 spec well defined enough to offer full compatibility straight off the bat.

Bill Buxton

Always a pleasure. Bit of a shame we only got 20 minutes in the keynote on Tuesday, but his calming influence and thought-provoking discussion of the nature of Natural User Interfaces was a welcome contrast to some of the technology-focussed information

Sessions

In addition to the keynotes, I attended a total of 9 breakout sessions over the 3 days. I chose to attend those sessions where I thought I might have a different point of view and questions to ask, or if it was a subject outside my normal sphere of expertise – to try and gain a different perspective on my day-to-day work. As such, the sessions I actually attended were perhaps different from those I highlighted in my Pre-MIX post. Here is a selection of those I did make it along to:

The Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL24

Great nugget of a session – tracking usage from within the statistical black hole that is Silverlight. Providing opportunities for analysis of usage data and feedback on user interaction.

Building an Accessible Microsoft Silverlight Experience

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL51

Good overview – the real value is in the Slide Deck; great links to some useful tools and information around JAWS 11 compatibility.

Microsoft Silverlight Optimization and Extensibility with MEF

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL52

Something we need to look at, especially useful for opening up your application to 3^rd parties. Our recent survey tool application would benefit from the use of a standardised framework for the integration of 3rd party games and components.

Windows Phone UI and Design Language

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL14

A great overview of the story and rationale that delivered the lovely crisp UI you’ve seen demoed and blogged all over. Real insight into the design journey, and really showed how much the team cared about the fresh new Design Language for mobiles in general, not just the Windows Phone.

Designing Corporate Websites with SharePoint 2010:

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/PR01

Some interesting snippets around inclusion of Silverlight and taking theming from the desktop to the web, allowing branding consistency in all forms of corporate communication.

Microsoft Surface Goes Social: Research Project at the University of Linz:

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/EX13

Interesting research project on the use of context and user sensitive virtual interactions in real locations, and the use of surface as a meeting place and hub.

Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks and Architectural Experiences

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/DS06

Consideration of how to design Interfaces for a wide variety of form factors and the impact of their environment and location context.

An hour with Bill Buxton:

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/DS16

Non-specific, and not technical in the least, but a very interesting hour long open discussion on the current state and perception of design and User Experience in the industry, and how it compares with other more established fields.

Themes

As expected, Windows Phone 7 Series was the major theme. With the release of full details and support for its XNA and Silverlight development platform, it seemed 75% of break-out sessions mentioned it, and some were entirely focussed around it.

Unfortunately, perhaps as a result of so many technology debuts (IE9, OData, Phone development, VS2010, Silverlight 4, Blend and Sketchflow updates) it seemed the User Experience message got a little lost. Fortunately, a little bit of Bill Buxton goes a long way. Perhaps my favourite talk of the conference was the least structured; his session titled “An Hour with Bill Buxton” had no agenda, and just one slide. But of all the sessions, it was the one that had me walk out of the room with my head fizzing with ideas, inspiration and a sense of empowerment as a designer.

User Experience was alive and well in sessions like these – talks with no particular technology focus, but a real and genuine excitement for design and it’s many facets.

People

This year, MIX surpassed last year’s conference in terms of the breadth of socialising and networking opportunities available. Having only started really using Twitter just before MIX09, there were a lot of people who i had only started following in the 12 months since.

Putting faces and personality to some of the names I’d got to know via the web over the previous year was a big highlight of the event. And getting to meet a whole load more in real life, exchange stories and experiences common to us all working with similar technologies and on similar projects. And just shooting the breeze, talking about anything and everything, tech related or not… even the odd training session!

Vegas

Again, the location didn’t disappoint – just as unique and intense a city as I remember from last year. I was away for less time overall, but spent more nights actually in Las Vegas and think I felt the effects of air conditioned air and lack of daylight by the end of the week.

The non-stop atmosphere of the place kind of suits the tone of the conference though, you never know where or when you might bump into a friend, new or old, and find yourself having the most in depth discussions in some unlikely places. The new venue of Mandalay Bay worked well too – just as plush as the Venetian, and it was no bad thing to be slightly removed from the Strip – there was still plenty of nightlife on the doorstep, and a short cab ride to the bright lights.

A highlight for me this year was checking out the new City Center [sic] development, with some stunning architecture from firms like Studio Daniel Libeskind and Foster + Partners. A real contrast from the the chintz and cheese of the rest of the strip, with some fantastic examples of quality and detail in the buildings and spaces we visited.

… for designers and developers who build innovative consumer web sites. Attendees are coders, strategists, information architects, visual designers, UX professionals and digital marketers. They represent top web sites, web start-ups, interactive agencies and other organizations that do business on the Web.

It is the most relevant conference to what we do at i2Q / Synetrix in terms of our choice of technology (as Microsoft Gold Partners) and in that almost all of our applications are web focussed.

Announcements & Keynotes

As ever, the biggest buzz leading up to MIX is around the big keynote announcements. Microsoft seem to have got into the habit of saving some of their coolest news about their various web and communication technologies for the March event in Las Vegas

There have been a few leaks (mostly around the Windows 7 Series phone development platform), but there are plenty more that have been kept under close wraps for a proper curtain call in Vegas.

The degree of enthusiasm and excitement shown by the delegates over the week must seem a strange thing for those not at the conference, not in the industry, or not interested in Microsoft products and technology. Indeed, to me now (remembering the keynote announcements for new functionality, products and services released last year), the extended rounds of applause verging on standing ovations might seem a little over the top.

But when you have a room full of 1000 designers, developers and technologists who work day-in day-out with this stuff - the enthusiasm becomes infectious, and when all those people see a new feature that will ultimately make their job easier, or allow them to be more creative or productive. you can kind of understand how it gets to feel like some sort of hyper-enthusiastic teenage pep-rally.

Sessions

Aside from the Keynotes which take place from 9 to 11 am on the first two mornings of MIX (streamed live via http://live.visitmix.com/) there are around 140 sessions over the 3 days, with a day full of workshops on the Sunday.

It’s impossible to make it to all of the sessions you would like to, the calendar of sessions I’d like to attend has 2-4 entries for every time slot of the three days! Fortunately they are all recorded and generally available 24hrs later, for anyone and everyone who might be interested, not just attendees.

Here are a just a few of the sessions this year which I’m particularly keen to attend:

Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications

Increasingly, we are looking at ways of accessing and displaying large quantities of data, and applying some insight to the meaning behind it. This should offer a bit more food for thought and alternative approaches.

Building Pivot Collections

Really looking forward to getting some more information behind this new technology for visualising collections of information - there are so many potential applications in education.

Stepping Outside the Browser with Microsoft Silverlight 4

Finally the line between desktop and internet application is dissolving. Now we can build truly powerful applications that can be accessed from anywhere and can escape the restrictions of the browser.

In-Depth Look at Internet Explorer 9

The latest and greatest version of the (whether you like it or not) still dominant web browser. As ever, we will be hoping for increased standards compliance and support for emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3.

Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight

The new Windows Phone 7 Series is causing quite a stir. It has a lot to live up to in the Smartphone market but offers a really great platform for us to extend our Silverlight development expertise and take our applications into the mobile world.

Building an Accessible Microsoft Silverlight Experience

Increasingly important for us and looming large on our roadmap is improving the accessibility of our Silverlight applications. We know it has the capability, we just need to better understand how to utilise it.

Developing Natural User Interfaces with Microsoft Silverlight and WPF 4 Touch

The Natural User Interface (NUI) has become ever more mainstream over the last few years, as touch-based computing has moved from mobile, to table-top and now to the desktop with Windows 7. We need to ensure our applications support this evolving method of interaction.

Themes

At every conference or event you attend, there always seems to be an over-riding theme around a new technology or concept. For example, at BETT this year the key themes were 3D (everywhere), Augmented reality (emerging tech) and Playful Learning.

The recurring theme of MIX is designer - developer collaboration (hence the name of the conference), but this year the big news is Mobile. Coming just a month or so after the first sight of the new Windows Mobile platform, MIX is the event where everyone is expecting to hear more detail, especially those Microsoft partners who are keen to start developing for it.

People

This for me, is the real reason to come to MIX. As I’ve said - the keynotes are streamed live, and sessions available soon after the event. so why attend? Aside from having a vastly different experience in person (much like attending a football match rather than watching on TV), you can actually connect with your peers from around the world, ask the experts in person, and even harass the people who make the tools and technologies we use in our day to day work. That is the real value of MIX.

Vegas

Aaah… Vegas. take all of the above and wrap it up in a crazy environment like Las Vegas, during Spring Break and throw in St Patrick’s day for good measure. Microsoft really know how to put on a great event and consider every aspect of the event from breakfast through to the attendee party - its sure to be another year to remember.

Keep track of all the goings on via the MIX website, on Twitter by following @mixevent and the #MIX10 hash-tag.

Originally posted on www.OPENHIVE.net

I travelled back from London yesterday after a great couple of days at the BETT show.  Last year was the first time we’d really shown off any of our applications, demonstrating our Silverlight and SharePoint based VLE, but this year we were launching our new brand OPENHIVE and releasing our full suite of products to the world.

there were a number of other stands I wanted to visit during my time there having heard a lot of chat on twitter (#BETT2010) in the days before and at the start of the event.  So here are a few of my personal highlights…

OPENHIVE Launch

It was Wednesday morning when we unveiled the stand to an expectant crowd.  I was at home after a couple of long days ensuring everything was up to scratch with our application interfaces and some of the digital aspects of the marketing.  We had some positive feedback get back to the office, but it wasn’t until I arrived and could for myself see how well everything had come together – the stand, branding, demo pods, screen animations and ‘freeBees’ including of course – the bee balloons!  What really got me was how positive and excited everyone on the stand was, clearly ‘buzzing’ from the great feedback and reception we’d been getting.  A great launch, bringing together almost a year’s hard work.

Futurelab

I’d come across Futurelab via a reference on twitter and noted them as being an interesting company doing interesting things.  Aside from some game-based learning apps and some great creative use of display and interaction, something that caught my attention was a Haptic feedback HCI device.  Using a pen type element mounted via universal joint on an articulated arm, the user is able to manipulate a cursor on screen, interacting with an elastic 3d plane and receive feedback provided via resistance in the movement of the device’s arm.

It’s one of those things that gets you thinking about potential applications.  The technology isn’t brand new, being employed in medical training (think surgery without the patients) and neither is the concept of feedback to anyone who’s played a games console in the last 5/10 years.  But it should be considered as another option in the ever growing menu of ways to interact with a digital environment (especially where feedback is an important factor), as well as being really quite cool to play with.

SIMS Discover

For those who may not be familiar with technology in the UK education sector, SIMS from Capita education services is the MIS used in around 80% of schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.  They were attracting quite a bit of attention with their prototype Discover application which interested me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly they are now a (step?) sister company to my employer, Synetrix.  Second, I’d heard that it had been developed in Silverlight – a technology we also make much use of in presentation of schools data, often derived from SIMS.

I was quite impressed with their consideration of touch, and drag and drop functionality.  The interface itself is nothing ground breaking, and in it’s current prototype form seems slightly limited (though doing a small number of things well is no bad thing) but it’s great to see some real thought being given to how an everyday user can manipulate a large range of data sources, in a usable manner, to gain some real value as a result.  Their mantra during development of ‘as easy to use as an iPhone’ is a good one when considering touch based interfaces for the masses.

Smart Augmented Reality camera concept

Continuing a 3D theme that many thought was the hallmark of this years BETT (from a new technology perspective at least), Smart technologies had a proof of concept being demonstrated using one of their document cameras and some clever software.  Making use of plastic cubes with 6 different patterned sides, the software is able to recognise the shape ad position, displaying a 3D model in the position, angle and direction of the cube.  It was set up so that on shaking the cube, an new model was loaded.  Alternative methods showed flash cards and a book with different patterns on every other page, presenting the possibility of having a truly 3D popup book ‘experience’.

Garlic and Shots!

Finally, apologies to anyone who visited the stand on Saturday and got more than they bargained for during a demonstration or conversation.  I suspect it may have been a joke on the part of a certain member of staff who recommended the Olsson Bros restaurant for the team dinner on Friday night but while a great time was had by all, Saturday found us munching the mints, and trying hard to talk to people without breathing on them!

All in all – a great show for lots of different reasons, it doesn’t get much BETTer than that ;)

It’s my intention that this would be supported with demos of our real world, existing Silverlight (2 and 3) applications, and the content comes from the experience we’ve gained at i2Q/Synetrix over the last two years we’ve spent working with Silverlight.

Please cast your vote here and help me spread the word on…

“Baking a great Silverlight UX: the recipe for successful designer-developer collaboration”

Abstract:

In order to make the most of a User-Experience focussed platform like Silverlight, we need to adopt a design-led development process.

To achieve this successfully requires close communication and collaboration between designers and developers.  We have the tool in Expression Blend, but how do we best utilise it to ensure the end solution remains true to the vision?

Find out some of the best practice and tips of complex Silverlight application development, learn how to avoid the pitfalls and enable designers to best leverage this powerful toolset for a great user experience.

Draft Outline:

• User-centric design
  • Keeping the user in mind at all times, focussing on how best to help them achieve their goals. Which in turn leads to a…
• UX led development
  • Where the user requirements and client specification inform the interface and workflow (in the View), which in turn informs the interaction and logic (in the ViewModel)
• MVVM FTW!
  • Not technical, but what the benefits are from a designer’s point of view, and what it means for “Blendability”
• Blendability
  • How easy it is to view and edit a data-bound user control, custom control or template from within Expression Blend. (Not whether or not you can turn an iPhone into a smoothie)
• Communication & understanding
  • Ongoing, regular and close collaboration between designer and developer in the context of an agile, iterative development process.
• Improved results
  • The combination of all of the above empowers the designer to exert greater control over the evolution of the application’s user experience.

Take Away:

At the end of this session attendees will take away an understanding of the real world benefits of user-centric design with a Model-View-ViewModel architecture, and practical tips on how to achieve the best possible end result through effective collaboration.

Knowledge Areas:

Silverlight, MVVM, designer-developer workflow, Expression Blend

Level of this presentation:

Aimed at beginner to intermediate practitioners, maybe of interest to advanced Silverlight developers / designers too, dependent on their current working practices.

The fundamental elements of win…

Twitter = Air

The Twitter platform seems pretty ethereal at times, especially when trying to nail down the business model.  But like air it pervades everywhere, if it’s not there we certainly miss it (though perhaps not quite as crucially :), and – this is my favourite analogy – sound cannot communicate in a vacuum.  Twitter acts as the molecules in air, with sound waves emanating from one source and radiating out.

Tweetie 2 = Water

Angela Dodson: So why water?
John Constantine: It’s a universal conduit. Lubricates the transition from one plane to another.

Constantine, 2005

Tweetie offers an attractive UI and experience that smoothes the process of transmitting and receiving, acting as filter, magnifying glass, and multi-channel broadcaster.

iPhone 3Gs = Fire(?)

Probably the most tenuous analogy, but I’m sticking with the theme.    Services like video and Image publishing on yfrog wouldn’t exist without the technology providing the need, and kindling the ‘fire’ of development and innovation.

Combined

Recently I got a new iPhone 3Gs as warranty replacement, and while I’d tested out video in a “yep, that works” cursory fashion – I’d not yet tried to do anything useful with it.

So I found myself at the excellent Yardbird in Birmingham where DJ Vadim was playing live with his band. Wanting to share the moment but feeling just sending an image to twitpic doesn’t really cut it, I thought I’d just see if it was possible to send video attached to a tweet via tweetie 2 with its improved functionality and UI.

So…

1. new tweet
2. write some text
3. click word count / features button
4. “use camera” hmm … sounds promising, it’s not specifying ‘photo’
5. record video
6. “use”
7. send!

Stuck the phone back in my pocket and checked back a couple minutes later to find it had posted the video to yfrog, and the message to twitter.

http://twitter.com/spacescape/status/5108928191

Now I know all this sound very simple, child’s play even – but that’s kind of the point – the ease of use of the whole thing.  So many times you try to use an application or piece of technology in a way that you *think* it should work, and find yourself disappointed.

Brilliant – another glimpse of the future, and I’m liking what I see.

By the time HTML 5 is prevalent across all major browsers, say maybe up to two years away (and I suspect still to be largely reliant on how long the fully HTML 5 supporting version of IE has been available), Silverlight should be up to version 5, going on 6 – by the current rate of progress.

The talks given by Bruce (of Opera, opinions his own :), and also Aza Raskin (of Mozilla) at FOWA point towards the future of HTML web applications and their integration with the browser.  By adding more application oriented standards to the markup, and increasing the intelligence of the browser, they are becoming a more powerful tool in themselves, devolving some of the control from the applications within.

With Google’s approach to creating a web based operating system via Chrome – providing their suite of apps, new /old methods of communication via Wave and Gmail, and access to more content than you could shake a stick at… i can see why MS may find themselves playing catch-up here.  Though I’m glad to hear that (at least for now) that MS are not going with Silverlight for their forthcoming Office 2010 web apps,  from what I’ve seen of Outlook Web Access 2010 - if they can deliver a similarly well implemented UI, they may be onto a winner with the scale of their existing user base.

Via the AIR runtime, Adobe have stolen a march (cross platform at least) on Microsoft but it seems based on a slightly flawed technology (Flash/Flex) not designed for purpose from the outset.  I’ve also just been shown the latest Apps on www.acrobat.com, and it looks like Adobe are having their own go, allowing you to create, share, collaborate and export as PDF documents via a Flash based word processor… though I’m not sure why you would want to.

What MS have in Silverlight is a very powerful, easily deployed platform with the potential for delivering really bloody complex, bespoke applications with advanced, custom, tailored user interfaces.  And games, probably games too.

But you don’t really want to be experiencing this experience within the environment of a browser.  With HTML 5 providing the capability of features like Canvas (shame video may be consigned to politics hell) and more consistent cross browser implementations of  the scripting supporting it, Silverlight and Flash developers will have to work harder to to justify their use versus an increasingly sophisticated, plug-in free and fully open standards based, browser-native platform.

MS have taken the first step in unleashing Sliverlight in version 3, with Out Of Browser support.  This enables you to run your Silverlight application from the desktop, off the internet, at your convenience.  Except that right now, it isn’t as convenient as it could be, if it had some more of the features of its parent – WPF.

When Silverlight is able to step out of its sandbox and wear its own chrome, OS independent, it will be a true platform in it’s own right, without need or limitation of the browser.   Sounds a bit prophetic, but I wonder if that may be its making or breaking.

The idea behind this set of talks was to take a look at the options currently available, or on their way for creating Rich Internet Applications.  Unfortunately we couldn’t get representation from the Flash community, but Bruce Lawson was there to give his popular talk from FOWA on HTML5, and I offered an insight into the features of Silverlight and Expression Blend 3.

The slides are available…

• On Slideshare
• Or as a PDF, including my speaker notes [3.5Mb] for extra info (click or hover on the pink note icon top left on each slide)

I’ve also uploaded the example project I used in the demo [2.5Mb]. Included within the root of the Project folder is the XML I imported using the sample data function to populate the list box if you want to try it out yourself.

Details of the features demonstrated in the sample:

• Grid Settings & Layout
• Custom fonts & embedding
• Pixel Shading - Drop Shadow
• Sample data XML import
• Create List box from sample data
• Template resources (listbox item)
• Element > element binding between Listbox & text block
• Storyboard timeline animation
• Behaviours to trigger animation
• Out of Browser / save to desktop

Links mentioned in the talk:

• Silverlight smooth Streaming Demo
  • http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming
• SketchFlow
  • http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/SketchFlow_OverView.aspx
• Expression Blend trial
  • http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/try-it/default.aspx

I have a load more links detailed under a previous talk, all around getting started with Silverlight – lots of useful blogs and resources if you’re new to the platform:

http://www.space-scape.com/index.php/2009/04/01/silverlight-insight-talk-real-world-experience

Finally, I realised afterwards that i didn’t demo our latest app which came out of the work we did with SketchFlow.  I’ll see if I can get a screencast done, as it’s certainly one of the most polished products we’ve produced, and a good example of the more conventional line-of-business type apps.

Thanks again to the Multipack for another cool Presents Session.

The future of Front-End Engineering

Britt Selvitelle – Twitter Inc.

Check out the forthcoming Tweetie2 - http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-iphone/ - Nice new features – that’s what gets twitters devs excited.

Twitter = Platform … twitter.com = the Twitter ‘web client’

Announced here - ‘twitter labs’ (to be renamed)   - facility to allow them to be more playful and experimental with features – relaeasing them to a small subset of users

• Dark coding(?) – turning features down according to demand // capacity / issues.
• If you’re creating a service, aim to release an API with alpha 1.0.

The Future of the Cloud

Simon Wardley – Canonical

to summarise – either ‘the cloud’ is based on open source, or we risk losing internet freedoms.

What we need to avoid some of the pitfalls – is open source and standardised method of switching betweensproviders.

The Future of Agile (and Rails)

Yehuda Katz  - Engine Yard

Responding to Change is the key statement… or Preserving the ability to change in the future.

Basically … Suggestion is that Ruby, and Rails offers a framework that is supports the above ethos.

Creating a Mobile Widget

Interesting demo – showing how easy it is to create an App for use on the Vodaphone 360 device (and others). USing HTML/CSS/JS, runs in chromeless opera browser

• JIL – joint Innovation Lab (consortium of Vodaphone, Verizon and others)
• App star comeptition, and HelloApp widget comp

How to increase the Accessibility of your web app

Robin Christopherson – AbilityNet

Literacy, Dyslexia… Accessiblity is importnt.  It doesn’t jsut benefit disabled users – able users are better able to complete tasks.

Great demonstration of how a disbaled user experiences Facebook.  Such a different experince with the voice.  Mobile version make for a much more streamlined and less confusing experience – due to the lack of functionality related javascript and markup

• MVDA video accessibility
• JAWS very much the more advanced screenreader.  Using WAI-ARIA, elements like drag and drop list boxes become usable with alternative options for making selections
• Captchas – bad.  see zurb.com. Plenty of alternatives; such as

Marketing your Web App – The future of online marketing

Alex Hunter

Most developers believe that ‘Marketers are the cancer on the nutsack of creativity’

However – it is important.  Without it, your app or brand is set up for a whole load of Fail.

Important thing to remember when looking at social marketing and networking is that people don’t want to connect with ‘Brands’ they want to connect with ‘people’

why – because we feel they care.  Staking your own reputation on it.  Belief in your product says a lot.  Belief equals credibility.

The Future of Print Journalism

Lynne D. Johnson - (ex FastCompany.com) … Advertising Research Foundation

Print will continue, in one form or another – most likely at a premium, subscription tyope affair.  Print IS in decline.

• Craigslist took the classifieds
• eHarmony took the personals
• Google to the little ads for niche products
• … and Argos can email its customers itself, if it wants to announce a sale.

Social is where it’s at… as we know.

SodaHead and The Huffington Post are examples of the personalised news, from social sources.

As per the Guardian yesterday (with their Data store and platform), the New York Post has a developer centre.  Traditional print organisations need to start thinking like web developers… platforms and apps. CONTENT PROVIDERS.

Start-up Metrics for Pirates

Dave McClure – Founders Fund

• Acquisition
• Activation
• Retention
• Referral
• Revenue

The notes were mainly written during the talks, and may include some thoughts of my own around the potential applications of the technologies and approaches mentioned.

First up after the introduction was Kevin Rose – founder of DIGG.com…

How to go from 1 to 1 million users

1. Ego…

It’s about enhancing user’s self worth…. experience – improve how they feel about themselves during or following their interaction.

Achieve this by providing emotional rewards, and visible rewards… badges.

For example, one can see twitter followers as social currency, a user’s high follower count is considered an indication of status. And one with a relatively low following count even more so, etc…

Leader boards can work, as long as they are inclusive, and don’t put users off.

2. Simplicity…

take stuff out – don’t overbuild a feature

3. Build & Release…

don’t second-guess the users – get it out there and see how they use it

4. Connect with community

podcast… launch party…

engage and be an active participant in the community you’ve created

Look at ways to bring people back into your system… real-time notifications of events, leaves users not wanting to feel left out…

wefollow – is an example of people wanting to be included.  “My peers have added themselves to this, so i should too” – particularly relevant in a professional context.

take new user through a series of positive tasks to introduce them to the app or network, and show the etiquette that will enable them to get the best out of it – reward them as they achieve the tasks.

Advanced Web App Marketing strategy

Chris Abad, Irrata Labs

again – empower your users to do the marketing for you… give exposure to those raving fans, construct the framework that allows them to evangelise on your behalf and gives them the buy-in and ownership that keeps their interest and encourages their contribution.

Future of Facebook Connect

Cat Lee

• building blocks:
  Identity
  connections
• reasons to connect; sharing, having experiences with friends – more interesting and fun
• widget central – facebook widget… check out the recommendations
• facebook connect wizard and playground
• translations – allowing facebook to take over the world..
• May be applications in language learning?
• WTF is XFBML ?!?!

HTML  5

Bruce Lawson

Generally awesome – check out the slides at www.brucelawson.co.uk

How people will use the web in future

Aza Raskin – Mozilla

making the web ‘You-centric’

1- identity

• Mozilla looking to make Roboform obsolete!

2 - ?

• Mozilla is bridging the gap between the desktop and the web – THIS IS THE OBJECT OF A BROWSSER!  enter email – get suggestions of  people from your address book,
• Issue with SQL-based local storage, is that front-end devs DONT DO SQL!

3-integrated

• problem is the separation of the data… used to be important stuff on desktop
• ‘whatever’ button
• bold hope – turn tech prob into personal prob
• trust site? who else uses|?

4-making revolve around ___

ubiquity – natural language “check weather in London in C”.. and it does

interesting solutions form both Mozilla and Facebook around translations…

another glimpse of the future… on a foreign trip with your courier pad, make photo of sign in station, pad identifies text, scans, renders, translates.

IE 8 accelerators offer the beginnings of similar function

Web links to check out:

• Cappuccino
  http://cappuccino.org/
• …by 280 North
  http://280north.com/
• Revision 3
  http://revision3.com/
• Spymaster
  http://playspymaster.com/
• …by Irata Labs:
  http://iratalabs.com/
• Facebook developer site
  http://www.facebook.com/developers/
• modernizr.com
  http://www.modernizr.com/
• html5demos.com
  http://html5demos.com/
• Jet pack – Mozilla extensions
  https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.