Tag Reboot7

Reboot slut

For at runde det hele af: Dag 2 var fantastisk inspirerende. For mit vedkommende sluttede det med Loic Le Meurs “The European Blogosphere”, som var et passioneret, indsigtsfuldt og skarpt blik på den franske blogosfære (han nåede aldrig videre til de andre lande). Det effektive ved den seance, var de helt konkrete historier om hvordan weblogs på forskellige områder fuldstændigt har vendt op og ned på kendte modeller. Politikere der henviser til deres egen weblog som primærkilde, t-shirt fabrikanten der får kunderne til selv at producere produkterne. Borgeren der tager kampen op mod borgmesteren på sin weblog og bliver landskendt. Kosmetikfirmaet der på deres weblog indrømmer at de har misforstået alting, og be’r læserne om råd til hvordan de skal håndtere mediet. De konkrete historier burde mange flere talere tage udgangspunkt i, før de bevæger sig til abstraktionerne.

Helt banalt er lærdommen fra årets reboot, at internettet har selvorganiseret en række meget effektive kommunikations- og businessmodeller der viser sig at være mere brugervenlige og menneskenære end nutidens dominerende modeller. David Weinberger fik mig overbevist om at internettet har affødt et vidensbegreb og en distributionsmodel der lægger sig utrolig tæt op ad den måde vi tænker og handler på (som enkeltindivider).

ParasitDen idealistiske diskurs? Vil man snart le af, hvis jeg skal være lidt kynisk. Her er tale om fødslen af en model der mest af alt er fascinerende i sin effektivitet. Måske er der et kæmpescam i gang: det hele går ud på at eliminere omkostningerne ved ‘indholdsproduktion’ ved at lade webloggere levere det gratis (billede: Google er en parasit). Det kunne være mægtig interessant at få fagforeningerne til at kommentere konceptet “medarbejderweblogs” – hvad skal man have af tillæg for at skrive sådan én? (læs: vågn op!). Og Jason Frieds krav til at medarbejdere skal kunne skrive godt er meget eksemplarisk for værdierne i miljøet, og efterlader jo de skriftsvage ved vejkanten. Men sådan har det måske altid været?

Et superbt arrangement, møder med en masse spændende mennesker, og følelsen af, at tiden vi lever i er helt speciel.

Reboot Flickr I & II | Technorati | Loic Le Meur Wiki | mp3-filer lørdag | RebootQuotes | Interconnected notes I & II | Wbm om Reboot 6

Loic Le Meur

Sidder her, behageligt flankeret af emme og netliv (dobbeltflankeret af Trine Maria og Bering Express), og bereder mig på at høre Loic Le Meur, The European Blogosphere (program). Loic Le Meur har den europæiske licens til at sælge typepad-weblogs. Han har prøvet at få kollektivet til at give ham stikordene til sit oplæg på en wiki. Er lidt usikker på om der er mere fatteevne i mig, men i hvertfald, herunder, lidt noter; måske.

    Det giver ingen mening: tjek wikien. Der opfordres kraftigt til at redigere i den, finder man unøjagtigheder.

  • Og dog: Skyblog.com har 2.2 millioner (ulæselige?) sms-agtige blogs i Frankrig
  • Der er 100 blogplatforme i Frankrig.
  • Forside på Libération: La blog génération
  • Historien om monputeaux.com: Beboer i byen Putaux, der er blevet arresteret for at tage billeder i en have (?). Han har skrevet i et år om hvor meget han hader borgmesteren. Han har flere læsere end der er beboere i byen. Nu venter han på dommen…
  • Dominique Strauss-Kahn – politikerblog med en masse kommentarer.
    Fordømt! Er ved at løbe tør for strøm.

David Weinberger

Author of “Small pieces loosely joined“, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and The World of EndsDavid Weinberger, the natural shape of knowledge (program):

  • Apologies: There is no natural shape | I’m sorry about George Bush
  • Internet’s effect on knowledge – popular belief is that the internet is misinformation, gossip, chaos, lies
  • It’s a conflict of models
  • Origins og knowledge. Knowledge is originates in real concerns in the real world.
  • Aristotle: There are ten questions you can ask about any object.
  • 1: What is it? Putting it in a system of similarities and differences

  • Sorting the laundry is taxanomy. Knowledge ends at my sock drawer, because it contains no organizational principle.
  • Principles of organization mirror the limitations of the physical (but we don’t have to!)
    We apply the same organisational principle on everything
    We’ve assumed that we have to drive out ambiguity.
    Gatekeepers filter things for us – they have enormous power
    digitizing everything. First order (the collection)| Second order (metadata) | Third order (everything is digital)

  • 4 digital, organisational principles:
  • 1:Leaf on many branches (multiple categories)
    2: Messiness as a value (eg. chaos of inbound/outbound links)
    3: Unowned order (browse and organize the information like you want)
    4: Users build info (distributing the cost of metadata).
  • Large scale change in thinking about data: Movement from trees to piles of leaves
  • The formal distinction between data and metadata doesn’t exist anymore
  • The piles of leaves can be distributed
  • What is the new shape of knowledge? -> screendump of doc searls weblog. As far from the gatekeeping role as possible.
  • Every blogger in this room is generous by pointing away from himself
  • The web is built on little acts of generosity
  • Screendump of New York Times -> all links except 4 are links to New York Times itself (the

  • echo chamber criticism is stupid!)
  • We’ve seen the meltdown of the traditional media in the U.S.
  • Picture of Dan Rather, who bloggers brought down. Jon Stewart is the best journalist on American TV right now.
  • American Media are the last one to know that we don’t believe them anymore
  • Topics get smaller (eg. the deep fried mars bar/heavy metal umlaut page) in wikipedia. That’s possible because wiki is not paper.
  • Multisubjectivity (objectivity -> showing the world how it would look like if no one was looking at it). Subjectivities are in conversation with each other.
  • The long trail is twisty.
  • We can trace topics. The multiconversational space has some of the heft we have ascribed to objectivity.
  • A two-dimensional document does not have any content!
  • Knowledge is a continuing conversation (not the result of it).
  • “Good enough” is foreign to the traditional view of knowledge (right or wrong).
  • Multiple-dispute-ism: nobody has to be right.
  • Semantic fragmentation. Solution -> Conversation (differences on shared ground).
  • In line with Aristotles proposal of how to understand the world.
  • What’s happening right now: re-meaning the world, making meaning ours!

Perfect!

Jason Fried Douglas Bowman

Starting right now – masterclass in CSS with Jason Fried & Douglas Bowman: mindblowing!
What was it about? A Q & A session about design techniques, theft, educating customers and more…

Douglas Bowman

Douglas Bowman, Design as Standard (program). Douglas Bowman er en af mine helte. Fordi hans webdesign er så sprødt, ganske enkelt. Manden bag Wireds redesign (link 1, link 2) for et par år siden.

  • Design is a standard. What makes beautiful design?
  • Standard benefits those who build the tools/build with the tools
  • The Bourne Supremacy on DVD: What if there were an error message: “This DVD is not compatible…”. It works because of standards.
  • Screendumps from Vodafone website: Change browser. We have the tehcnology to avoid this today.
  • The idea of beauty: Parallel with nature.
  • Maybe there were beautiful designs five years ago: but it was messy under the hood.
  • Structure must be beautiful all the way from the inside. The technologies that use standards create an ecosystem.
  • Standards based design is often bundled with accessability. A story: after the wired redesign the feedback was negative. A week later Zeldman linked to my businesssite -> a lot of traffic. People started sending feedback on my personal site, it was much more positive. One positive mail: ‘congratulations bla, bla, by the way I’m blind‘. That hit me like a ton of bricks.
  • Many more benefits to accessability than servicing disabled: Search Engines | Rendering speed increases | Simpler code | Greater flexibility | One version
  • First reaction to Wired redesign: “Commercial Suicide”.
  • First goal: Do the right thing. Inspired by blogs, alistapart etc..

  • Screendump from the old code. Only one line in the CSS-file.
  • Cinnamon Interactive -> beautiful, especially the source. Others: espn.com, pgachampionship.com, fastcompany, macromedia, adaptive path, disneystore.co.uk, gassweiler media AG, yahoo
  • Wired news redesign: Saved 730 terabytes/year (Over a million CD’s) | One change, immediate results on thousands of pages
  • Check CSS Zen Garden
  • CSSvault.com and many other CSS gallery sites
  • Upside: More awareness | purified data and content | Proven viable in different sectors | reduction of file services | Accessability on the radar | modular thinking
  • Expectations: Bar set higher | Know and understand multiple technologies | Lawsuits and legal requirements | Faster, better, cheaper
  • Mistakes: Over-reliance on the box model and making the box visible | Image replacement | Presentational class & id names (use semantic names that describe content instead of appearance) | Imitation has lead to stagnation.
  • CSS is not the magic bullet: can’t turn bad design into good design. Won’t make us better designers.
  • Types of tools: creating | building. Don’t start too early with the building tools. Focus on the creative process early on.
  • Dynamic templates. Allows change of entire layout or structure of page by changing class or id.
  • How the Blogger CSS is functioning…can’t take notes of that. Changing color schemes
  • Wired uses a pure color.css
  • Sliding doors: illusion of one image that expands and contracts
  • Rounded Corner boxes
  • Remote Rollovers
  • The single image theory
  • Looking ahead: portability and templatization

That went fast…

Malthe Sigurdsson

Malthe Sigurdsson, The Skype brand (program):

  • What is the Skype thing? An application you use to talk through the internet. For Free. Forever.
  • It raises the barrier of entry for our competitors. It raises the barrier of exit for the users.
  • It’s about enhancing communications
  • A small, big company. 160 people in 15 countries.
  • Users in every country recognized by the United Nations.
  • Forbilleder: Apple, ebay, Google, wikipedia.
  • All employees have access to the skype-wiki, which contains all the information used in the company.
  • Where are we now? 3 mill. people online as we speak | 45 million registered users | 10 billion minutes served.
  • Davidthemarine: ‘We’re the users, so we dictate how in the end this program is gonna go. Skype is as much our product as it is theirs. We don’t develop it but we’re the userbase. We’re the customer‘.
  • The brand is the product is the brand.
  • Malthes focus: providing free services.
  • Do simple things really well.
  • No knee-jerk reactions.
  • Release all the time – unconnected to PR-stunts or events.
  • Open up. We want to be friendly, down to earth, listening to the users. Users can say anything on the forums.
  • Skype API: others can develop on the functionality.
  • The Skype weblog
  • Viral features.

Mobilos

Det tog lidt længere tid at sove end jeg havde regnet med, derfor er jeg lige dumpet ind i foredraget om Christian Lindholm fra Nokia, der fortæller om “Dominant Design” indenfor mobilteknologi. Et af nøgleordene her på reboot er “metadata”. Metadata er det net af oplysninger man kan placere en fil i, så udefrakommende applikationer kan organisere filen på alskens måder (f.eks. søgemaskiner, kollektive forummer som Flickr, Delicious og Technorati). Det er selvfølgelig også vigtigt m. f.eks. film i mobiltelefoner. Den hotteste form for metadata lige synes at være “tags”. Man mærker sin fil (sin side/sit objekt/sin post) med et nøgleord, så andre hjemmesider eller programmer kan vise den, sammen med alle de andre filer der er blevet mærket med det samme tag.

Om fem år: vil internettet blive benyttet lige meget af mobiltelefoner som af PC’ere. Lagerpladsen har et potentiale til at blive så stort at ens mobiltelefon kan blive til en “life recorder“.

Christian Lindholm har en weblog.

Day 1

Nå, måtte et smut til Valby Hallen, og derfor blev afgangen tidligere end planlagt. Nåede lige at høre David Heinemeier Hansson, men det gik henover hovedet på mig. Man skal vist have arbejdet seriøst med programmering af webapplikationer i mange år, for at forstå fordelene ved Ruby On Rails.

Konklusion på dag 1, er det hele var lettere skuffende (i forhold til reboot 6). Måske fordi jeg har læst mig til mange af synspunkterne, perspektiverne og visionerne i forvejen. Der har ikke været deciderede aha-oplevelser, og en del af foredragene virkede lidt pligtskyldige, opsummerende, faktuelle. Det er lidt frustrerende at der på tidspunkter sker tre foredrag ad gangen – det dessiminerer det kollektive referencepunkt.

Endelig har jeg hørt mig selv sige i mange sammenhænge for nyligt, at jeg skulle til en ‘spændende IT-konference’. Det har nogle syntes lød som en selvmodsigende ordsammenstilling. Et par gange har jeg spurgt mig selv om hvor spændende det så egentlig var. Svaret: Det er vanvittig svært at koble IT-visioner på virkeligheden om menneskenes hverdag. Jimbo Wales synes jeg var den eneste der gjorde det med sætningen “To distribute a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet in their own language“. Det er en menneskelig ambition der kan forstås.

Jo, og Dinah Metas fortælling om hvordan det globale katastrofeberedskab forandrede sig under Tsunamien.

Programmet i morgen ser meget inspirerende ud.

Over and out.

Jason Fried

Jeg må indrømme at – på trods af min begejstring for firmaet 37signals.com og dets visioner og produkter – er blevet en lille bitte smule træt af alt det hype stifterne har været så dygtige til at generere om sig selv. Men det er jo ikke deres skyld. Spørgsmålet er dog om foredraget “Building great things with small teams” vil være andet end en lang reklame for firmaet. Med andre ord: vil jeg tage noget med hjem, andet end lysten til at købe deres produkter?

  • Mål: Reducing mass | Making things manageable | Lowering cost of change
  • Find the right people: Passionate and happy | Well rounded | Quick Learner | Trustworthy | Good writer
  • I’ll take someone happy and average over a guru who is disgruntled and frustrated.
  • Act your size
  • Less formalities | Less mass | Less Fear | More fear | More change | More Freedom
  • Embrace Constraints: The only time you’re going to be creative is when you meet constraints
  • Jason foreslår at man giver hinanden nogle timers alenetid hver dag
  • Spending a dollar should always hurt
  • Build half a product not a half-ass product
  • Say no by default | Listen to the product | Ignore details early on | Improve what you have | Decisions are temporary
  • Less features | Lower cost of change | Less room for error | Less support required | Encourage human solutions
  • Give people just enough to solve their own problems their own way. Then get out of their way.
  • We always start with the user interface. There’s nothing functional about a functional spec.
  • Get real | Start designing | Start prototyping | Start experiencing | Start changing | Rinse and repeat
  • Make most decisions just in time
  • Make decisions when you have real information
  • Feel the hurt: ikke nogen tredjeparts support
  • Publicity amplifiers: Feature food | Promote through education | 30-day major upgrade | Transparency = Trust
Jo, han er sgu’ god nok ham Jason…