@Media 2007 – San Francisco

I was really looking forward to this @media. Firstly, because I was in the United States and secondly after working on my own for the last few months, I wanted some fellow web company. It didn’t disappoint; I came away feeling really empowered and inspired! I wish I could bottle up that feeling and when I have a bad day, take that bottle and help myself to a dose. So here’s my thoughts and experiences from the last few days. Hopefully for those of you who couldn’t make it, there are loads of things to get you thinking and links off to places.

Day one

I made my way over to the Westin Hotel on Third at 8:30am to get singed in and hopefully get a cuppa down my neck before the show began.

I sat myself down on the back row of the audience (they had tables this year, great idea! Looked like a lecture room) and was delighted to see that the whole row was full of ladies! Yes it seemed to me that there were more females present here, than at the London counterpart.

Jesse James Garrett took the stage to deliver – “Beyond Ajax“. As better described by Jeremy Keith, there was a slight attire problem and which was quickly resolved and then Jesse soldiered to give an inspiring presentation. I was impressed, as I would have been totally thrown off course by that mishap! Well handled. The most interesting aspect for me was Jesse explaining the research done on our cognitive processes when we interact with technology. I can’t remember the source of this information, however it was very interesting. I hope Jesse posts his slides up somewhere or talks about this online soon.

Molly chose a subject that I was surprised to see on the bill, web browsers. “The Broken World: Solving the Browser Problem Once and For All” I guess that says it all really… that’s why Molly probably chose this subject area. I’ll admit, I am as ignorant as the next web designer/developer in the sense that I have moaned and screamed about them not supporting “x” or behaving like “y”. Yet I hadn’t seriously thought I should try and dig a little deeper into how the browser works. Molly showed a good overview of browsers and their basic under the hood components. She also illustrated the problems faced by browser teams when it comes to deciding on how to support new features and the impact it can have to how the browser currently behaves. I took a lot away to think about on this one.

Dan Cederholm (I’ve always loved the simple bits site, cute design!) presented “Interface Design Juggling“. For me his most interesting points were on typography. He suggested some simple yet effective typography considerations that can add a touch of class and elegance to any web design. I was pleased to hear that Richard Rutter is working on a “typography for the webâ€? site where you can learn some typography theory and hands on techniques.

Cameron Adams aka The man in Blue, exhibited his skills in flexible layouts in a presentation called “Dynamic interfacesâ€?. It was interesting to see how Cameron talked about offering the user various levels of customisation (for example: myspace offers extensive customisation features and Flickr offers limited changes through predefined templates) and how this offering needs to tie in with the users goals. How much customisation does the user really need? Will they benefit from being able to change the layout? These are the questions you want to ask yourself when offering dynamic layouts.

Richard Ishida was here to tell us about “Designing for international users: practical tips“. Apart from wow’ing the crowd with his linguistic talents of Spanish and Russian to name but a few, he also filed us in on the potential problems we could run into when building a site that could be translated or modified for use in other countries. His tips and tricks ranged from syntax issues to date format problems. What does this date translate to in your country?

01/02/07

Well to me it means 1 Feb 2007, but in the US it means 2 Jan 2007. Now go and investigate what that means to a country in the east… See what issues you could run into here? For more information on this subject take a look at Richards page on the W3C.

Jeremy Keith presented a fab show as I expected on “Bulletproof Ajax“. Jeremy’s main messages here were, build for Ajax from the start and implement it at the end, this aids degradability and optimum access for all users. Keep processing on the server, don’t be tempted to let the browser handle it. It might seem ok to do so, but it’s not the browser’s role. Keep in mind the layers of separation we have all been striving for.

• Structure
• Presentation
• Behaviour

For pages full of Jeremy’s practical tips, buy his book, Bulletproof Ajax.

The end of day one’s sessions is near and Jeffery Veen comes on stage with his energetic charisma to really get us going, “Designing the next generation of web apps“. He presented a wide range of issues, from why design is hard (”fear” of being left behind and the “must haves” of web) to… developing experiences that are based on patterns that are inherent in what we already do that empowers users to accomplish their goals (Pretty much quoted directly from his slides!). Jeffery also talked about patterns in data and how we can think about illustrating them more intuitively. I was privileged to see this part of the show last year in London. It was good to see it in action again.

We all went off the Minna gallery for the @media party. It was a chance to speak to people and wind down.

I then made the mistake of eating at The Stinking Rose… I am sure everyone the next day was loving me!

Day two

Joe Clark kicked off day two with “When accessibility is not your problem“. Joe pointed out some interesting areas on when we shouldn’t have to be worrying about accessibility issues, such as font sizes and alternate style sheets. Can’t this be dealt with by the browser/user agent? I hope Joe posts his slides somewhere soon. I want to flick through this presentation again.

Cameron Moll presented “Designing for communication“. Apart from how nicely designed his actual presentation slides were, he explained how to effectively design and communicate by considering various factors such as “…eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak” (Hans Hoffman), designing for content and encouraging participation. I really wish I could sum up more of what Cameron said, but you really had to be there to witness his speech that go along with the slides. Podcast anyone? Although the slides are worth a look as he suggests some extra reading.

Dan Webb presented “The mysteries of Javascript-Fu“. Dan dished out some tips and tricks for the pro javascripter and also discussed libraries and toolkits that are readily available on the web. Most of it went over my head, so I can’t comment too much on this one. Pop over to his site for more resources.

Andy Clarke presented “Royale with Cheese“. His angle this year was looking at worldwide web design and posed questions such as “are we heading towards a globalised web style“? He backed this up by showing us sites that are you can find locally tailored for other countries. Such as Yahoo Japan, Yahoo Korea and Honda Japan. Are we suffering from globalisation and losing cultural styles due to designers looking to western web design to aspire to or to take their inspiration from? What about looking at their culture and beliefs for motivation? Where do you look for new ideas? Is there a risk that western ideas are becoming too dominant and as a result constraining web creativity? Andy highlighted some deep thinking in this area and also presented some excellent research that he has composed. I would love Andy to do something more with this research and get more people involved in this topic. Will you take you research anywhere Andy?

Tantek Çelik talked about “Micorformats, the building blocks, and you“. What can I say, this was a great overview of the subject with some neat examples of how you can be using microformats in your projects today. Tantek also introduced POSH, which isn’t a new fangled technology. It’s an acronym that’s easy to remember and maybe the name will get it some well deserved attention. We all know there are still many sites working in a real unposhly manner. For the full range of microformats currently available and in development visit microformats.org or buy the book!

@media was wrapped up by a hot topics panel where we were asked to scribble down our questions and they would pick some to answer.

Some interesting questions were raised and the main one that stuck in my head was “who should we be wary of now Microsoft are getting their act together with IE“. (Not sure how it was phrased exactly, but you get my meaning, who’s the bad kid(s) on the block?) One of the answers was the CMS vendors. Yeah, the ones who charge the earth and spit out messy code, ones that are not promoting semantic coding standards and separation of content/presentation and behavior. It seems the more expensive the CMS the worse it is. The advice from the panel was to get blogging about this. Let’s hope the people making the decisions will do some research before purchase and just maybe they will read your review about why it’s not a good system or what problems it has. What would be super is if this also pushed the CMS vendors to fix these issues! Now that would be the cherry on top.

Well, I could go on and on, but I’ll wrap up this long report by saying thanks to all the lovely people I met and chatted with. For me, meeting people is a huge part of the experience. Please do get in touch if you want to chat or scream about anything webby, I am always on MSN for a chinwag.

So here’s my mini blog roll for those of you I met last week:

• Alissa Nedossekina
• Shawn Henry
• Adrienne Rice Adams
• Angela Luong
• Anjanette Bunce
• Alix Vale
• Craig cook
• Jina Bolton
• Nate Koechley

Over and out.