Overview

Many businesses are built after-hours or during odd hours of the day and night. This panel was a discussion by entrepreneurs who built (or are building) their Web/E-commerce/Other business while holding a day job, multiple jobs, or who are currently balancing two+ career options.

The Panel

• Gretchen Heber – NaturallyCurly.com
• Jeremy Bencken – Buzzstream
• Aruni Gunasegaram – Babble Soft LLC
• David Altounian – iTaggit.com
• Elisa Camahort Page – BlogHer Inc

Panelist Backgrounds

Altounian – Started iTagIt while he was in school. Left his other job in 2007, and left for iTagIt. Then his business called him back and invited him to become CEO.

Jeremy Bencken – founder of BuzzStream. His first experience was as a founder of HarperRatings.com. Started in 2000 with his wife in his apartment in Mountain View. Would work from 8pm – midnight every day for 10 months. In 2004, focused on it and made it a full-time venture. In 2007, he sold the company to Internet Brands out of L.A. The biggest lesson is that you have to be ready for the work that is involved. You have to be ready to put your family obligations aside to build a business like this. It’s going to be a lot of work, and make sure your family and friends know that as well.

Elias Camahort-Page – Co-Founder/COO, BlogHer Inc. Throughout 2005, BlogHer was just a side thing. Before that, we didn’t have a company, just 3 chicks with credit cards. Through all of 2006, we were still working on WorkerBees clients, but split between that and BlogHer. Not until 2007 did we extricate ourselves fully, but not until 6 months later did we become Venture backed. My story is really about how you make those decisions, when you decide to go from… “Do you want a lifestyle business, or do you really want a company?” What do you really want, how hard are your willing to work. In addition to it being so much work, it’s so fulfilling, and it’s something that’s very rewarding. I never expected to be entrepreneur, but it has its rewards.

Gretchen Haber – Co-Founder, NaturallyCurly.com. There are 3 legs to our business, a social network, and online magazine, and an eCommerce component. Originally we had no business sense, we would just sit around the News room and talk about how to help our hair. So we created NaturallyCurly really as just a hobby, and we treated it as a total side gig for 4-5 years. Eventually, we decided we needed to turn it into something or quit. So we decided to make a go of it for while more, and eventually quit our day-jobs.

Moderator Questions

Having a partner… how important is that?

(Elias) My partner, our relationship has been built around the focus of us building a business together. At the time we started, we weren’t friends, we just decided to start a business together. The reason partnership is important is that, hopefully you bring complementary skills to the table. You come from different backgrounds, and you can weigh in with different types of expertise. I was running a product management team, so I had a lot of business experience. However, Lisa came from journalism and media development. Our third partner had a sales and biz dev background. All that meant that we respect each other and know how to give and take.

The second reason is that you need support from someone else who’s going through what you’re going through. Yes, your friends and family need to support you, but no one can really support you like your business partner.

The third reason is to carve up the pie. It doesn’t scale to have just one person, or even three people. Eventually, you need to carve up the pie, and know that one person leads a given area, and the other people are there to advise. It makes it a little more sane, because otherwise it’s a lot to tackle. Partners bring a lot to the table.

Gunasegaram: I have to agree. I started BattleSoft on my own, and I actually met my partner online.

(Altounian) A few things you have to watch for. You need to make sure you have partners with complementary skills, and not overlapping skills. When you don’t pay attention to that, there tends to be a lot of pressure over who’s going to do what work. And if you’re really trying to do this as a part time job, it’s really important that the expectation is aligned.

Make sure you and your partners have similar income goals. One problem with iTagIt is that 2 of us needed full-time jobs, and 2 of us were trying to do it part-time. When it got tight, there was a lot of pressure between those 2 groups. And a lot of wasted energy went into managing those pieces. Keep in mind… it might not grow into a full-time job for 2, 3, 5, as much as 10 years. So make sure your goals are shared up front.

Gunasegaram: How long was it before you took the jump to a full-time job?

(Bencken) It took 5 years to go to a full-time job. We were managing our revenue with Google, and we were scared Google would change something. We waited until we had 2x what we needed for salaries in revenue, before we made the jump, on the contingency that maybe our revenues would drop.

Gunasegaram: How do you manage your resources?

(Heber) That’s a good question. Inevitably, some of your side work will bleed over into your full-time work. The first job is to ascertain how receptive your current employer is to allowing you to have a side gig. Some employers are very open to it, particularly for developers. It’s helpful to them often that you have a side gig, because that’s where you stretch and develop new skills. Other employers aren’t that open to it, so you have to be careful. Make sure you understand the specifics of any inventions agreement you might have signed when you came on board. For programmers, there’s probably an agreement that says if you work on something from 9-5, they own it. So just, be careful.

The company will almost certainly – regardless of what they say – own anything you do for your company on their computers. So don’t do anything… because they WILL own that, and you could be hosed.

(Altounian) Don’t do anything with your company equipment, because it really exposes you. Even if your company says it’s OK. Lawyers can easily change the verbal agreements after the fact. “JUST DON’T DO IT”. It’s a simple rule to follow.

Gunasegaram: Doing this company full-time, and now part-time, there’s always a need for funding. I just wanted to talk about the challenges of that, and how you plan and manage for the timing of getting funding?

(Altounian) When we started Motion, we were planning on getting money from the very beginning. I tried to do the same thing with iTagIt because we had raised money once. What I didn’t take into account was, in my mind it’s a part-time biz going into a full-time biz. However, once you raise money, the investors expect it to be a full-time gig. They want their money to be working full-time for them. However, in your mind you might still be bootstrapping the business, and then you have two employers you are dealing with … your investors, and your regular employer. So that’s tough. Be really careful about that.

(Elias) One of the things they said was important was about how they saved up. Starting in 2006, we bootstrapped for 18 months. We started sharing revenues with a whole bunch of other people, our vendors, distributors, service providers, conference attendance (travel) etc. So we weren’t paying ourselves very well, because we were always the last to get paid. So I started saving money, saving money, because I always wanted the freedom to walk away from a full-time job. In the middle of 2003, I walked away because I had 2-years of income waiting for me in the bank.

The people who fail as entrepreneurs never ask the question “What’s the worst that can happen if I fail?” Ask yourself, and really answer the question. And then set yourself up for success. Conserve cash. Conserve cash. Extend your runway. Do it now, do it before you have funding, because you will have learned a lesson about how to do it once you do have funding. You can probably get into 6 figures in friends and family. Then, up to .5MM angel. Beyond that, VC. Any money comes with strings attached, so understand the strings, the risks, the real worst-case scenario.

Understand what you all agree you want to do with your business. We all agreed there was more demand out there than we could meet with friends and family, or angel. So we went with VC. But once you have that, there’s a lot of commitment and things on your plate. So understand your goals there.

(Heber) I just went into debt. I just don’t know how a person could do it as a side-gig after having some funding.

(Altounian) One of the things I was very careful in the beginning was to talk to my wife about it. My wife’s answer was “we could always work for McDonalds, go for it”.

(Bencken) I think I’m the only business on the panel that hasn’t raised money. If your business id dependent on SEO or user-generated content, it needs to grow organically. For businesses like that, it’s good to stay part-time so you can give it a chance to grow on its own, and lowers the pressure to grow quickly.

(Elias) Another good reason to bootstrap is to set up a revenue stream. That would give you better valuation when you do raise cash.

(Altounian) If you are going to do it part-time, you also need to tap into your network to get help. Jeremy Bencken is one of the best at that, he’s always calling people and networking to get the biz needs met.

(Bencken) Another thing you have to be willing to do is dive in and get your hands dirty. You can’t rely on external resources for all of these things.

Audience Questions

Eric – working on some products for non-profits. What is your experience working with the cloud, computing vendors?

(Bencken) Use Amazon services. They are really cheap. We started on rack space that was expensive, but it was good uptime. If you’re looking at cloud services, take as much advantage of them as you can, up to the time they will create more headaches for you.

(Altounian) We are all technical, so we all thought we would be doing it a lot cheaper if we bought our own equipment. We got one big hit on NYTimes, and our site was down for a week. So I would say don’t do it yourself.

Joe – user experience designer, researcher. I’m wondering.. “what’s the one thing you wish you had in the early days of your business?”

(Bencken) More time in the day. Sometimes it feels like sleep is your biggest obstacle. You always want more time.

(Heber) I wish I had more frank conversations with my family. I wish I had known how long it would take, and given more up-front conversations.

(Elias) I wish I had some concept about how to balance my life. When it’s yours, it’s never off. Luckily, my husband codes for fun. So he gets the passion, so I’m lucky. My schedule is brutal, and I sleep 5 hours a night. That’s mainly because I can’t turn off my mind. So I still need help with that.

(Altounian) I wish I had had a much more developed network. I didn’t understand how different this world was from traditional hardware biz. I wish I had network and expertise before I got started.

Question – A lot of people’s side jobs have now become main jobs because they got laid off. So, what should people think about now?

(Gunasegaram) This is the question of “accidental entrepreneurs”. This is a challenge because now you need to think about your project in a business way.

(Elias) It was helpful for us that we didn’t think of it as a business. We started with the community, asking what do these people want. So we built a following, and then we asked, “how can we build a business around that?”

Tom Singer – 3 years ago, I worked for a company that wasn’t supportive of my sidejob, so I just hid it from my company. 1.5 years ago, I found an employer who understood that my sidejob was relevant, so I moved to that. My current employer is very supportive. My question is this… how much should you share, even with a supportive employer, about how well/poorly your side business is going. Sometimes I’m cautious to share with them how well I am doing…

(Heber) You are right to be cautious and hold back a bit. Ultimately, they don’t really want to know how well you are doing, because they have other masters to serve.

(Bencken) I think you should just be honest and out there with your company, on your company site. But, you shouldn’t talk about it at all at work.

(Elias) I think most people are still pretty uncomfortable with talking about financial situations. It puts everyone in an uncomfortable situation to talk about finances. People in the U.S. would rather talk about sex than how much money they make.

(Altounian) If you can figure out how to leverage it so your employer gets a side benefit, that’s a great idea. One of our developers was a UI developer, and by working on a side business, he was able to bring his learning back to the company. However, you don’t want your employer to think it’s enough of a side business that you could leave them. However, if there is value to your company, you might be able to get a lot of support to work on those things.

Audience – When was that moment, that you knew you were going to make it? As a web startup. new technology is coming at it very quickly, so if it’s not taking off after 2 years, do you consider changing technologies?

(Bencken) You could flip that around and say… how do you know you’re not going to make it? If it’s not consuming or eating you up in terms of savings, and you can grow it on the side… there’s really nothing that can take it away.

(Altounian) For me, when I knew we were starting to make it with Motion, is when people started trying to take it away from me. When you start to have external forces pushing the company, that’s when you know that you’ve made it. For many people, making it means $100MM. But for me, it meant that Motion took on a life of its own, with external factors, and growing independent of me.

(Elias) We always say “we’ve made the job we want to have” so we’re not too anxious to take off. We just want to continue building this company we created.

(Gunasegaram) Most companies will not turn out as you expected it to, but you always have to have the courage to say “is this the right time in my life to be doing this?” We’re all facing that in different situations, and we’re seeing a lot of companies shut down for mental, financial, spiritual, etc.

(Altounian) Get an advisory board. If you have an advisory board, they can remind you about your list and your goals, and keep you focused. I think that’s a huge tool especially if you are doing this part-time.

Chris – people often don’t go into their own endeavors because of lack of knowledge. How much did this limit you? And do you actively seek out collaborators to fill those gaps?

(Heber) When we started, we knew nothing about business, so we absolutely needed some help. My biz partner Karen was quick to jump on the phone, and ask people for help. We got Paul Mitchell on our board of advisors. How did we do that? Because people are excited to help you out, and share their information.

(Gunasegaram) Just reach out. You don’t know where anyone is at in their life. Maybe they’ll want to help you.

Guillermo – A lot of ideas start “wouldn’t it be awesome if…” so when do you cut the corners and develop what is out there? And when do you try to build it yourself because of your needs to have it be custom, scalable, etc.?

(Elias) I think you need to be able to show something pretty soon. There’s less willingness in investors to fund the experimental stage. So I think you should use tools to get prototypes up as quickly as possible and show something for what you are doing.

(Bencken) There were only a few things in our business that we had to create ourselves. Those are the things we created. As much as possible, use existing frameworks, CMSs, things like that.

Takeaways

• Protect your IP from your day job
• 8pm to midnight is a beautiful thing
• Don’t beat yourself up – you’re not full time, so realize that in advance and lower expecations
• Set expectations with your family/friends
• It works for some but not all niches – Semi-conductor can’t do on side, but some others you can
• Partners rock. Get one.
• Use care in raising external funding

Introduction

Despite the heavy-hitters on this panel, the session was very poorly attended. The moderator also didn’t do a very good job of keeping it focused or directed, so it was basically a free-for-all with many of the panelists bickering for the whole panel. At one point, Hammer-Lahav even walked off stage into the audience to ask a question! Short story, effective moderation is key to a good panel discussion, and without it, it’s basically crap.

That being said, I did take a few notes, so here they are for your enjoyment.

Overview

Many of the most interesting new formats on the web are being developed outside the traditional standards process; Microformats, OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and originally Jabber – four out of five of these popular new specs have been standardized by the IETF, OASIS, or W3C. But real hackers are bringing their implementations to projects ranging from open source apps all the way up to the largest companies in the technology industry. While formal standards bodies still exist, their role is changing as open source communities are able to develop specifications, build working code, and promote it to the world.It isn’t that these communities don’t see the value in formal standardization, but rather that their needs are different than what formal standards bodies have traditionally offered. They care about ensuring that their technologies are freely implementable and are built and used by a diverse community where anyone can participate based on merit and not dollars. At OSCON last year, the Open Web Foundation was announced to create a new style of organization that helps these communities develop open specifications for the web. This panel brings together community leaders from these technologies to discuss the “why” behind the Open Web Foundation and how they see standards bodies needing to evolve to match lightweight community driven open specifications for the web.

The Panel

• David Recordon – Six Apart Ltd
• Dawn Foster – Fast Wonder
• Eran Hammer-Lahav – Yahoo!
• David Rudin – Microsoft
• Dare Obasanjo – Microsoft

Moderator Questions

Question: Facebook Connect vs. OpenID… what’s better?

(Recordon) As long as communities are willing to say that a user experience sucks, we can figure out how to add that idea to the stack.

(Hammer-Lahav) I’m going to go out on a libm. Generally, standardization is there for taking market away from a market leader. The thing about Facebook Connect and OpenID is that it’s too early to say “OpenID is the winner”. OpenID may need a swift kick in the ass. On the other hand, Facebook hasn’t been a good community member either, because they haven’t listened much to their community. So, I’d like to see both of these developed independently, because communication is good.

(Recordon) There’s plenty of evidence that no solution will stand if it doesn’t continue to innovate. So OpenID may be to be blamed for not having innovated enough, and Facebook came along.

(Rudin) One of the main points that I’m taking… ultimately, standards aren’t the be-all and end-all of all technology. It’s just like any other piece of technology, and needs to stand on its own and stand up to the competition. We can’t just say “we’ve made the standard, and it’s done” because the world is full of standards that no one uses. That’s because there’s a marketplace out there that layers on top of standards. What you end up with is something that may not be the most technically elegant, or may not be the best solution. Competition is alive and well, and it’s important that the competition continues.

Question: Is evolving standards body going to push some other technologies into extinction?

(Hammer-Lahav) The good thing is that we scared the shit out of the standards bodies, and we started getting calls from people high up in the organizations. I’m telling them… hey if no one wants to bring their stuff to you, it’s because no one cares. If you start a highly opinionated group of 60 people, you won’t get anywhere. What you need is a “benevolent dictatorship model” where someone will lead it. You need more than goodwill to get people to agree.

(Rudin) We’ve got this situation where standard bodies have become complicated over time. So the open web initiative is starting a clean slate, but it will never replace something like ISO or other international standards, where you need help from the government, or telecom standards. So it’s really a matter of all the efforts can live side by side.

(Recordon) Are they there because they want to be there or are they being forced tobe there? How are open standards used for a competitive advantage? Establishing a base layer to build on top of it is different than a situation where it’s contentious and not everyone wants to be at the table.

(Rudin) A serious problem… if you’ve got multiple parties, like RSS, how are you going to change that? Frankly, this type of issue can make or break a standard. Competition is often times why the standards end up kind of long and complicated.

(Hammer-Lahav) Lots of good arguments for not working through standards bodies… they are expensive, inefficient, monopolized by a small group of opinionated people. It’s turned into a big mess. At the IDF, it’s a really fucked up organization. They vote by humming.

(Rudin) Humming is a great example of how these things evolve. The whole idea is that people hum, and they wanted a way for people to be able to vote without having to vote against their boss. So it’s a political process, and fascinating example of why certain processes evolve. There’s a certain method to the madness.

(Recordon) I think that’s bullshit. There is more value in being present rather than being on IRC.

(Obasanjo) How is this different that the open standards community? Is your model a good model?

(Hammer-Lahav) I think it is a good model. Any monkey with a keyword can start a process. But they couldn’t establish a consensus. People ask me… why are you blogging so negatively about OpenID when you are working on it?

Audience Questions

Question: There’s a lot of discussion about anti-patterns. What’s our model for a well implemented process?

(Obasanjo) One of the best patterns for open standards is too make sure that you have a problem that many people have tried to solve, but they don’t all solve it in the same way, that means there’s a body of work you can learn from. Good counter examples to that if you look at all the XML standards, there’s too much invention.

(Recordon) Companies having half a dozen if not more implementations is a problem. Another good idea is having all of the discussions on the mailing list. Make all of your decisions in public, and make everyone accountable for what they do and say.

(Rudin) I’m not sure I agree with that. That’s one size fits all idea. As you go into bigger more complicated standards, you have ways to resolve conflicts, etc. You go up to international level, it’s not just individuals voting, it’s countries voting. And people represent it. A small group of people comes up with a country’s position, and they vote on that. So I don’t think there’s any one way to do it. It all just depends.

(Hammer-Lahav) 300 years of American political evolution has still failed to produce an efficient model for common consent. People by definition are not animals that tend to fall in line. It really depends on who the personalities are in the room. You have to accommodate people’s personalities. “Making standards is really like making sausage”. You don’t want to know what’s going in there.

(Rudin) Why the hell is Microsoft here? We don’t want to waste our resources, that’s why we’re here. What we’re trying to do with the Open Web Foundation is make sure that there aren’t problems up front. At least with scoping up front, we don’t know exactly where we’re going, but we all agree we’re trying to go in a given direction.

Question: What can we do to prevent the proliferation of specs bodies?

(Hammer-Lahav) I don’t think we really have a good one. It’s hard to have an open conversation about this. But truly, we need a good one, and so far we haven’t seen one. On the standards side of the world, licensing is a mess. It’s the Microsoft lawyer that is getting us closest to this right now. You don’t want to need to hire an IP lawyer to understand what a license means.

(Recordon) For big companies, for every specification project we need to understand how these things work.

(Rudin) With most standards, you don’t get the licesne to include most standards.

Question (Hammer-Lahav from the audience) You’ve been really vocal about being against the open foundation. How do you feel now that you’ve seen where people go. Did it make you feel better about it, do you still think it’s a stupid idea. What?

(Obasanjo) You are already pointing out some of the problems with open source specifications. Based on my experiences, I’ve really loved the IETF process.

Question: The questions I wanted to push back on particularly is … what we found during performance process is… blah blah blah. What we need is to take a middle ground which is to find the practices that we can converge, and do that.

9th Annual SXSW “Bloggies”
The Bloggies

It’s time for the 2009 Weblog Awards, the annual non-profit ceremony that celebrates the best in blogging. The Bloggies are the Web’s longest-running blog awards, and the nominations, finalist selection, and votes are all up to you, the blog reader. The votes are in, and you’ll discover which blogs are this year’s champions.

The Winners

• Best Web Application for Blogs – Google Reader
• Best Australian or New Zealand Weblog – Girl With a Satchel
• Best Asian Weblog – Glad to be a Girl
• Best African Weblog – Glad to be a Girl
• Best European Weblog – Chocolate and Zucchini
• Best Latin American Weblog – A Canuck in Cancun
• Best Canadian Weblog – Everybody Likes Sandwiches
• Best Photography of a Weblog – Pioneer Woman Photography
• Best Art, Craft, or Design Weblog – Post Secret
• Best Food Weblog – Cake Wrecks
• Best Fashion Weblog – Go Fug Yourself
• Best Travel Weblog – Camels & Chocolate
• Best Gossip Weblog – Dlisted
• Best Entertainment Weblog – Television Without Pity
• Best Sports Weblog – FatCyclist
• Best Weblog About Politics – FiveThirtyEight
• Best Computer or Technology Weblog – LifeHacker
• Best Topical Weblog – Cute Overload
• Best Teen Weblog – Foodie At Fifteen
• Most Humorous Weblog – I Can Has Cheezburger?
• Best Writing of a Weblog – Cake Wrecks
• Best Microblog – One Sentence
• Best Group Weblog – Gawker
• Best Community Weblog – I Can Has Cheezburger?
• Best-Designed Weblog – Confessions of a Pioneer Woman
• Best-Kept Secret Weblog – Pistols and Popcorn
• Best New Weblog – Cake Wrecks
• Lifetime Achievement – Fark.com
• Weblog of the Year – Confessions of a Pioneer Woman

Overview

The AAA game design category from the 2009 ScreenBurn at SXSW Game Design Competition will have an hour-long panel, composed of four professional and modern game industry experts, to judge and provide meaningful game design feedback. Each of the four finalists will present a 5 minute PowerPoint or Keynote presentation followed by 5 minute Q&A by the panelists. This is intended to be an accelerated simulation of what companies endure when pitching game concepts to publishers. Finally, a grand prize winner in each category will be determined by jury vote and audience reaction. The winner of the competition will be interviewed by attending press, and will be featured in a conversation with an industry professional at Studio SX on Monday, March 16.

Panel

• (moderator) Kain Shin – IGDA
• Raphael Colantonio – Arkane Studios
• Souris Hong-Porretta – Entertainment Media Ventures
• Chris Charla – VP Biz dev, Foundation 9 Entertainment

Introduction

First SXSW AAA Game-design competition. What’s the difference between casual and AAA? To us, AAA means the full-game experience that is high budget. And you are trying to make the largest full-scale high-budget game without cutting any of the experience.

Contestants we are about to see have been whittled down from a list of 30 contestants. It’s down to a list of 4. And the audience will decide the winner. So, be prepared!

CoverUp – Intrigue, Consipracy, and Kidnapping

Concept is a game that people will want to play, and they might actually learn something in the process. The hook- hero has a run-in with a mysterious girl and gets wrapped up in a conspiracy on a college campus. It’s for 17-22 year-olds, so it can’t be drugs, or sex. So it’s a conspiracy about The Man.

The Gist – hero has to unravel clues and uncover evidence of the conspiracy to present to the authorities.

Game Play – involves mental puzzles such as code and research clues.

Game Perspective – Players view the gmae from a 3rd person perspective.

Audience – Game is targeted to Freshmen on campuses, and Highschool seniors, etc.

ManorMeta

We Play Everywhere

A futuristic world designed for young people to grow in, as they face the challenges of their own being

Transmedia storyteling : A network gamespace

Growing trees with their hands. 3D motion capture. Look for hidden meaning. I enjoy playing games with a mission to change the world.

Geared towards ages 6-13 primarily

Project Z.E.U.S

Seth Smith – project ZEUS is an ecological game based on restoring life to a barren and lifeless earth. The goal is to create an experience where people can learn to co-exist with nature. The goal it to help people think about developing industry with a mind towards the environment.

Ring Master

Ladies and Gentlemen… children of all ages. Concept is a combination fantasy game in the circus genre. Ringmaster taps into the fantasy of running away to join the circus, only now you can do it in a game. You can choose to be any of the characters… clown, acrobat, elephant, etc.

Painful. Wow, I can’t keep typing. This game really seems silly.

Strengths and Weaknesses Evaluated by Panelists

(Charla) CoverUp – cool education aspects, and I don’t have a problem with the educational style. The biggest challenge is how it related to literacy. ManorMeta is really cool and expansive and crazy, but I have no idea how you make that game. Z.E.U.S was really neat. It was the most traditional of the games, the most commercially accessible one. The procedural stuff will be hard, but if you can pull it off, that’s cool. Ringmaster, I really like the concept. I like the idea of putting together routines. It’s definitely not a traditional MMO, but that’s cool.

(Hong-Porretta) With CoverUp, it seems like it couldn’t be a AAA title. ManorMeta was pretty unique. Project Z.E.U.S., there needs to be a little more gameplay development. With Ringmaster, conceptually it’s wonderful, but it also seems that it has too much game play.

(Colantonio) CoverUp game I don’t see as a AAA, unless there are more physical types of gameplay in there. ManorMeta, really cool values, the vision seems really unclear to me. Z.E.U.S. is one of the most viral pitch I’ve heard, and I think subject matter will appeal to a lot of people. Circus game tried to do too many things at the same time. Circus version of Rock Band would be cool enough.

The Vote

Project Z.E.U.S is the winner!

Nate Silver
FiveThirtyEight

He first made his mark by figuring out new ways to analyze the performance of baseball players. More recently, he translated his number-crunching talents to the arena of politics — and his predictions of an Obama landslide proved amazingly accurate. SXSW Interactive is proud to announce that Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com will serve as the keynote speaker on Sunday, March 15. Interviewing Silver at SXSW will be veteran BusinessWeek reporter Stephen Baker, whose recent book “The Numerati” explains the power of metadata in today’s society.

Interview

Question: One of the thing that the spotlight people think about is Politics, issue by issue. But most Americans don’t like to think about that.

Answer: I think most Americans don’t get enough credit. Sometimes, during a campaign the issues are superficial. Either there’s a limited amount of time and space, or people are looking at leadership, self-worth, etc. One of the things I’ve watned to do for a long time is do a qualitative process with voters and find out what really motivates you to vote for Obama or McCain. Especially the 4% of black Americans that vote for McCain. Or 20% of white evangelicals voting for Obama.

Question: The coda – how does it relate to baseball? Did you just plug it into politics?

Answer: No, they aren’t really the same algorithm. It’s about having good habits. I believe in being really meticulous about things. If you really want to solve a problem, sometimes the most interesting things you learn are when you aren’t on the 80-20% part of the curve, it’s those 5% places. A lot of times, these decisions really are made on margins.

Question: Economic Crash right now, what effect does that have on us as voters?

Answer: You have a situation where people are frustrated because they are losing jobs. Obviously that’s a problem where people are sort of fearful. It’s like a 9-11 event, where people are very pessimistic about the direction of the country. On the other hand, people have 65% (high) approval rating of Obama. This is a very odd situation. In the mid-terms elections, we’ll see what happens.

You ask, when will you start to blame Obama for the economy? There’s a grace period of 6-12 months. I think by 18 months, people start to blame Obama for the problems. So Obama needs it to turn around sooner rather than later. The one thing going in his favor is that most people think the recession will last for years. So Obama could beat expectations even if it takes a little over a year.

Question: Is anybody polling in locations with high foreclosure rates?

Question: Are you going to go into human resources?

Answer: Probably not. I think this type of information analysis is very different than trying to analyze job performance. It might be helpful at the 30K foot level to say “what types of things do you generally look for?” but you ultimately need to talk to the employees.

Question: If you could just snap your fingers and have a Masters Degree in something you don’t have right now, what would it be?

Answer: Probably Computer Science so I wouldn’t have to hire a computer programmer. However, in some fields, a Masters doesn’t help you very much. If I knew Computer Science better, I’d be better able to tweak Blogger, etc. There’s a lot of code we’re developing that are ugly hacks.

Question: Would you put your Gmail address up on the Internet?

Answer: No. I’m a pretty private person. I’m happy to go talk to a bunch of people in a year, but I’m surprised by the amount that people are wiling to share of themselves right now. The average 15-year-old girl today literally sends 2,500 messages a month. There’s this constant desire to share everything with everyone in your life. I have this fear if I got into that, or sharing with Facebook, perhaps I’d never see the light of day again.

Question: You’ve got a leading company right now in political analysis. So what is your strategy right now? Are you going to hire some assistants, or what will you do?

Answer: We’re at the point right now where we are trying to decide whether or not to pursue some VC funding, or possibly just continue to go it on our own. It would be really nice to be able to hire a programmer and a designer. Right now, it’s really just the two of us working on the site right now.

Question: Are you going to branch out into other areas?

Answer: We tried to do an Oscar prediction, and it turned out kind of well, but not too well. We looked at a DB of the last 30 years of Oscar History, and a lot of it was obvious stuff. Previous movie victories lead to Academy Award victories. There’s other stuff too. The academy doesn’t like comedies, or things that are too edgy. It likes epic serious films.

Question: So what did you get wrong?

Answer: We got best actor wrong. There’s a tendency for the academy to want to spread the awards around a bit. Sean Penn had won recently, and we thought that might play into it. That’s why we chose Mickey Rourke. However, maybe he’s pissed a lot of people off recently. So we made a mistake there, but it was a good mistake to make. Another error we made was best supporting actress. We all knew Penelope Cruz would win, but our model didn’t predict it, and instead chose Kate Winslett. The difference between a zero and a missing result is very important.

Question: Are you going to do the Oscars next year? You’re doing a book…?

Answer: I am. The book is about trying to predict big issues for our planet. Hurricane forecasting, to fashion design, to search, to the search for extraterrestrial life, etc. The idea is to look at prediction in different fields, and see where the limitations really are as well.

Question: How about national security?

Answer: That’s really kind of a problem field in which to do prediction. However, the real world lacks static and chatter / noise. And if you get it wrong…

This particular talk was very popular and off in a fairly small side room of the Convention Center. So, showing up 3 minutes late greeted me with about 10 (and soon 30) other people who wanted to get in, and they weren’t letting anyone else in. So I went to the keynote for a while, and only later returned to catch the trail-end of the Q&A for this dicussions, and network with the panelists.

For purposes of completeness, here’s what we missed…

• Molly Holzschlag – Opera Software
• David Baron – Mozilla
• Hakon Wium Lie – Opera Software
• Sylvain Galineau – Microsoft

This panel explores how major browsers implement CSS3. The focus is on finding effective and efficient methods for developers to unleash their creativity while maintaining cross-browser compatibility. The panel covers current implementations, future plans from the major browser vendors and some discussion of the current progress on the standard itself.

I DID at least manage to gather a few notes. They are below…

Notes

Molly recommends a couple panels on Monday: Interact : 3:30 on Monday – free open source standards for web curriculum

Molly will twitter and put on Molly.com the slides and content from today’s talk

http://dbaron.org/talks/

Questions

Question: Will you be able to introduce turning off anti-alias for small fonts?
Answer: There’s pressure from both sides on this issue.

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering

Celebrity Death-Match

We’re gonna face off the folks at 37 Signals vs. Don Norman

Wired Magazine article – how 37signals goes about its business. What was amazing about the Wired article was what happened between 37Signals and Norman.

Quote from 37Signals: “We’re not designing for others… we’re designing for ourselves”. We call this Self Design

Don Norman’s response: “37Signals people are arrogant and utterly unsympathetic to the people who use their products.”

So, the question is… User-Centered Design vs. Self-Design

Where did User-Centered Design Come From?

One of the oldest computers… IBM mainframe computer. You had to have a plumber come and install your computer. And there was a huge red button you needed to press to turn off the computer. That caused a level to flip and a weight to drop and sever the cords! So, this is an example of original Self-design. The IBM mainframe was developed by Engineers for Engineers.

In the early 80s, devices like the IBM Displaywriter started to appear. It was designed for Office Workers. They were not skilled in the computer, and might not be trained with the computer. They were focused on the data and documents that they wanted, but did not care about the operation of the device.

The Birth of User-Centered Design

• A reaction to tools designed only for engineers. Needed to help non-engineers learn and use tools.
• Based on human factors and cognitive experience
• Put the users at the center of the design

But guess what…

User-Centered Design Never Worked

There’s never been a single study that showed that user-centered design actually worked. Lots of people have done usability testing, and gotten great design results, but lots of people have gotten great designs without it. Apple doesn’t do any usability testing at all. Microsoft runs 15,000 usability tests every year. Is Microsoft 15,000 times more usable than Apple? Sure! *not*

How do the Best Teams Create Great Designs?

This is the subject of focus of User Interface Engineering company (Jared’s company). So, we’ve been studying this for several years, comparing companies with great people and great designs, and companies with great people and never get greatd designs.

We’ve learned a few things…

• Process – a series of steps used to get things done. Process doesn’t have to be a repeated thing. Process is just the series of steps you used to get something done. Example of cooking a dinner: you might not know what your process is (different every time), but you always have a process.
• Methodology – the formalization of process, to get some sort of repeatability out of it.
• Dogma – these are basically belief systems. The best dogma that is out there is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The whole organization runs on dogma, and it’s incredible how dogmatic they get. A great example is the 3-1-1 for Carry-Ons program. 3 ounce things in plastic bottles have to fit into a single zip-lock bag. If the items don’t fit into a zip-lock bag, they are considered dangerous materials. So, the TSA disposes of them in a “safe” place.
• Techniques – the building blocks of a process.
• Tricks – what you do when the right technique is too hard to do.

There’s a difference between Cream Cheese and Yogurt. According to TSA, cream cheese is safe, and yogurt is not. One day, Jared went through airport and a pretty lady was arguing with the TSA agent. Apparently, she had a tube of fluid that was less than 3 ounces, but it was in a zip lock bag. The agent is telling her that she needs a zip lock bag. So she looks for “does anyone have a zip lock bag?” and Jared gives her his zip lock bag. The TSA agent wouldn’t let him give his bag to her “because of the shot checks”. A ridiculous story.

So why did this happen? The answer is Dogma

Dogma: An unquestioned faith independent of any supporting evidence

Techniques – a rue is good for a heavy soup, a gravy, a custard, flan, etc. So rues are not methodological, it’s not really a process or a methodology. But it’s just a building-block of a process. The first time you go to make a rue, you will fuck it up. The first time you make it, you’re going to burn it. You have to have the heat just right between low and hot, and if you get it wrong you won’t cook it, or you’re going to burn it.

So, rue is a technique. You master the technique through constant practice.

I hired a plumber, but never once did I ask him what his process was. Wasn’t part of the interview. So this guy showed up with his van, and he had all this crazy equipment in the back of his van. He found a drip, and he pulled a tool out of his “bag of tricks” and he starts banging on the pipe. “How did you know that was going to be the right tool?” “No, it’s not the right tool.” “Why don’t you use the right tool?” “I don’t feel like going out to the truck”.

So the answer here is that he was using a trick. An improperly used technique that gets the job done faster.

So, we expected to find that the successful organizations would have some sort of methodology that drives them that other organizations don’t have. But that’s not what we found.

What Did Our Research Find?

• The best teams didn’t have a methodology or dogma the followed
• The struggling teams often tried following a methodology, without success
• The best teams all focused on increasing the techniques and tricks for each team member
• They were constantly exploring new tricks and techniques for their toolkit
• There were no dogmas

It’s Time We Replaced the User-Centered Design Dogma

The Story of Stone Soup

Story of a villager that comes into a village where they are having a draught, and no food. He build a fire in the center of town, and asks to borrow a kettle. He says he has a magic stone, and he takes a stick, and starts to stir the pot with the stone in the water. So someone says “what will this taste like?” “It would taste better with carrots…” and everyone starts adding items to the pot. And within minutes, they have stew, and everybody enjoys the stew.

As his parting gift to the village, the traveler leaves them the stone. And then he walks away. Lots of times, when we go into a job, we are that traveler, and we bring with us our stone. If we’re good, when we leave, we can leave them the gift.

So, what is happening is that it’s about good team-work.

Two lessons to learn from this story

• Team-Work is the Value – If you get everyone working together you will get better results than working alone.
• Don’t Believe Your Placebo – At no point in the story, does the traveler ever believe that the stone makes soup. The traveler knows that the stone is a placebo. And they work 60% of the time, even though they do nothing. Placebos do 60% plus or minus 5.

My son is a magician. But at magicians’ conferences, they don’t talk about magic.

The goal of User Research: To Inform Design

Pretty much every usability test ends with the same sequence of events. At the end of the test, people say “oh my god, if we’d known this 2 years ago…” So, whenever there’s a usability problem, we could have been efficient if we had gotten that information sooner.

Big Box Retailer

Audience interactive example: Four people gathered from the audience to hold a string. The string represents 1 millions users that visit a “Big Box Retailer” website. The string represents $1.2BB in revenue per year. The string is blue with a bunch of 1-feet yellow marks along it. The blue parts represents the visitors who come to the site but don’t buy anything. The yellow and red represents the customers who buy something. Conversion rate: 1.6%. So 80% of their revenue is coming from 0.32 % of their traffic.

So, the problem we have solved that no one has figured out yet. We need to design for this small 0.32% that is buying. If we could just increase the amount they sell by $10, that would represent $500MM in additional revenue.

What gets measured, gets done
What gets rewarded, gets done well

How many of us are actually rewarded for the things that get done well at your companies?

We’re going to do an experiment from the audience on brand engagement. How many people love your brand? The folks at Gallup came up with a metric.

Measuring Brand Engagement

• Loyalty
• Confidence
• Integrity – do you think company will back this product?
• Pride – are you proud to be an owner of this?
• Passion – if this company were to disappear tomorrow, will you be sad?

Asks audience to come up from the audience and stand in front of numbers hanging on the wall. 40 people filled out a survey, and will stand near their numbers.

• Starbucks – 3
• McDonalds – -5
• Apple Computer – +7
• Microsoft – -5

What we have here is a normal bell curve distribution for Starbucks. People the love Starbucks love it because it’s consistent, and they honor their bad drinks. As for people that hate it, they’ve had bad experiences with Starbucks, and they didn’t taste care of me. Coffee tastes burnt and bland products.

McDonalds – people are veg, don’t like it. It’s a consistent experience.

Apple – everyone likes it. No need to question.

Microsoft – “I have to use it for my job”. Person felt embarrassed about liking it.

Conclusion: It is very easy to measure brand engagement in this way.

Measuring Engagement While Buying Electronics

We chose to do this CE11 score for various brands. How did they do before people purchased and after people purchased? Most people had a higher opinion before they shopped with the retailer.

• Amazon – 6.2 to 5.5
• Circuit City – 4.5 – 4.3
• Dell – 3.0 – 1.4
• HP – 1.4 – -1
• Walmart – 0.5 – 1.1

So, we can target where in the user experience these numbers went down. When you focus on culture, things go up. So, that’s it. But here’s the deal. We have to be very careful what we use, because there’s a lot of Voodoo techniques out there.

Beware of Voodoo Techniques

• Eyetracking Interpretation In this shopping cart, users didn’t look much at the cross-selling offers, which is a common finding. However, a company called Eye-Square is now getting sophisticated at showing you eye-tracking. However, it’s all Voodoo. To Jared Spool, eye-tracking is just as good as Ouija board.
• Analytics – What inference should we make from numbers going down or going up? They often don’t mean anything.’

The 3 Core UX Attributes

• Vision – “Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years from now?” You make a stake in the sand, and everyone on the team needs to understand it. It’s not a product vision, it’s an experience vision. What will it be like to use this product 5 years from now?
• Feedback – “In the last six weeks, have you spent more than two hours watching someone use your design or a competitor’s design?” If it’s more than six weeks, you have forgotten.
• Culture – “If the last six weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?” If you have a culture that celebrates failures, then you will have a culture that rewards innovation. Every time we make a mistake, we learn something. If you have a culture that is completely risk adverse, you end up putting out dreck. That’s how it works.

Summary

• It’s time to retire the dogma of User-Centered Design
• We should focus on Informed Design. Build a reward system based on informed measures
• Focus on the Three Core UX Attributes. Vision, Feedback, and Culture

Blog: www.uie.com/brainsparks
Site: UIE

Gabriel White
Punchcut

Gestures are simply the way we interact with the natural world. How can designers translate that into meaningful, engaging interactions with handheld devices? We’ll discuss current and emerging technologies like near field communications, proximity, accelerometer, etc. and we’ll propose design principles that create fun experiences and deeper connections with users.

People interacting with real-world technologies, e.g., a ghetto blaster, a lond-line, etc.
People that can’t even read can learn to use some of these technologies, using spatial and visual memory. For instance a physical control that they can learn by having someone teach them the button in this location does this, etc.

The way we typically design online devices is that we have a set of controls, and we overload the controls. In other words, we use the same controls in different ways in different contexts.

The amazing thing is that some people that can’t even read can use an ATM in India. They learn it through a series of physical movements / gestures rather than just reading the display (which they can’t even do).

Driving Factors – Gestural Interfaces

When you’re talking about small devices, e.g., remote controls, the complexity that emerges means that there’s a lot of pressure to make it simpler / more straightforward to use.

How do we minimize complexity?

Answer: One way is to remove features, and simplify like that. That’s good, but often gets rid of some valuable complexity.

Products like the WII, iPhone, etc are devices loaded with sensors beyond the traditional button pressing. So it opens up a whole new modes of interaction.

Languages and Affordances

What is it in a gestural system that tells us that we can do something with it? Buttons have an affordance that you know if can be pressed. So what sort of affordances will be available with new devices that support more types of gestures?

Examples:

• A dial that has roundness, writing around the outside, and a bunch of things that make it clear that you can turn it
• A blinking cursor that tells you can type there

Ultimately, one of the challenges with iPhone and new devices is solving the issue of affordances… how to communicate HOW you can interact with the device

How do people communicate intent?

We are still caught up in using gestural UIs in terms of control. What’s happening in the example of the WII is that I’m using a gestural UI, but to declare my intent (move the bowling ball). It’s basic interaction with a new device.

Declarative Controls – So that’s one mode, and it’s the old way.

Implicit Controls – A new way. Example of a seat belt warning. You are trying to drive the car, and it notices that you don’t have your seat belt. So it gives you a warning.

Example: Doors that open when you approach them. Your intent isn’t to open the door, it’s to go inside. So the door responds as you approach the building.

Example: “Shaking” a Samsung MP3 players, or iPhone Urban Spoon so that you can “give it a shake” and get a random restaurant recommendation. These link to a metaphorical story of a jar of jelly beans which you shake to rearrange the order.

Strange examples – these are all real examples, but they don’t necessarily map well to a real-world story that we have in our head.
Example: Facebook app which has a “shake” to upload the news stream function. It’s not really clear what the metaphorical story is there.
Example: Shake to answer a phone call
Example: Shake to clear the cache.

Affordances and Memory

Video clip: g-speak is a sppation environment for interacting with data
G-speak
g-speak applications interact in real-space and real-time with the computers and screens and users in a room.

G-speak is really cool. However, the vocabulary of gestures isn’t probably going to be sustainable on a wide consumer scale.

So in contrast to that, here’s another short video, which White thinks represents a more intuitive natural system.
Canesta

What’s Next?

Our direct physical manipulation of devices will affect the way that they interact with us.

Paper Windows

The paper document

Conclusions

• What are the affordances?
• What are the gestures someone is going to use?
• How can I use gesture to disambiguate?

Recap – Big problems are related to…

• Language
• Affordances

Audience Questions

Question: How can we prevent the wrongful/confusing overloading of elements and gestures?

Answer: Hopefully we’ll be able to develop standards so that designers can make the right choices.

Question: g-speak – people seemed into it. However, people didn’t seem that into Canesta.

Answer: I think if we are creating interaction that are creating anxiety, we’re probably doing the wrong thing.

Question: Is flipping pages more intuitive or a button? Also, how do you see gestures evolving so they’ll become smaller, things you can do sitting down rather than having to stand up in front of a screen?

Answer: As for turning pages, I think we need to define a language. Explicit representation of a button is going to help us do that. There are all sorts of ways to represent these interactions. We have to think about what the different pieces of the language are.<br/

As for micro or macro gestures, the conversation is more complex. You could argue that a TV remote control is not actually all that convenient (moving your arm around). What’s the language we are creating, and how does that move from smaller interactions to larger scale ones?

Question: Macro gestures … have you seen any research on how macro gestures will work out in practice? They take a lot of strength…

Answer: Maybe we’ll evolve. It’s hard to image a UI that involves extended arms to last for more than 5 minutes. There are definitely paths for us to be able to use full gestures, but hopefully in a less punishing way.

Question: How much do you think accuracy limits of gestural capture will play out?

Answer: Yes, the sensors are often very crude. But the flip side of it is because we’re so finely tuned to interacting with things physically, we’re able to manipulate it in a way with more sophistication than is allowed just by the precision of the sensors.

Checking out Christina Wodtke’s book reading / micro-talk at the Abode Day Stage here at SXSW:

Christina Wodtke
Boxes and Arrows

Social Architecture

Psychology – Lewin’s Equation
B = f (P,E)
Behavior is a function of the Person and his or her Environment

Think about any social website. You only have control over E. Historically that was only 50%. But now with micro-experiences built into other sites, that E might be as little as 2%.

What is the Social Web? It’s all about love and esteem.

Social – it’s all old stuff

• Usenet
• Forums
• Email
• Mailing lists
• Groupware

Gene Smith’s model

If you’re going to build a piece of software, the first thing that you are going to design for is handles the user can invest in. People need to be able to build a reputation, and their self-esteem.

Identity

• Avatar
• Profile
• Activity
• Collections

Try to think about default Avatars. Make the person invest a little bit. Made the default avatar kind of bad so people can invest in it.

Identity is Context Based
Think about the context of the person’s online identity. Is it a work space, a play space, an outdoor space, etc. E.g., LinkedIn identity is different than Facebook identity, etc. So add the right options for data customization

Presence
It’s nice to know that there’s people around you. How do you have signs of life on your website? It could be as simple as “last uploaded”. So Basecamp does a good job at this because it shows last time you logged in, and people have guilt if that doesn’t look up to date on a collaborative project.

Reputation
For some small systems, reputation can be offensive. “I already know all of these people”. So these systems can backfire. But for bigger sites like eBay, money on the line, lots of uses, it’s important.
In Digg, people started gaming the system once there was a leaderboard. So it’s a delicate balance between big and small systems.

However, if there is money involved, there’s got to be reputation.

3) You need barriers to participation. This is one of the things that killed Usenet.
You have to have some cost to either join or participate, in not at the lowers level, then at higher levels.

Anyone can read Slashdot.
Anonymous cowards can post, non-anonymous cowards can post with a higher rating.
But to moderate, you really have to have been around for a while.

“Get people rolling through your site”, keep priming them with new experiences.

Norms and Caretakers

Make sure there’s going to be some human-beings that are going to spend time in this space. Every group is going to have norms, and you’re going to need human beings to participate in some way. You’re either going to have to hire people, or you’re going to have to think of a system like Slashdot that allows certain people to moderate.

Relationships

When you have a social network, how would you find the people you might want to build a relationship with? It could be as simple as Twitter (follow / don’t follow) or it could be more complex like Flickr friends and family.

There’s a principle called gifting. If you send people mailing labels, they are 5-times more likely to donate, because they feel obligated. When I share a story about myself, you feel obligated to share about yourself. On LinkedIn, you give a recommendation, people always give a recommendation back. In fact, if you want a recommendation from someone, don’t ask them. They will almost always write one back.

Attending the annual “JavaScript head to head” panel here at SX in order to finally see the legendary John Resig in the flesh…

• Nate Koechley – YUI
• Andrew Dupont – Prototype JavaScript Framework
• Becky Gibson – IBM
• John Resig – Mozilla Corporation

In a reprise from last year’s popular panel – the JavaScript libraries authors are getting together again to impart their what they’ve learned from their experience in developing solid, world-class, JavaScript libraries. Covering everything from advanced aspects of the JavaScript language, to handling cross-browser issues, all the way up to packaging and distribution. A complete set of knowledge for a JavaScript developer.

4×10 minutes talks with Q&A at the end

Nate Koechley – Getting loaded

JavaScript loading blocks page rendering.
We know a single file is best.

Sites often use multiple unrelated JavaScript files.

Larger projects use multiple files for flexibility and ease

Most files are order-dependent.

Other files aren’t needed right away.

Andrew – Prototype

Sprockets for JavaScript concatenation

Meta-Language Frameworks

• Google Web Toolkit
  Turns Java into JavaScript
• Pyjamas
  Turns Python into JavScript
• Cappuccino
  Turns “Objective-J” into JavaScript
• Google Caja
  Turns JavaScript into better JavaScript

When thinking about frameworks, think about up-front cost and ongoing cost (maintenance).

The basic idea though, is use what Framework makes sense to you. We’re “stuck” with JavaScript, so bear it or work around it somehow.

Becky Gibson – IBM and Accessibility

Dojo newest release is out now.

But this is my talk about ACCESSIBILITY! Boo yah.

Top 3 reasons people don’t worry about accessibility

1 Adding A11y is too hard and will ruin my design
2 People with Disabilities don’t use my site
3 My site IS accessible – it’s up 24×7.

DOJO is doing it, JQuery UI is doing it, etc.

ARIA – Accessible Rich Internet Applications

• Accessible Rich Internt Applications
• W3C Specification, like HTML, CSS, XML etc
• Within Protocols and Formats Working Group which is part of WAI – Web Accessibility

ARIA lets you add semantics to script UI elements.
Updates state information dynamically
Makes items focusable via tabindex attribute
Adds keyword event handling – mimic the behavior of a rich client UI, and minimizes tab key navigation

You just add custom accessibility tags to your HTML, such as role=”container” or role=”tree” etc.

Summary

JS Toolkits are implementing ARIA – use them
ARIA makes AJAX accessible
Make your websites dynamic AND accessible

John Resig – Creator of JQuery

Performance and Testing

Stack Profiling

Performance Tools – use native tools provided by the browsers themselves

Firebug Profiler
Safari Profiler
IE8 Profiler

FireUnit – a new extension for Firebug that gives you a JavaScript testing framework

QUnit – JQuery’s test suite, nice and simple

TestSwarm : Distributed Testing for JavaScript

Audience Questions

Question: John – a question about TestSwarm. Is the Swarm just for QA? Does it work with Selenium?

Answer: No, it’s for any test suite, so that you can hook it into generic or custom frameworks.
As for Selenium, I’m familiar with Selenium RC. You need machines that are capable of running these specific browsers. The client is a JavaScript file, and it can run anywhere. TestSwarm is open source.

Question: For Nate, how dos dynamic combination of JavaScript files affect overhead and browser caching?

Zero overhead. As for caching, there’s a lot more permutations, so there’s that negative effect. At the same time, cache’s only hold so many files, and here there are fewer files, so that’s a bonus. We also focus more on multiple HTTP requests, so this improves that. Overall, the effect is superior.

Question: Convergence? Any thoughts on continuation or drop-off of these libraries?

Answer: (John Resign) There is some convergence on the underlying frameworks. But not so much on the acutal front-side of it, because you’d have to strip away the essence of the framework.

So, here I am sitting at SXSW ready to “learn how to get the most out of SXSW”. Is it really worth it to attend this panel and miss out on a few other fantastic sessions? We’ll find out…

How to Rawk SXSW

wiki is here

Moderator:

Glenda “Bon Jovi ” Bautistsa
Agendacide.com

Panelists:

Baratunde Thurstan

Ernie Hsiung – Ning and Blogger
LittleYellowDifferent.com

John Halcyon Styn – LifeStudent and Fears, Regrets, Desires
Lifestudent.com

Zadi Diaz – Epi-food show
Zadidiaz.com

Topics:

• How to keep yourself from being constantly documented, or HOW TO become constantly documented
  e
• 2) How to make Satan fingers “the Rock horns” or the “horns of metal”
• A little rebellion is good for your health

What you need to know about SXSW:

• This is IRL time. So get beyond your computer.

Question: Why do you come to SXSW every year?
Answer: (Diaz)
The first time I came it was out of guilt. I would have been depressed if I missed out on another year.
Answer: (John)
If you see people, you don’t necessarily realize how you know them. One of the great things about this conference is heart and a lot of fun. There’s a massive amount of integrity. My year is split between Burning Man and SXSW. In both places, you have tons of creative amazing things because they are inspired to do so. If you see something that is broken in the panel, you fix it.
One thing that is really important to understand… everybody is a little nervous. I’ve been coming here for 10 years, and I’m a little nervous. Everybody here wants to meet you. Don’t feel like you need to be invited to things.
Make it your goal not to send any emails like “I wanted to see you, but didn’t have the courage or time… maybe next year.”

Question: What do you like in the conference Schwag Bag?

Answer (Ernie): Get your conference bag. There’s a lot of marketing materials, and I just bring it back to the hotel room. It’s really heavy to bring everywhere. The giant guidebook is useful but it’s like 100 pages. It’s probably more useful in your hotel room.

Answer (Thurstan): Bring the gum with you because you need to be talking a lot and will need to keep your breath clean. There’s a company called Friendster that is doing friend profiles. *skeptical on that one*. There’s a CD that feels festive.

Answer (Diaz): I don’t even get them. If there isn’t anything cool in them, I don’t even bother. I actually follow everything online. All my scheduling, etc. I’m trying to save some trees.

Answer (Styn): Isn’t a canvas bag cool?

Question: We were making allusions to Twitter just now.

Answer (Ernie): The great thing about SXSW, is it started as old-school blogging communities. A lot of those people joined real social media companies, and the conference picked up a lot.
Sched.org: Sched at SXSW : A great site for keeping up with SXSW.

(Ernie) SXSW ‘09 Insider’s Guide : at sxsw.ning.com. Disclaimer: I work for Ning. However, this unofficial guide to SXSW is a great resource.
SXSW Insider’s Guide

Brad is in charge on another blog called SXSW Baby.
SXSW Baby

If all of this information is too much, you can also just not plan everything and just follow what everyone else does like a Sheep. And I have no problem with that.

Dodgeball – back in 2005, 2006 this was the “must use tool”. It was bought by Google, but now there’s a new service – just release this week called Foursquare.com (what’s the URL on this?)

A lot of oldschoolers use Upcoming
SXSW on Upcoming

The hash tag. Who knows what a hash tag is? A whole bunch of hands go up. Is there a certain place we can look for a list of tags from this conference? sxsw.agendacide.com. People love to spell out the tags.
Agendacide

Thuston : My recommendation is not to focus too much on making it to some crazy conference. Instead, chill on a couch somewhere, and you’ll be surprised that you might meet someone interesting. Another concept is to go to a conference that might not interest you at all. Part of the opportunities here are to go to things that you might not already know much about, or whatever.

John: Maybe one of the joys is ask people around if there is something they are looking forward to. One for me was hearing Henry Jankins speak, and it blew my mind. Try to sit in something that you don’t know if you’re interested in. Find the interesting speaker, and go to what they are interested in.

Diaz: It’s also good to go to a panel if you feel like you might like the people that are on the panel. So you’re able to connect on a deeper level beyond the subject matter.

If you go to Twitter you can watch the comment feed and stream.
use Twitter Search and do a #sxsw search for all the SXSW comments.

Whatever happens at SXSW will be posted on Flickr. When you do a Google image search, this “infamous party photo” will haunt you for years. So just be aware that these things will happen, and people WILL be documenting you and tagging your photos.

Bautista: There’s a really cool mashup built for tags in general.

Thurston: Pepsi is one of the sponsors this year, and they did a cool way to visualize what is happening at SXSW. The pepsi zeitgeist.
Pepsi Zeitgeist

Thurston: A few trips to help maintain your budget. Try to avoid the Austin Convention Center for eating. It’s pretty expensive. There is some great coffee shops, grab a breakfast burrito. There’s a Whole Foods a bit West. Take an hour out of your day, “walk West” and buy some food at the Whole Foods. Get some granola, power bars, etc and have lunch with strangers. So you have that social thing going on, and you can save money and eat healthy.
Check out the Trade Show. There is some free food there.
Crash somebody’s corny media party, and take their food. Don’t make them take that food home. That’s yours. You registered. You’re entitled.

(Hsiung) : There’s also Screenburn. What’s cool about Screenburn is it has a lot of gaming and other alternative ideas.

(Bautista): Does anybody have a Gold badge here? Is it useful to interact with Film, etc?

(Diaz): Making film connections could be very healthy right now, since Film is going online. There’s an interactive studio going on this weekend, there’s a lot of happy hours and stuff like that. 406 East 1st street is a film screening going on. So overlapping is good. Check out a film screening.

(Thurston) Music crowd is just more black jeans and crazy makeup and hair. One year that I was here two years ago, I lost my voice pretty completely. But this taught me to listen. A lot of coming here, you could get a lot more out of shutting up and listening to people around you. Don’t need to sell yourself. Let other people sell to you. Taking in, and not just broadcasting all the time. So take a sanity moment to “shut up” like I’m gonna do right now.

(Styn) There’s a couple of events I’d like people to see. There’s a pasties and cupcakes events. But at 9:30 there’s a virtual hug workshop. Also, I’m doing a panel about how the web can save the world.

About events, and evening events especially in general. At the big events, you should say “I’ll see you in line” because it’s out of control. If you feel like you should be someplace, everyone else does too. Which is fine, but there may be some opportunities to go to a smaller place.

Think of something cool and interactive to do in lines. “So where’s your tattoo?”

(Hsiung): Even if you’re not the type of person to drink, that’s OK. There’s this inferred, we’re going to Digg or Facebook party and get sloshed. But if you’re not the type, there’s nothing wrong with meeting some people you met earlier, and just going out to dinner. The joy of going out to dinner is totally under-rated. That’s what I prefer doing.

(Bautista) It’s all about deepening the conversation with people. There’s a temptation to drop your business card everywhere. But it’s about meeting other people, learning how they work, and … transparency and authenticity. Deepen the conversation.

Advice: Deepend the Conversation “Liz Henry”

(Diaz) You’re going to get sick after this conference. It’s called SXSars. So many twitter streams about people getting sick after the conference.

Audience Questions

Question: What is the one don’t-miss event this year?

(Thurston) Bruce Sterling
(Hsiung) 20×2
(Styn)Pasties and Cupcakes
Hugs
Plutopia Event
(Diaz) RV going around with parties inside.

(Bautista) Transporation at SXSW. There’s cabs, rickshaws, etc. “I’m far too intoxicated to figure out transport options” … we put those contact info on our Agendacide site.

Twitter.com – our VIP lounge.
If you’re willing to confess, you can do tech cab confessions.
Twitter.com/techcab

Question:
What was one regret you had from you first SXSW?

(Thurston) I got obsessed by having to be where the action was. You end up waiting in line, and fighting with a bouncer, and I didn’t have enough confidence to leave. There’s so much stuff going on, and it’s OK to skip the big popular thing, and go with a small group.

(Ernie) For me, it was the Fray Cafe, and everyone had a chance to tell something in public, and the nerves got the best of me and I didn’t do it. So it’s OK to show what you’re working on. Don’t have any regrets.

(Styn) I don’t believe in regrets. Which is ironic because of my show Fears Regrets Desires.
Every year I come back with ideas, but I feel like I can’t execute them. People can lead you anywhere. Be in the moment, learn from the people here, and be yourself as much as possible.