Looks like my panel will run at SXSWi. Making and Drawing- Comics in the DIY/Maker World. Thank you if you voted for me! And if you are going, stay tuned for more information about where and when.
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Tag: conferences
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SXSWi Tuesday
Tuesday
I headed for The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web? Developers from Facebook, Tumblr, Ember.js and Webkit discussed when it was appropriate to choose to develop apps in the native environment (they were primarily discussing apps for iOS), when web based apps are a better choice. There was also a discussion of the pros and cons of hybrid apps, using the Facebook app as the primary example. The panelists stressed that you get a lot for free with browser based apps, and that monetization is the primary reasons for creating a native app (you can find/sell it in the app store). They seemed to generally agree that content heavy apps might be better served in the browser development model. The development cycle for web based apps was compared to the cycle for native apps- it is much faster to develop a web based app. There was a plea for developers to get involved in the W3C rather than simply complain about their slow progress.
Flash: F Bomb or Da Bomb. This panel examined issues that Flash has with accessibility and also with search engine optimization. Panelist Philip Gross described how difficult/impossible it is to use a screen reader with a site built completely in Flash. Kristine Schachinger, who tests government sites for accessibility, suggested using Flash for small parts of a site, not building out a whole site in Flash because of SEO problems, as well as accessibility. There was some criticism of Adobe for not dealing with these issues. Also a plea to make sites more accessible, not just to “do the right thing”, but as a business decision. Sites that are not accessible are losing a lot of business. The future of Flash was seen in offline applications, such as kiosks, AIR desktop applications.
In Coding the Next Chapter of America History Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America described her project of getting developers and programmers into local government to create apps and technologies. She quoted former boss Tim O”Reilly “Government is a platform.”Code for America has a fellowship program, now in its second year, which places developers in local government. Pahlka described the growing pains of setting this program up, as well as demoing a couple of projects that have been built, including Adopt-a-Hydrant, an app that helped users in Boston identify snowed in fire hydrants during a snowopocalypse so they could go dig them out. She also announced the launch of Code for America Brigade, a platform for organizing citizen hackers: “Change your community through software”.
I considered going to the Anthony Bourdain panel, until I saw the huge line of people waiting to get in and decided my panels were over for this year.
Calvin and I walked the floor of the trade show during the block party, free food and beer, and plenty of swag. Calvin won a tee-shirt with his wicked fast typing skills. They eventually gave me one too, just for hanging around.
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SXSWi Sunday
Both of the panels Calvin was involved with were on Sunday morning. We headed out to the convention center early, finally having amazing luck with the shuttle- it was waiting when we got downstairs at 7:30. Not the usual hour wait.
First panel: Publishing Models: Transforming the Book. Calvin was the organizer for this panel and Rachel Deahl, also of Publishers Weekly, moderated. I have to admit, I was furiously taking pictures, far more than could ever be used, so my notes are practically non-existent. Luckily, Calvin has written it up for PW, read SXSW 2012: New Publishing Models and the Rise of the Referral Economy The panel was lively, featuring among other highlights a spirited discussion of publishing models between Brian Altounian of Wowio and Molly Barton of Penquin.
Calvin was the moderator of Discoverability and the New World of Book PR. This panel examined new marketing practices for selling books in the age of social media. All of the panelists agreed that there was no longer such a thing as local press because of the web. How do you convert an NPR interview into sales at Barnes and Noble? Barbara Henricks of Cave Henricks Communications pointed out that there is no custom template for marketing books. Rusty Shelton of Shelton Interactive stressed the importance of giving sufficient time to build a connection between audience and author, not a month before publication. Shelton- “Good PR helps bad books fail faster.”
After these panels were over, we hooked up with my family for brunch. Fun! and I got to hang out with my great nephew Eamonn. And it was my birthday!
Back for more panels, first How Comics Journalism Is Saving Your Media. I particularly enjoyed this panel, as I am obviously a huge fan of non-fiction comics. Erin Polgreen talked about Symbolia, a tablet app of illustrative journalism that she has founded. Susie Cagle, who has a background in journalism, showed some of her coverage of Occupy Oakland. The panelists talked about how it is sometimes easier to convince a subject to let them draw a picture than to take a photograph. Matt Bors showed some pages from coverage of post-quake Haiti created by cartoonists and illustrators from Haiti. Heres a link to a live blog if you would like to read more, well worth it.
Final panel of the day, Reinventing the Graphic Novel for the iPad. Daniel Burwen discussed his evolution from game designer and animator to iPad/graphic novel designer and developer. His project CIA: Operation Ajax is a 210 page interactive graphic novel for the iPad. “I wanted to tell stories about other stuff than Tony Hawk.” He traced his influences from the world of graphic novels to Brian Michael Bendis’ book Torso- a thriller that “was like no comic I had ever seen”, with unusual layouts and graphic storytelling strategies. One of the lessons Burwen learned “Comics are artisanal”, a process quite different from game development. The project took 3 years to create a 210 page graphic novel and an interactive iPad app. Flash was used as the tool to mock up the app initially. The app has a lot of additional content, video, documents from the time period of the story.
We dropped by a couple of publishing parties, then had dinner with some publishing people at a tasty sushi spot. And they sang happy birthday to me!
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SXSWi Saturday
Saturday
Grabbed a cab with very nice couple, including one of the panelists I saw the afternoon before, Charlie Wollborg. Shuttle nightmare continues, rainopocalypse also continues. Got to the convention center late, but made it to the end of browser debugging tools panel – The State of Browser Developer Tools. I missed most of the presentations, but heard the panelists wish for more interoperability between the tools, and that browser developers would work together to standardize the tools. Convergence! There is a W3C working group on this topic. “Ask for what you want! Make some noise! File a ticket on Bugzilla.” Another discussion was the lack of debugging tools for some of the HTML5 functionality, like web sockets and keyframe animations.
Best SXSW moment, running into a former student when she scanned my badge, she is an intern for SX and designed a lot of the graphics! Go Jessica Clark! She designed the logo for the SX cycles program sponsored by HBO, as well as a lot of the maps, which are awesome.
Next up, walked around a bit, then headed to the Top Chef Transmedia panel.Interesting to hear their strategy for “Last Chance Kitchen”, a side running series of webisodes, where recently eliminated chefs could fight to get back on the show. I am a big Top Chef fan, I enjoyed this panel a lot, and didn’t find Andy Cohen as irritating in person as I find him on TV. Weird. He was joined by Tom Colicchio, and producers and marketers of the show. Top Chef encourages all of their “cheftestants” to engage with the fans on twitter and other social media. Upcoming plans include incorporating content created by fans.
Listened to web standards evangelist Chris Mills of Opera at HTML5 and CSS3: Does Now Really Mean Now? He demoed some of the cool new features, then showed how to design so that the work would look good in browsers that do not yet support these features. “Progressive Enhancement”, “Don’t Rely on the Shiny” and “Graceful Degradation”- words to live by. He stressed the need to always have fallbacks or shims when necessary. He advised using Modernizr for feature detection. Most notable quote “Every time you use an IE filter a kitten dies.” This talk is available as an audio file on the link above, (some, but not all panels are recorded) definitely work a listen.
Baratunde Thurston’s keynote was entertaining and thoughtful. A funny man- what else would you expect from someone who works for The Onion and has written How To Be Black? His talk touched on the personal- stories from his mom and grandmother’s lives, illustrated by great photos. Cool apparently peaked in 1964, if you were wondering. He spoke about growing up in Washington DC: “We had everything they had in The Wire in my neighborhood except universal acclaim and the undying love of white people.” He showed images and clips of comedians throughout the world, including Nigeria and Iran, taking on the political situation in their country, critiquing it with humor, and using social media to get keep pushing.
We headed up to the Sheraton to The Curators and the Curated panel. Interesting discussion – what is aggregation and what is curation? When a person selects and recommends, it is curation, when an algorithm does it, it is aggregation? David Carr of the NY Times was ferociously articulate, I kind of agreed with him when he said the word curation is kind of twee, but that this is a new type of cultural activity. Mia Quagliarello of Flipboard discussed their process of working with publishers to select, then reformat and paginate content, creating custom templates. Maria Popova of Brain Pickings has proposed a system for systematically identifying and attributing curated content that has just launched on Curator’s Code. Noah Brier of Percolate pointed out that “Brands are in the eco-system of content creation, for better or worse”. Interesting and thoughtful panel. And it is recorded, listen to it on the site.
Dinner with the members of the Publishers Weekly panel. Delicious! I will always trust Rachel Deahl to pick a restaurant.
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SXSWi Thursday and Friday
Thursday
Got to Austin late, past midnight, and I still had to wait in long line for a taxi- our hotel is far, far away from the convention center, and far from the airport. jetBlue was fun, I enjoy channel surfing on the plane and eating blue potato chips. I believe I am the last person in the country who enjoys flying.
Friday
Much excitement getting to the convention center, and plenty of rain. After waiting in  line with many hundreds of people staring at their iOS devices (and noting that this crowd generally does not want to put their iPhones in cases), I got my badge in enough time to head out to O’Reilly’s TOC publishing mini-conference. Got very very wet on the way- yes that is a running theme this year at SXSW, sorry abut the whining.
I heard a couple of interesting presentations- Jason Illian demoing his project Book Shout centered on creating communities of readers who can share and comment as they read with many options to personalize their groups. There was a very amusing panel of authors, many from Texas, talking about how they used social media to connect with their audience. I was particularly interested in one of the books, Cooking For Geeks by Jeff Potter, which appropriately is an O’Reilly publication. (I bought it later at the convention center so I could get it signed by the author.) The science of cooking, but with real recipes- my kind of title.
We braved the rain to walk to the Sheraton Austin, where most of the journalism/publishing panels are taking place. After a hearty buffet lunch, we saw Digital vs. Print:Storyboard to Digital Delivery. Many representatives of major media conglomerates, talking about “content is king”. Have we heard this before? Yes. Liz Schimel of Meredith National Media Group (publishers of magazines like Parents and Better Homes and Gardens) made some interesting comments on reaching the women in their audience and determining what kind of content and functionality they are looking for. She mentioned that women are often using their iPads while cooking (that would be me) and that they are learning from how their customers are leveraging technology.
The Power of Visual Storytelling was next, one of the most entertaining panels so far. The panelists seemed determined not to be another boring group of yammering talking heads. One of the panelists, Charlie Wollborg, jumped up from the podium and walked out into the audience to rant- think about what you are sharing. “Think WIST – Would I Share This?” “Instagram is killing storytelling.” What does literacy mean- “We should be teaching kids how to write  a good headline”. Another panelist, Karl Rude, spoke of the importance of design “the glue that holds everything together”, as well as the various forms of literacy, verbal, visual, theatrical and technical . I enjoyed this, and enjoyed watching the live stream of pro-panel and con-panel tweets flying behind them on a gigantic screen, but wished there had been a bit more specifics that had to do with visual storytelling. Entertaining though, and of course how can I not agree with advice to think more about design and literacy?
Next, MIT Media Labs. Joichi Ito, the director, gave an overview of their history and also of OUR history- before internet (B.I.) after internet (A.I.). A few quotes- “Media Lab is not directed research, it is anti-disciplinary.” Â “Our work is less about products, more about eco-systems”. They also demoed a few of the projects in the works. As always, fun to see what they are up to. One interesting project that Katharine Havasi was working on was getting computers to understand language the way people do, to be used to help doctors understand their patients better, giving feedback on their bedside manner.
I slipped into the very end of what I found was the most interesting presentation so far- Designing Living Things, a group of engineers, designers and academics discussing synthetic biology. I only wish I had attended the whole thing. Christina Agapakis “As engineers, we are using evolution as a design tool”. Â Patrick Boyle- “We are in the process of developing standards and practices to fail gracefully”. Interesting discussion of spider-goats- spider silk is apparently one of the strongest materials around, there is interest in replicating it.
That was the end of my day of panels. Â Calvin and Rachel had a dinner, so I went back out to the hotel through yes, more rain. Got lots of work done, though, a bit boring.
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SXSW: Day Three
Panels! First The Politics of HTML 5. Unfortunately I only saw about half of this panel. The panelists discussed the problems of setting the specs for the HTML 5 standard and navigating the interests of stakeholders who sometimes have opposing objectives- the “priorities of the various constituents†are not the same. John Foliot of Stanford pointed out that a large percentage of the open bugs and issues in the standard currently have to do with accessibility. “There is tension between what a working group can do and a federal agency can do.â€
Urban Technology on the Dark Side looked at the relationship of cities to technology, focusing partially on military and governmental surveillance. It also showed how activists, artists and architects have subverted techniques of surveillance and partition to their own ends. Artist and geographer Trevor Paglen’s long-range photographs and Project Cybersyn, a project in real-time computing used as an economic model during the Salvador Allende government in Chile were shown.
At Big in Japan: Outreaching to a Unique Market, panelists discussed specific cases that succeeded in establishing brands in the Japanese market. Blogger Fumi Yamazaki explained how different generations use mobile devices, and pointed out that the commute of the average Japanese worker is about twice as long as an American’s and it is spent on a train (not driving) where they can use their devices. Ryan Holmes of Hoot Suite commented that some of their success in Japan might be due to the cute mascot they had made into a stuffed animal. Information was shared about contributing to the relief effort in Japan.
Founder of 4chan Christopher Poole discussed the importance of allowing users to remain anonymous in a site with user-generated content such as his image-based bulletin board. “The cost of failure is really high when you are using your real name.†His site favors “content over creator, creators squeezed together riffing back and forth. In 4chan, its not just the product but the process as well.â€Â In 4chan, none of the content is archived, it is dynamic and ephemeral. Poole also demoed Canvas, his new project which launched in beta earlier this year. Again it is user-generated, set up in a collaborative model, at this point all content is visual. This time users must set up an account, for now through Facebook, though they may remain anonymous. It offers users simple tools “to level the playing field†to create and share images.
Of Fanboys & Fidelity – Adapting Comics For Broad Audiences: Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, (who as an undergraduate at U T was a cartoonist and had a strip in the student newspaper), had long been a fan of Frank Miller’s series Sin City when he approached him about making the series into a film. He got Miller interested in working with him by shooting some scenes based on the graphic novel and flying to NY to show him. Miller was concerned about the script, so Rodriguez wrote it in a month based on the graphic novels (there is no screenplay credit in the movie, Rodriguez considers it an adaptation). “I made it very easy for himâ€.
Greg Rucka, writer of the graphic novel Whiteout, discussed his experience in seeing his work turn into a movie. He did not write the script, he wrote 3 scenes based on character, not plot. Rucka expressed strong opinions on how the super hero genre is seen by Hollywood producers-“Fidelity to the character makes or breaks these movies. Big studios approach to super heroes is apologistâ€.
That’s it from me about panels for this year. Other SXSW news- this is the year of the group messaging app. GroupMe, Beluga and many more. The parties were a lot of fun, Lone Star beer everywhere, along with a big pile of carrot sticks.
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SXSW: Day Two
Check out the PW coverage! On the PWxyz blog and on the PW site.
On Saturday, my first panel was Drawing Back the Curtain on CSS Implementation. This panel had representatives from theW3C Working Group on CSS as well as from the major browsers (Safari excluded). They broke down the features of CSS 3 into two general categories, new features and features that make things easier (or “easing the pain you feel every dayâ€), and commented that the second group get a lot more response from the development community. The panelists repeatedly encouraged the audience to become part of the process by making comments to the working group. Elika Etemad discussed the box model- she believes that padding and borders should be part of width (Microsoft was right!). If your eyes are glazing over, you are not alone, I cannot interest my students in the box model and they are learning CSS. There was quite a bit of discussion about layout and why there hasn’t been a better layout model.
Next, Flash is Dead! Long Live Flash! A panel I can clearly relate to. After donning tees-shirts “I Love Flash†and “HTML 5â€, Elliot Chong and Toby Miller of Resource Interactive discussed the pros and cons of working with Adobe Flash as a development tool. At the top of a list of topics, both sides first agreed that Flash intros suck. Search engine optimization in Flash, HTML 5 browser support, mobile performance in Flash were all debated. In the end, both sides agreed that Flash is just a tool and that developers should be “polyglot engineers rather than platform fanboys†using “the right tool for the right job.†I was hoping for more resolution here, but guess that wasn’t meant to be. Entertaining though.
Jane McGonigal reprised her TED talk (and Colbert appearance), making the case that “games are preparing us to take on the world’s most difficult problems.†She outlined the possible benefits of games (positive emotions, better relationships, meaning and accomplishment), then engaged the entire (very large) audience in a game of Massively Multiple Thumb Wrestling. “With great gaming comes great responsibility.â€Â MacGonigal pointed out that an average gamer born in the 1980’s or after will have spent 10,000 hours playing video games, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of time spent in middle school and high school. She talked about the relationship of eustress, or positive stress, to gaming- one gets the focus and adrenaline surge without the negative consequences. After outlining statistics that prove that gaming really isn’t bad for you (gamers have fewer nightmares and more lucid dreaming, for example), she showed projects that have used gaming for social good, in education (Quest to Learn) and in politics (the Guardian’s Investigate your MP’s expenses project).
Next we took a break from panels and went to ScreenBurn, which is the video game element of the SSWi. We took a quick stroll through the exhibition floor, where the exhibitors range from Capcom and Sony to the Game Development Institute at Austin Community College. One standout was the IndiePub booth, which exhibited the finalists for the 1st Independent Propeller Awards. These games had great graphics and the gameplay looked clever and absorbing as well.
My final panel was All These Worlds Are Yours: Visualizing Space Data. I was really tired, got there late and didn’t take many notes, but check out these links. Eyes on the Earth 3D and Eyes on the Solar System
Had to take a break, why not visit the PlayStation Lounge? Cocktails, carrots, some strange food in chafing dishes. Also lots of games and 3D TVs.
Spent the evening with my family. Fun!
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SXSW: Day One
After having a relatively relaxed morning at our hotel, we went to the convention center and checked out a few of the corporate lounges. AOL- tootsie rolls, mini M & Ms and caramels. Microsoft- ASUS tablet (no they were not giving them away- the things cost over $1000). Many Windows 7 phones. And I have to say, it is a great interface. Fast and responsive, looks great. I wonder if only the prototypes are like this, this has not always been my experience with Windows.
Next we walked over to the popup Apple store in downtown Austin to see the new ipads. The store was not open yet, but there was a mighty long line of eager early adopters waiting for their chance to plunk down their cash.
Gowalla had a cool airstream trailer parked a couple of blocks from the convention center. They were giving away tees, tacos and passports. Thank you Gowalla, I skipped lunch after eating 2 of your delicious tacos (though I am a foursquare loyalist).
My first panel was Programming and Minimalism with Jon Dahl of Zencoder. He drew parallels between coding and other forms, music and engineering as well as writing, quoting Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”. Good programming is clear direct writing- yes I agree with that. “Programming is defining complex processes in a precise way. Programming isn’t necessarily about computers, its just where our programs live nowâ€. He spoke about the importance of style, and traced cycles that moved between simplicity and complexity in rock music. He ended with a set of principles for writing code that was based on principles defined in the Orwell essay. Great start to my SXSW panel experience.
Next I ran to one of the Hilton’s where many of the education panels are running. First I went to Child’s Play: Game Design as an Educational Gateway. The panelists made presentations about their work building curriculum that incorporate game design for children as part of STEM (science, technology engineering and math) education. After a plea for creating games for the sake of games “We need to be creating all kinds of games and not apologizing for them†Colleen Macklin outlined the work she has done with Activate, a web based project that teaches children game design as well as developing awareness of green practices. The project was deployed at a workshop at the Dandelion Middle School in Beijing. Macklin outlined the learning goals of the project, stressing the importance of teaching the students systems literacy and the iterative design process.
Michael Angst gave an overview of E-Line Media’s Gamestar Mechanic, an on-line game that lets children “level up from player to designerâ€. He described Gamestar Mechanic as a game-based digital learning platform that teaches the importance of systems learning, as well as critical thinking and problem solving.
This panel was interesting, but I also wanted to go to The Potential of Augmented Reality for Education which was luckily in the next room.Tish Shute of the blog Ugotrade described Augmented Reality as “mobile, local and personal. It puts people at the center of their data.†She also discussed the difficulty of making invisible data visible.
Brendan Scully of metaio outlined some of the open source tools available to work with AR before he gave an overview of the work his company has done. Scully described AR as “glue for digital objectsâ€, an apt description. He described the importance of developing augmented literacy, and suggested that 3D modeling should be taught to children in elementary schools. Karen Hamilton of George Brown College discussed the difficulties of integrating technologies into the classroom, particularly getting faculty to buy in. She also talked about ways to harness the technology students bring to the classroom in a time of budgetary constraints, using QR codes or mobile apps such as Foursquare.
I finished the day with Interactive Comics: Techniques to Enhance Math Education with John Baird. This was an entertaining and informative overview of comics in education as well as many particulars about how he uses comics to teach Math with his project Create a Comic Project.
Baird referenced works such as Maus that have been integrated into history curricula. He described his approach in the Create a Comic Project, where he gives students templates of drawings and panels, and the students write the dialog. His project is an extension of the math writing movement, where students participate in such projects as writing math journals that are reviewed by their teacher. Baird also reviewed what comic material is available currently about math, such as Logicomix and the Essential Math Series of the AIMS Educational Foundation. He outlined approaches for using comics as both passive and interactive learning tools.
Parties! Heard Pains of Being Pure at Heart at the Sapient Nitro party. We danced- we ate party food! Then we had Korean bbq tacos from a food truck. Party at Mohawk, also great. And it was my birthday!