From Writing
Welcome to the beta of the new saila.com. Send in your bugs.
Living Can Kill You
“Living Can Kill You” first appeared as a chapbook poems in 1994, before being the name used to describe a regular blog starting in June of 2000.
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BarCamp Seattle: The Father’s Day Edition
Sunday morning and another Seattle bus adventure means arriving once again late for BarCamp Seattle, thankfully, the sessions also got underway a bit later. Today begins (for me) with a discussion on social media design where I promote Pownce’s friend/fan and group pattern (potentially to be added to the new social media repository announced in the session) and will end with, apparently, Diet Coke and Mentos.
Yesterday’s session were a solid mix, starting with more formal presentations and easing into casual discussion outside in the sun by the end of the day. Seattle was finally starting to get the BarCamp spirit. In fact the tipping point seemed to be a session on Starbuck vs. Samwise — it was a relaxed, loose conversation that was tangentially about the attention economy. Other sessions on the economy, mobile “microformats” and accessibility provoked some good discussions that were almost all cut short by the time limit of 30 minutes. This was most notable during a discussion on standards and search; one statement about using only one anchored link per page could have spawned an entire 60 minutes worth of argument.
Today, it’s about 45 minutes, which seems to be far more comfortable a timeslot, as evidenced by the social media talk and a demo of drawball.com. People seem to be a lot more comfortable and ready to participate…
OH: “What’s next!?”
Answer: How to be a superhero, by Tantek Çelik.
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First impressions of BarCamp Seattle
Probably a result of the venue, what with its actual class rooms filled with podiums, projectors, and microphones, the formality of this Seattle BarCamp is far more implicit than ever it was at the Toronto BarCamps (except for the one held, coincidentally, at the MSN Canada offices). Lots of hallway buzz, but the sessions have been sadly distracted by the jackhammering going on outside the Adobe building.
That being said, the level of discourse is excellent and the snacks are great (no Starbucks coffee [but no keg of beer that might get stolen]). In fact, the attendees are actively engaged in each of the half-hour sessions I’ve been in (there are three rooms and a packed grid).
- Best tip so far
Judo can help Web standards.
- Best moments so far
Seeing all the organizers wandering around in housecoats.
- Weirdest moment so far
Seeing all the organizers wandering around in housecoats.
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Heading to BarCamp Seattle
This is being written on a bus (the 30) as I tardily trek to BarCamp Seattle — only the first of many differences between my experiences with the BarCamp scene in Toronto (although, coincidentally, on my way to the first Toronto BarCamp, I spotted some infamous graffiti on the outside of a Starbucks franchise).
Toronto held its first BarCamp in November 2005 and the community that’s grown around it has helped energize the tech and Web development community there (and potentially created a baby boom).
This weekend, marks my
thirdfourth BarCamp, but the first in a city (my new city) where the tech community is so dominant in mainstream life. Although Seattle is four-and-a-half times smaller than Toronto, this weekend's BarCamp Seattle includes some of the Web/tech community celebrities and is being held in Adobe Seattle campus (which is right beside Google and Getty and across the channel from Newsvine [Microsoft is a bit further away]).All of this is leading to some high expectations for the proceedings ahead, and I hope, as the weekend wears on the chronicle some of them here.
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Web Directions North ’08 kicks off
Coming to this year’s Web Directions North provided me with a very memorable first: entering Canada for the first time as a U.S. resident. (Explaining to the border guard that we actually did live in Seattle and weren’t actually re-entering the country was…interesting). Thankfully, once we made it across I was happily re-united with my former co-workers at The Globe for an amazingly cooked meal at toothpastery’s house.
Day one started with more reunions — including a few Torontonians, some of the Web Directions 2007 crowd, a co-worker — and a very enjoyable keynote by Zeldman (he spent a good hour offering an eye witness account how The WaSP and Web standards actually came in to being).
Next on my list was Derek’s talk on real world accessibility and how it can affect usability (ask him about king-size bed’s in London), followed by Kimberly Elam’s in-depth session that I am currently in: five essential tools for Web typography.
I’m not sure if I’ll be blogging too much during this conference, but you can follow my Twitter-stream or the conference’s own pseudo-tumble log for a better sense of what is happening.
By the way, if you are attending, and see me, please come by and say hey.
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Thank Hotwired, Saila suggests
Although my first thought was to Twitter this (apparently the frequency for which I do that is starting to make cats salivate), but it deserved more than 140 characters. That being said, had it been a little tweet it would have said this:
@veen: increasingly, it’s clear that everything I learned, I learned from HotWired
I’ve mentioned it before in a couple of posts, and in person to Mr. Veen, but as I do some work for a media client examining their competitors and forming some online strategies and best practices, that site and its primary colours raced back in mind.
Maybe it was the electronic music being streamed into my headphones (the first online music I regularly listened was webcasted from HotWired via Beta Lounge).
Maybe it was that nearly every guideline I outline was done by that crew back in in the mid-1990s.
Maybe it was the nature of my client’s business.
Maybe its the the current debate over “purpose.”
Nevertheless, it’s inspired me to collect my thoughts and respond to a point I made a few weeks ago. After the Online News Association’s conference in Toronto, one of my posts alluded to the fact that mainstream media has failed to pick-up on some of the independent Web’s best practices.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll start posting some longer essays collected under the tentatively group under the title of “Saila Suggests” that will respond and expand on those best practices.
The first, appearing this weekend will be an overview, and will be followed by an piece on created user-friendly Web addresses. Although my self-imposed schedules are infamously erratic, I hope to a have a few more posted before the year is out.
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