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Managing social networks is a total pain. Fortunately for wannabe 2.0 rockstars everywhere, CEO Dewey Gaedcke and his team started Minggl, a tool for managing multiple social networks. I caught up with him downtown to ask him a few questions about it. |
Michelle Greer: Social networks are never static. We’ve all come to love or hate the new Facebook, and people adopt new Twitter clients seemingly monthly to keep up. Every week, some naive VC funds a social network of some stripe hoping it will actually get adopted. How does Minggl plan to keep up with the constantly evolving trends in the social networking sphere?
Dewey Gaedcke: Great question and this is Minggl’s sweet spot—-we believe that people want to participate in many communities and will frequently move between them. We’re not a site, or a tool, or a community—we’ve built a “relationship layer” that is embeded in the browser so we can facilitate all the social things you do, transparently between communities. You get to “do social” based on how you know someone and how much you care, instead of ‘where’ they hang-out, or which tools they use. If you think about it, “social” is relationship centric, not tool or venue centric, so the only sensible thing to do is to carry the relationship model with you, in the same way your brain does it. The only point of personal connection between Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace (for you, from a technology perspective) is your browser, so we modify the browser to bring relational/productive benefits to you, everywhere you go on the web. From a technical perspective (if that’s what you are asking), Minggl is an API abstraction layer—this means we have ZERO site-specific code in the product…..Minggl support for Facebook (for example) is defined by a little XML file that Minggl knows how to interpret and run. If we want to add support for Plaxo, we just have to create this little text file and ww don’t change the core program at all. It’s very elegant ;-)
Greer: Minggl allows users to filter statuses from the people you follow based on keywords. What are some applications for this sort of functionality?
Gaedcke: Out of the 400 “friends” you have online, very solid research shows that you can only be truly “friends” with about 150 of them. Of that 150, only about 40 are meaningful (you really care) in your life. And of those 40, it’s likely that only a few publish information that aligns with your goals and interests. Do you have time to read the daily menu consumed by 250 distant strangers??? If you do, then use minggl without filters (in this mode, our mStream feature works just like the news aggregators) and read everything. If you don’t, then Minggl will show you information from the people you care about first and not waste your time with the rest….or at least save it for when you aren’t so busy.
Greer: Twitter seems to be the social network of choice for many prominent people in the social networking sphere. Any plans to expand the Twitter section of Minggl to include the “replies” and “archives” sections?
Gaedcke: We already support replies and retweets. Archive will be coming in the next few months. But micro-blogging is only a fractional part of the social dimension—-we believe that people care most about the person and about the message, not whether it goes over phone, email, sms or pony express. So you will see Minggl shifting the focus from “where you hang” and “what you use” (to communicate) and making it about who, what and why—-the real essence of social
Greer: What is your platform built in? Should we expect to see Minggl FailWhales?
Gaedcke: Minggl is built on a massively scalable architecture. The app server alone is written in three (Java) tiers, including a clustered cacheing layer. The DB layer is partitioned, load balanced, multi-master and replication aware. You may see Minggl hickup because someone pulled the wrong plug, or a bug slipped through QA, but it won’t be for scalability reasons….that I can guarantee.
Greer: What is it like working with the Twitter API?
Gaedcke: Twitter API is great….it’s clean, simple and works (when their infrastructure is up)
Greer: I hate managing social networks and like that Minggl integrates them into one sidebar. Do you need more developers so as to appease my need for easier and easier tools to manage social networks? If so, how should they get in touch with you?
Gaedcke: We will be hiring experienced Java and Javascript developers aggressively beginning in the middle of November. They can begin experimenting with our API to build social apps that deal with the ENTIRE friend list (instead of just a slice). Experienced techs can send their resume to jobs@minggl.com (best wait till mid-November). They should also play with the product, and get involved recommending features and reporting bugs at: http://getsatisfaction.com/minggl
Greer: Minggl allows you to tag people with certain keywords. Did I get a “cool” tag and if so, when the hell are we going wakeboarding?
Gaedcke: you received a “genius” tag and this means that minggl will randomly inject pictures of Einstein and Tila Tequila onto your various online identities.
To see how Minggl can save you some social networking headaches, download Minggl here. If you have some ideas for the product, get satisfaction by letting their team know here.
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Omar Gallaga is the author of the popular technology blog Digital Savant on austin360. I caught up with him on blogging, improv, and sneaking up on Sarah Lacy. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/omarg. |
MICHELLE:
Your Digital Savant blog allows you to diss the addition of a Motley Crue song to the video game “Rock Band”. Did you sell your soul to the devil or something? How did you score a gig that PAYS you to blog about video games?
OMAR:
I KNOW! That’s always the biggest revelation when I speak to students about journalism. It really started when I began working on the Statesman business desk way back in 1997. I’d always been big into video games and whenever there was an opportunity to write about a local game company (like Origin Systems), I always took it. After a while, I began writing more about personal tech and keeping up with the games industry became a larger part of my job.
Now, it’s probably only about 15 percent of my job, but I still try to keep up with what’s going on and play as much as I can. People forget, though, that sometimes you also have to play the really awful, worthless video games.
Surprisingly, not a lot of other people in the newsroom had a lot of interest in writing about the subject. I think a lot of people still think video games aren’t worth writing about unless you’re talking about the industry of interactive entertainment. I tend to think that there’s a lot culturally going on and that people my age (33) or younger have a lot of memories and cultural references built around games.
At the very least, it’s kind of nice not to have had all those hours I spent growing up playing video games be a complete waste. Now I also run a Web site about video gaming culture and history called Videogamey and I’m finding that I have more video game memories floating around in my head that I ever thought.
MICHELLE:
Your Digital Savant archives go all the way back to April of 2005. How did blogging and your blog in particular come about at Austin360.com?
OMAR:
It’s actually been even longer than that. Before Digital Savant, we all contributed to an “XL Blog” that was much more general. I would write about DVDs or movies or whatever else was happening. At the time, it was very experimental and only pertained to entertainment. Over time, we realized we should probably break them out into separate blogs and make them more thematic.
People in the newsroom knew that I had a pretty popular personal blog at the time that I’d been writing since 2000, so it was a natural fit for me. And technology is something I’ve always enjoyed writing about, even when I was editing our Spanish-language newspaper, ˇahora sí!. I kept “Digital Savant” going even as I was doing a whole other full-time job.
MICHELLE:
You were recently named “Employee of the Month” at the Austin American Statesman for your comprehensive coverage of your SxSW Interactive coverage. Do expand on your coverage of the conference, the disastrous Zuckerburg keynote and your run-in with Sarah Lacy.
OMAR:
It was very much a mix of good planning, long hours and some luck. My editor Sarah Lindner and I had been planning our coverage of South by Southwest Interactive for months. We’d shot videos of Hugh Forrest way in advance and had made plans to record a video of the Zuckerberg keynote. For a while, we weren’t even sure we were going to be allowed to do that and I was wrangling with SXSWi PR people over whether we would have any problems doing that or not. As it turned out, there was a whole crowd of people videotaping. But I got there an hour and a half early just to make sure I’d have a seat in the front row.
We taped the whole keynote in HD and had someone on staff waiting back at the newsroom to edit the video and post it as soon as possible. I handed the camera over when the keynote was done and we had a four-minute version of the keynote up within a few hours. As it was happening, I kept a log of interesting things that were said and things that happened and e-mailed that to the video editor so she knew exactly which clips to pull.
A few hours later, I was hunting for food and someone helped get me into an invitation-only event. Sarah Lacy happened to be there and I had my little Canon point-and-shoot. I overheard her talking to someone about the keynote and kind of laughing the whole thing off. I introduced myself and asked her if she wouldn’t mind saying what she was just saying on camera. She was very friendly and agreed.
As soon as I had the footage, I called my editor to tell her. By this time, Twitter and online blogs were already buzzing about the keynote and I knew we needed to get it up online. Our video editor had already left for the day, so I edited the footage myself on my Macbook and uploaded it to YouTube. Then it spread all over the Web after I posted about it on Twitter. It was just pure luck that I happened to run into her and that she agreed to be on video. By the next day, it seemed like the video was everywhere.
As for the rest of the conference, several of us kept in touch via text message or Twitter and we covered the conference in blogs and videos. We learned a lot. It was the first year I’d really thrown myself into SXSW in a while since coming back to covering technology and it involved commuting from New Braunfels every day and working 12-14 hour days. It was exhausting, but also really exciting. We want to do a lot more video next year and to find better ways to get updates out more quickly and efficiently.
MICHELLE:
Does the Statesman provide you will all the cool products you write about, and if so, do you get to keep them?
OMAR:
Companies send us videogames and tech products for review, but generally they ask if we want to review something first and I try to keep it very limited so we don’t get flooded with stuff we’ll never get to and have to mail back. Products that companies don’t want back (like video games or promotional junk) gets put in a company sale charity to benefit local schools.
I keep some video games for reference in case I think I may need to go back and play it again for an expansion pack or for future downloads. (Say, “Rock Band” or stuff on Xbox Live.) It’s not any different than what a music critic deals with: tons of CDs that end up in bins that you’ll never have time to review. Games usually end up in the charity sale or in a drawer, sadly.
MICHELLE:
How long do you think you’ll be on Twitter before someone throws your phone out a window?
OMAR:
My wife wants to throw my iPhone across the room sometimes. I haven’t gotten bored with Twitter yet, mostly because it went from being entertaining to useful for my job. I love it when big news spreads through Twitter or somebody posts something short, but profound.
MICHELLE:
Where are the best places to find you online?
OMAR:
My blog is at Digital Savant and I also write for Television Without Pity, Videogamey and a comic I do with my brother called “Space Monkeys!” at actiongravy.com.
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Julie Gomoll is the president of Launchpad Coworking, which will be the first official coworking space in Austin, TX. Currently Launchpad is in the exploratory demolition phase, but but you can track its progress as well as read more about coworking on the Launchpad Coworking blog. |
MICHELLE: How did you learn about coworking, and what originally piqued your interest?
JULIE: The idea started in my twenties — I wanted to open a cool bar where smart people hung out and had great conversations. Then I realized I didn’t need to hang out in bars and that people who were hanging out in bars all day weren’t having such interesting conversations after all. I realized my dream was really about building good community. So I started thinking about a coffee shop. Now I’m in my forties, and I like to hang out and work in coffee shops, but find them lacking. I started to think about doing something using the coffee shop model, but in a way that would better facilitate work.
I was talking to Tori Breitling about the idea and she said told me about a coworking group and said, “Look what these people are doing.” I thought we could do that — a coffee shop with extra room for coworking. We got so into the whole coworking idea that we flipped the idea around, and it evolved into a coworking space with an attached coffee shop.
I’ve always been a big fan of collaboration. I’m of the mind that sharing information makes us smarter and stronger. In the eighties, I ran my company Go Media, the company I eventually sold to Excite, that way. One of my philosophies was that I wanted everyone I hired to be able to teach me something. I hired people who knew things I didn’t. I like people who work with me instead of for me. For example, back then I was doing production on the Mac but I wanted to know about design so I hired a designer.
I applied this philosophy to working with clients, too. I might say to a client, “You don’t need me to do this, I can teach you how to do it yourself.” Telling my “secrets” not only didn’t lose me work, it got me lots more work.
With LaunchPad Coworking, I get to learn about architecture, IT stuff, café stuff… I’ve never done anything in food service, that’s not my world, so I hire people who know what they’re doing and it’s great, I get to learn a ton. So we’re not just building a coworking space, we’re also coworking within our company and learning from each other.
MICHELLE: Your team ranges from UI experts, to designers, to an ex-manager at Jo’s, to entrepreneurs and marketers. How did y’all meet and then decide to start Launchpad?
JULIE: I’ve known Tori — now our user experience architect — since ’85. She’s one of the first people I met when I moved here. We’ve worked together at Go Media, Excite, Halsoft and now LaunchPad Coworking. Marie Hwang I met through Tori. And Tina Rosenzweig I met through Marie. Susan Price is someone I’ve known since my job at TypeThree, my first job in Austin. Susan and I have been in some ways coworking since we met. We’ve often run our companies from shared space so we could be around each other’s smart clients and smart coworkers.
I’m the one who decided to start LaunchPad Coworking, and I put the team together, but making it happen certainly has been a collaborative effort.
MICHELLE: When do you open, and what’s going down when you do?
JULIE: We’re opening in July. Before we open we’ll do a couple of days of dry runs — get people from the local community to come in and see how it works. It’s a different kind of space and a different business model so we want people to come in and test the design of the space and the software that we’ve developed.
We’ll have an opening party a couple of weeks after we’re open. We have more people interested in that party than I can fit, though, so perhaps we’ll have several parties :)
I’m eager to see what works and what doesn’t once we’re open and to make necessary adjustments. I think it’s going to be a massive learning experience from day one.
MICHELLE: Right now I am cooped up in my dark duplex writing these questions. If Launchpad was open right now, how would it make writing this post a more pleasant experience?
JULIE: You’d be in the nice, spacious, light environment around other people, some you know, some you don’t know. It’ll be an inspiring place, a comfortable place, with access to great coffee and food. You can still work alone if you want — put on your headphones or put up a Do Not Disturb card — or you can talk to people around you, ask for advice, ask for ideas, get to know your other coworkers and build community. And you’ll be around other people who want the same thing.
Do you have any other ingenious events planned to get internet geeks like me away from their desks at home and coworking at Launchpad?
JULIE: As far as ingenious events, we will have some. We’re just getting our event strategy in place, but we know for sure we’ll have Nova Science Now Science Cafes, for example, (www.sciencecafes.org) — these involve conversations with scientists on current science topics. But day-to-day this is about a good place to work and a good place for community.
MICHELLE: If someone wanted to follow Launchpad’s progress, what should they do?
JULIE: We’ve already got a lot of interest, people are already wanting to make reservations. I can’t wait to get our software up so they can start doing that online!
So apparently people want to know why whurley would post a poll for what presidential candidate is best for open source. If you are too lazy to click on that link, basically open source software helps the small businesses that drive our economy. From a more personal perspective, we use open source everyday. Whether you are like me and blog using Wordpress, or crack open Firefox windows, or use one of the millions (billions?) of websites running on Apache or written in PHP, you benefit from open source projects. How many people and to what extent do we benefit from the companies, non-profits, blogs, databases, government sites, and billions of other applications that use open source projects? A President should consider these issues in an annual budget and will have to appoint judges that understand intellectual property issues. Do we really want to have to work around laws made by people who understand the internets as a series of tubes? Should we look to a leader who uses “the Google”? I don’t think so. Can the President set a tone (and a budget) for how technology and open source can improve the lives of every American and every person? Absolutely.
So here is the poll on which candidate you believe would best serve the open source community. You don’t have to register or wait in line this time. You just have to select a candidate by February 12th and your vote will be tallied on opensville the following day.
Do you like this post? Get the code to embed this poll in your blog or website here and the stats will feed to the opensville blog.
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SXSW is featuring Mark Zuckerberg as a keynote speaker. Whenever the subject of Facebook and Zuckerberg in particular comes up in everyday geek conversation, the words “punk” and “lucky” tend to come up quite a bit. Perhaps I have a different perspective, because a.) I have never coded anything, so there’s not much for me to be jealous of and b.) Zuckerberg still manages to remind me of a nice geeky guy I would bum physics notes from in high school, so I cut him some slack. |
Let’s evaluate why the average hard working geek would want to jump Mark Zuckerberg:
1.) Wired speculated that his net worth was somewhere around 1.5 billion dollars. Granted, this number came out in July before the whole Microsoft/Facebook media blitzkrieg, but this still puts his salary at 22,727 times the median salary for developers in this area. Zuckerberg is all of 23, in case you didn’t catch the “6o Minutes” special.
2.) We’ve all Googled ourselves. We all want backlinks. When Zuckerberg looks at Facebook’s backlinks, he can see that there are approximately 452, 000 to date. Who wouldn’t want all the delicious press associated with 452,000 backlinks?
3.) That whole “Hey, you jacked our idea and are now making stupid money” ordeal that’s still going on.
4.) Who honestly wants to be zombified or turned into a pirate?
Pimpin’ Facebook Ain’t Easy
Although it seems like Facebook can do no wrong with their incredible developer network, there is an unfortunate side effect of starting a site where people just want to unassumingly keep up with their friends. It’s hard to make money with it. With Beacon still in need of a major overhaul and all eyes on him for an IPO date, it looks like Zuckerberg has his hands full with Facebook.
Can SXSW goers learn by watching Zuckerberg speak? I sure hope so. Just leave the eggs and various projectiles at home.
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Ed Schipul is the CEO and president of Schipul–The Web Marketing Company. Ed will be discussing how to take your non-profit to 11 in his SXSW speech “Pimping My Non-Profit–Real Non-Profits Kicking Ass with Online Technology.” |
MICHELLE:
Your SxSW Interactive Speech is called, “Pimp My Non Profit — Real Non-Profits Kicking Ass with Online Technology.” Does this perhaps involve putting TV screens in head consoles or in car trunks? How does one pimp a non-profit?
ED:
Man, you COMPLETELY nailed it! We have taken the concept of “LCD Screen in headrest”, with obligatory neon green highlights, and extended it into the social sector. People serving food at the soup kitchens will literally have the LCD screens mounted on their backs on neon green harnesses. We predict the level of pimp will be so fresh even the food will be fresher! Perhaps a small segment may go so far as to embed the units surgically, excluding subwoofers, but we will be satisfied if the fresh soup action is worn like typical pimp bling. Word.
OK, seriously though. Social media, and in particular widgets, have truly enabled rapid response at a low cost for non profits online. It is no longer an issue to raise money online as you can add a chipin widget to your blog. Or paypal. Or coordinate your events with moveon or meetup or any number of other services. So great, now we CAN do it, but how exactly? What are the actual best practices so the donor dollar goes to the cause, so the volunteers time and commitment are maximized, so the stress is the lowest and so the return on investment of social media can be returned in the form of bottom line results for non profits.
When we say “pimp your nonprofit” we specifically mean leveraging new media tools to create best of class bottom line results. And keep in mind most non profits have two bottom lines – one for the financials and one for the real goals of the nonprofit; the social issue. This is exciting stuff and our panelists are amazing. Specifically I will be joined by these four amazing social change makers:
Beth Kanter, bethkanter.org
Rachel Weidinger, Strategy for Social Entrepreneurs and on Netsquared here.
Michaela Hackner, Girls with Macs and World Learning.
Erin Denny, Netsquared
Be prepared for our panel to take a stand on recommendations. To look at real world case studies. To speak with candor about what works and what doesn’t. And to listen with humility to the audience who will also likely have some amazing ideas to benefit the group. Did I mention I am excited about this?
MICHELLE:
Speaking of pimping non-profits, what is NetSquared?
ED:
The official mission is to “spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.” The Houston meetup group has extended this a bit to be an organization at the intersection of social issues and technology. And we have had some success connecting speakers to technologists to affect change. Sometimes it is as simple as SEO consulting for an organization. Other times groups like the Accessibility Internet Rally have joined forces with Netsquared to create complete accessible web sites for non profits.
And frankly it is also nice to meet with a group of people that speak the language and CARE about social issues. So perhaps the greatest success has been in connecting and encouraging dialog on social issues within the tech community. There is more to life than the latest startup. Seeing the success of organizations like http://www.savethecenter.org/ which in combination with a grass roots and a coordinated PR campaign literally saved The Center Serving Persons with Mental Retardation in Houston. That just makes you feel good. Netsquared was only a small part of the effort, but we were able to be a part of the solution.
The winner of last year’s netsquared conference was www.maplight.org which shines a light on money and politics. Another winner was http://www.freecycle.org/ - these are just very exciting and simple ideas that are affecting change. So yes, I am pretty excited about Netsquared!
MICHELLE:
You grew a mustache to help raise money for the Texas Children’s Hospital, but you did not win the contest. What is your strategy for next year, and do you have any potential mustache plans for SxSW?
ED:
Short of changing my genetics, I have little hope of winning this contest next year. So in the spirit of tilting at windmills I am ignoring these odds and moving forward with three courses of action.
When Ed is not acting as a John for various non-profits, he also runs his own internet marketing firm in Houston and speaks on various topics in social media. Are you having a hard time convincing your friends to come to South by Southwest Interactive? Read Ed’s writings on the three motivations of people to learn how to persuade them against being so lame.
*picture of Ed Schipul courtesy of Deneyterrio.
Today Linear and I trekked down to Houston to attend “Got Social Media?” Despite an ugly traffic jam that left me literally in park for 20 minutes on 290, I was glad I went. Much thanks to Erica O’Grady for hosting.
Rather than give you a play by play of what you can read on the slides from the workshop, here are some cool people I met:
Giovanni Gallucci: Marketing Guru with Jordan-like Digg/YouTube/Twitter/Flickr skills. Yes, he can crash your site by getting you tons of traffic, but will we soon see his more artistic side?
Ed Schipul: Schooled us on the three motivations of people. Able to pimp your non-profit better than Galpin Auto Sports or Huggy Bear. Intrigued (or somewhat disgusted)? It doesn’t matter–check back later this week for my interview with Ed.
Chris Bernard: My last SxSW interviewee. Contended that there did not have to be blood in Web 3.0 if the community actively polices itself. That’s quite a relief to me, as I am not a fan of Ultimate Fighting or slasher films.
Aaron Belafonte (Aaron M. Baxter): My accountabilibuddy as designated by Kelsey Ruger’s game I will title “Get Off Your Duffs and Network, People”. A CSS obsessed web designer with a talent for drawing on actual paper. Will be present (unlike me) at BarCampTX.
Paul Chaney: Contact from Practical Ecommerce. Blogger/Blogging Consultant/Twitterer and Internet Marketing Director for Bizzuka. Have a safe trip back to Louisiana!
Snax, will see you at Nuclear Tacos!
I also met some other SxSW panel speakers, who will hopefully make their Geek Austin debut soon.
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Design is taking a new direction as websites become less like entertainment and news and more like applications for people to use. At the forefront of this shift is Microsoft’s User Experience Evangelist Chris Bernard, who is speaking this year at South by Southwest Interactive. You can find Chris at the finals of Microsoft’s Phizzpop Challenge at their SxSW after party. |
MICHELLE:
In your blog, http://chrisbernard.blogs.com, you write, “De Stijl, Bauhaus, Futurism. The short history of design is filled with a lexicon of terms and movements that inspire designers of today.” How can GeekAustin designers use the design and cultural cues of the past to improve their work everyday?
CHRIS:
We traditionally think of Web design with a focus on typography and illustration, which are important components of graphic design and are certainly important for the Web. But symbolism and photography and the study of film and motion were an important part of the classic design lexicon too. Take folks the Charles and Ray Eames, they pioneered a lot of the design principles we use in the realm of Web and software design today, but they also were product designers and adept at the use of film and motion as a communications medium too. Symbolism was an important part of their work when you examine both how they lived and how they structured and shaped some of the iconic forms they are known for. Today we see all this disciplines manifesting themselves in the current high-water mark of interaction design, which is the iPhone. When we look at next general platforms such as Surface and gesture-based computing designers that have knowledge of these disciplines will become far more important.
But you don’t need to be inventing the future to embrace these disciplines. Firms like Happy Cog and Coudal partners frequently apply their creative backgrounds in photography, film and motion to their work and in applying how they solve problems.
MICHELLE:
Why will there be blood with Web 3.0?
CHRIS:
The great promise of the Web, which I think has largely been delivered, is a common standards-based way which we can all build against. Nicholas Carr (blog) equates the ubiquity and power of the internet or network to be a breakthrough on the scale of electricity and the electrical grid. If we agree with this I think we can say that the Web browser in this equation is the light bulb. Everyone needs a light bulb, but there are other things they want to plug into platform too, such as phones, televisions, etc. What we’re going to see over time is a complementary merge of open standards, de facto standards and proprietary standards. It’s going to be difficult for enterprises or individuals to firmly ensconce themselves in one camp or the other exclusively I think, but I also don’t think people will pay much attention to it as market dynamics and sovereigns will exert significant presume on providers to optimize experiences. We’re seeing that today with debates about data-portability for example but we’re also seeing it with the browser itself. As marketers play a larger role in subsidizer or creating much of the content we consume in the digital realm there will be a strong urge to optimize across multiple platforms. So for example, if you’re Sony Pictures, you might very well sell DVDs and Blu-Ray disks but you’ll be developing your own digital distribution properties and establishing agreements with proprietary parties that are de facto standards like iTunes.
MICHELLE:
Your SxSW Interactive speech is called “Hollywood and Design and Literature: Just Who is Inspiring Who?” So, who is inspiring who?
CHRIS:
Blade Runner just celebrated its 25th anniversary this last November. Talk to anyone in advertising or interaction design and it’s hard not to find folks that draw inspiration from movies like that or literature from the likes of William Gibson or Neal Stephenson. More recently we’ve seen concepts that are real today (gesture-based computing and multi-touch interfaces) shown in movies like Minority Report, The Island and Children of men become reality. In fact some of the more notable artists that create these visions, artists like Mark Coleran for example, actual transcend both mediums, working in special effects and in software design. In Microsoft’s Surface team for example we recruit very heavily from creative disciplines that focus on animation, composition and motion design and it you look at the new APIs that Windows users for UI, WPF, I think we’ll eventually see the value of those disciplines start to be applied tom more mundane uses.
MICHELLE:
What are you looking forward to most at South by Southwest Interactive?
CHRIS:
The thing I’m most looking forward to at South by Southwest is a discussion around the massive convergence we’re seeing in marketing, social media and (although it’s not quite there yet) what I would call rich internet or rich interactive experiences. I’ve also got a personal interest in what the convergence of the media and internet means for film distribution, main independent film. SxSW is always a good place to chat with folks about that.
MICHELLE:
GeekAustin is looking to do a site redesign. Any suggestions?
CHRIS:
Hmmm, where to start. I think working a bit on the contrast might be a good a good start. One of my favorite sites in terms of design and approachability is www.designobserver.com. It’s simple, clean and the design doesn’t step on the
content. I think Web sites that work best are those that don’t get in the way of the content. Much like a museum doesn’t get in the way of the artifacts it’s designed to represent.
MICHELLE:
Please insert not so shameless plug here.
CHRIS:
One of the things that I’m very excited about is that we get to continue an event we started last year called the PhizzPop Design Challenge. In this event we structured a bit of a design
‘grand challenge’ (albeit a very short one) in which we got 36 design firms from around the country (San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin, LA and Boston) to compete against each other solving a variety of technology oriented design problems that ranged from designing a hotel concierge system, to a better social media platform and even an online independent film festival. All of the winners from those events will be competing against each other at SxSW for the PhizzPop 2008 championship. For GeekAustin folks that will be at SxSW, the PhizzPop Design Challenge will be a great event to check out on Monday night, March 11th at Maggie Mae’s.
So I planned to go to the Refresh Austin website to leave a comment to the effect of “Hey, what’s up with this bunk wiki that’s been outdated for four months?” and what did I find? A lovely, revamped website! Very cool. If you are looking to meet up with a diverse group of tech professionals in the Austin area, I suggest checking it out. You will see the calendar of all upcoming events as well as photos from previous ones. If you are too lazy to periodically check the site, there is this lovely tool called the RSS feed that will allow you to keep up with Refresh Austin without even trying.
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The SxSW Interactive Festival is full of interesting speakers from throughout the technology spectrum. SxSW fans like you can choose who you want to hear from using a Panel Picker. Fortunately for me, I was able to speak to the man behind the picker himself, Lindsey Simon. |
MICHELLE:
So I hear you work for some company called Google. How is that going for you?
LINDSEY:
It’s been a really eye-opening experience in lots of ways. I’m actually working as a front-end engineer inside of the User Experience team, and that has been a great opportunity to learn from folks with extensive experience in doing user-centered research and design. It’s a very different approach than what most startups go with, and also I bet why many of them don’t succeed. It is often amazing to me how sometimes even a little bit of well done research can make some substantial improvements to, or sometimes justify the killing of, a project’s direction and interface.
MICHELLE:
You created the South by Southwest Interactive Panel Picker. Please explain what this is and why it is so cool.
LINDSEY:
The SXSW Panel Picker was Hugh and Shawn at SXSW’s idea, and I’ve glued it together for two years now. Both times, their goal has been to try to get more feedback from the community about what kinds of panels and ideas they most wanted to see at the upcoming SXSW. Pretty ballsy for an already successful conference. If you’ve ever submitted panel ideas to most other conferences, you know the drill - maybe you get a form letter back (if you’re lucky) and then probably a form rejection letter - everything in between is a total black hole. This is at least something different and draws on the momentum that BarCamps all over the country have evidenced exists - conferences should be about group participation and not wholly one-way expert-to-masses sorts of things. That experience is more fun for everyone.
This year’s particular take on the panel picker was kind of funny for a few reasons. When the SXSW folks told me that they wanted to go all out with comments, star-voting, and login/registration for the picker it was like, okay, this fun little project a year ago is going to be a full-on webapp this time. Having recently made my Google transition and consequently become a pretty happy Gmail user, I started thinking how similar the two things are in a few ways. Comments are like email threads, Gmail has stars, etc.. So I just started using the Gmail design as a frame for the development of the
panel picker. It made loads of decisions about visual design way easier than the year before. It’s not like this kind of application needs to be in any way revolutionary, so once it was all done, we just left the Gmail skin on it as kind of a bit of an inside joke but mainly as an homage.
MICHELLE:
Your speech this year is called “Filching Design.” What do you mean by this, and why would a design decide to pilfer or make off with the belongings of other designers (sorry, had to look it up)?
LINDSEY:
This idea came directly out of the making of the SXSW Panel Picker this past year, but there’s some history to it as well. When I was originally developing Dishola, we started with all of the html, css, and layout graphics from digg and built the site into that already-beautiful ui. Of course we knew all along we’d go back and redo the design for Dishola, but for a few months, it made it both easy on the eyes and in many ways easier to develop. We didn’t waste any time haggling about typography, colors, look and feel, etc.. We had a pretty well-functioning prototype that we could get feedback on. It’s not like the social networking premise of Dishola was revolutionary, and the UI didn’t need to be. I was focused on the idea - a site which revolves around dishes instead of locations (restaurants). That is the thing that makes Dishola different from yelp, citysearch, zagat, etc… And by developing it in digg’s UI framework we were able to give our testers, many of whom had never heard of digg anyhow, an immediate impression that we were building a “professional” looking site. As such, their comments were much more useful and on-topic I believe than if we’d solicited feedback with it running in wireframes.
So when I found myself using the same approach for the Panel Picker this year it seemed like it would be fun to talk about the good and bad of this idea at SXSW. I suspect lots of web developers do this sort of thing from time to time. It’s not really about stealing design, but borrowing UI instead of thinking about it from scratch when appropriate. Luke Wroblewski’s going to be talking about some of his research on form design, and I think this plays right into the idea. “Don’t think about the visual design of your form, think about what it’s designed for” - and pick the visual design that most aptly suits this - and it doesn’t hurt that it is based on loads of his lab research.
It’s worth noting that there are most certainly times where this approach can be inappropriate and it can (rightly) be argued that it boxes you into some paradigms before you should.
MICHELLE:
Is there anything in particular that you are looking forward to at SxSW Interactive, or in Austin?
LINDSEY:
Camilla’s fish taco at Polvo’s, visiting with my Austin amigos, and drinking some Fireman’s 4 from a tap.
MICHELLE:
Do you have any shameless plugs you would like to promote here? Go ahead. We don’t mind.
LINDSEY:
I’m always trying to spread the word about Dishola.
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Do you hate commercials? So do I, and so do your potential customers. That’s why I’m attending Got Social Media? in Houston on January 24th. Technology allows marketers such as myself to communicate more closely to our audiences than ever before. “Got Social Media?” covers topics such as buzz marketing, web 3.0, designing for the interactive web, and more. Houston social media expert Erica O’Grady will be hosting this event at the Houston Technology Center. | |
| Who’s speaking at this event? giovanni gallucci: Buzz Generation, Guerilla Marketing and Branding via SEO, Social Media, and Social Networking Kelsey Ruger: Crucial Conversations: The Art and Science of Conversation in Social Media Registration is just $50 until January 1st, and $65 until January 23rd. Learn how to make your marketing stick by signing up to attend. |
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