Simon G's Blog

I attended the inspirational  Gather 2015 unconference today. As described on the website for the event “It is the digital, technical and creative community’s big day out”. There were several sessions running simultaneously and it was hard to choose what to go to since there were so many interesting topics. Below is a summary of my key takeaways (or interpretations thereof) from the sessions I attended. UAVs, Internet of Things, 3DVR: What are we going to do with these things? How do we get us/our companies/NZ to lead the way? What can we do to take advantage? These are the questions - does the room have the answers? MAKER CHANGE BUSINESS @lancewiggs Future Skynet Remote Monitoring UAV Tour - e.g. rent a UAV and do tour of Egypt Auto-herding GPS in humans Better battery life Sensors inc. in building beams to say if leak problem Track robber Traffic control Drone based terror Evidence-based thinking Data —> Interpretation Auto milk ordering fro...

The Webstock 2011 conference kicked off today at the Wellington Town Hall.  This is the second time I have attended this superbly designed and organised conference.  The description on the Webstock site sums up nicely what Webstock is all about: “Webstock is a range of web-related events with the aim of improving how websites are built through inspiration, education, insightful analysis and practical application. It features industry leaders and kick-ass speakers talking on topics such as accessibility, web standards, usability and other best practices.” Here is my synopsis of Day One.  There was also an excellent collaborative note taking effort that can be found at http://webstock.waveadept.com/ . Mike Brown @maupuia Opening and welcome It’s the small things that make us connect and share. Having somebody on stage signing for the deaf is nice to see. Frank Chimero @fchimero The Digital Campfire We’re going from less robotic to more human. Universal theory of s...

We were in Europcar the other day to rent a car and a gentleman who was probably in his late 40’s was being explained the options of how to pay for road tolls.  The first option mentioned was that he could simply go to the tolls website to pay.  He threw his hands in the air and expressed that he knows nothing about websites.  The option presented next was thankfully a lot more palatable, paying via entering credit card information over the phone. Just over a year ago I was involved in putting a site together for a closed group of invitees and we thought it was reasonably intuitive to use.  What we didn’t consider though was that some of our invitees were not used to signing up to websites and consequently they had never had to think about what their username would be or what picture they would use for an avatar (not to mention the process for how to get it onto their computer and then onto the website).  For a subsequent event, we took this onboard and genera...

I had a great day at Webstock on Day 1 and below is my synopsis of Day 2, which was also excellent. If you get the opportunity to attend Webstock, do it. Some of the key themes from the conference can be summarised as: Build with love, use common reusable blocks, deploy quickly, deploy often, listen to explicit and implicit feedback from real users, understand what their needs are (not what they say they are), consider social and ethical impacts. Repeat. The Lean Startup Eric Ries ( @ericries ) http://startuplessonslearned.com #leanstartup Slides can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/startuplessonslearned/2010-02-19-the-lean-startup-webstock-2010 Why build a startup? Change the world Build an organisation of lasting value Make customers' lives better Pivot: change directions but stay grounded in what you've launched ...

I had heard lots of great stuff about Webstock in previous years so decided to go along this year to experience it for myself. This is a very professional conference and has (mostly) excellent speakers covering a variety of Web related technologies. Here’s my synopsis of Day 1. Opening Mike Brown ( @maupuia ) You will fall in love with things that are made with love Web Design that grabs people Scott Thomas ( @simplescott ) – Design Director for Obama's campaign Web and Print overlap in campaign Deliver clear and concise messaging, focussed on the “We” rather than the “He” Keep the message of hope while dismantling the notion of being aloof Establish a consistency and balance to exemplify stability and experience Persuading people was the mission of the home page therefore needed to be prominent, with localised information Spend more time researching than design Information ...