It came and went: it was my first SXSW experience and it was grandiose. I’ve got so many notes saved on my Evernote that it’s going to take me a while to go through them. I’ll have to do it soon, as I will be choosing 5 of the many talks I attended to present them “ignite-style” to some of my coworkers in the next following days.
That shoud be fun.
I may have not qualified to sing “Cowboys From Hell” at this year’s Cogaoke, but nevertheless, I’ll be attending this year’s South by Southwes (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX (US).
SXSW is film, it’s interactive computing innovation/extravaganza, it’s loads of live music all across the city –it’s perhaps the hottest, most happening place to be from the 12th to the 21st of March. I’m really glad that me and many, *many* other workmates are being sent by Pearson Education to learn, discover and get inspired by this experience.
We are only going for the interactive part of the event, which in itself it’s more than worth the trip to Austin. I would love to stay longer –especially for the music. Then again, SXSW Interactive won’t be lacking tunes: there’s always “open karaoke” for some of us to go see sing!
I’ll be using the power of the my little blue bird to document most of the various events and sessions I will be attending, along with a few “recaps” right here on this site.
(It’s only appropriate to use Twitter at SXSW, after all, it was there where Twitter had it’s “tipping point“)
If you’re not familiar with what SXSW is, please visit the SXSW official web site or the always reliable Wikipedia entry (citation needed).
This is one of those *things* I promised myself I would have to live at some point in my life (like Coachella, China, or Skydiving), so I’m rather excited about it!
Now, if only I liked BBQ…
Today, instead of going out for lunch, I decided to go for round #2 of my latest experiment out of Anjum’s New Indian cookbook: Black-Eyed Pea Curry:
Here’s a photo of the book + the actual dish, moments after serving:
Along with me rather spicy vegetarian meal, I decided to pick an article to read out of the latest Interactions magazine. I found one on “user-research-driven mobile user interface innovation” and found it rather interesting.
(No surprise there –it’s Interactions…)
I wrote a little something about the article over at TaskFlo.ws. –right after I was done savouring the product of my newly-found passion: Indian cuisine.
Namasté.
What a great gathering of amazing people, ideas (and of course, food). Interaction 10 was up to the best standards I may have had of a conference –and more. After all, it was created by and for interaction designers, right?
I had the opportunity to visit a really lovely town, learn loads and meet excellent people –some new fellow interaction designers, others for the first time (even though I had been communicating with them for some time via Twitter). I also had the opportunity to go to a few parties held around the conference, including an impromptu karaoke session at a local Savannah bar.
The experience of an event like this is indeed comparable to that of a music festival. There are various bands speakers going on at the same time and you sometimes wish you could go see all of them, but you are forced to choose. Gladly, the Interaction Design Association records video of every session of the conference, so not only I get to see what I missed (and enjoy again what I witnessed), but so can you. I’ll be sure to post links when those videos become available.
As I mentioned before, it all started with the workshops. The ones I took were all hands-on and very productive. A crash course on the essentials of brainstorming and wireframing. Then, there was the great number of talks.
I’ve *just* come back from running with 2 UX mates this morning, so I haven’t got time to do a decently-sized brief of what occurred yesterday during the first day of Interaction 10. Needless to say, it was enlightening, intense and exciting.
I’m sure I’ll share some more thoughts later. For now, leave you with this video I caught of myself playing with Microsoft’s Surface last night. It was running a game in which a song plays and players have to flip over album covers whilst the music is playing. Once you find the album cover of the song playing, you need to bring the cover to where you are to win points:
What i didn’t know is that the game (actually, the people) can get quite vicious whilst playing, so injuries can do happen:
At this point, I may just write a compelling, redUX version of what I took from the talks –the conference ends tomorrow. It has been everything I expected and more. I’d say the conference paid for itself thanks to mini-quiches and almond-chocolate ice cream baskets, but the knowledge being shared here is priceless.
If you are staying at the Planters Inn (in Savannah), you know you’ve got to go to the lobby of the hotel, the mezzanine, or even sit down in the hallway of your floor to get any wifi signal for your computer or phone (like I had to at 1 a.m. on Wednesday when I arrived here)
Sadly, I’m not the only one…
So you probably know where I am right now.
In other news…
The first day of Interaction 10 (for me –and many others) was a really productive/active one. It was a day full of workshops –and these were really hands on. Brilliant. Continue reading
As of nearly midnight last night, I’ve arrived in Savannah, GA for Interaction 10 (No sign of John Cusack or Kevin Spacey yet).
I’m currently staying at the Planters Inn. So far, a rather average hotel (except they’ve managed to give me the *one* room where the free WiFi does NOT work –so I’m writing this from the lobby). Unfortunately, I haven’t got time to complain (nor I’m willing to pay nearly double the rates I am now for a different hotel).
In any case, today should be really interesting. It’s going to be a day of workshops: one in the morning and another one in the afternoon.
More from southern lands soon –now, off to try and find if there’s any source of Lavazza in Savannah.
In the past month or so, I have taken industrial amounts of photos. This is due to my recent trips to Portugal (right before the new year) and Bogotá (Colombia) immediately after.
I’ve had the chance to acquire a great DSLr for the first time, and this is the first set that sees the light of day from all that Trans-Atlantic/Trans-American traveling: Lisbon.
The idea behind the Portugal trip came after about an hour-long gTalk conversation with my good friend (and photographer extraordinaire) Willie Morris. We studied together in Torino (Italy) back in 2005 and we’ve been mates ever since. We thought about it, decided, looked for tickets and planned our arrival –everything in more or less that time frame.
The trip was indeed a refreshing experience for me. I recently completed my much anticipated M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Indiana University and I was ready for a break from it all… and what better way than to relive my days of being a student backpacking around Europe with someone who knows exactly how that feels like?
Willie did, in fact, keep a very comprehensive account of our entire trip and shared it all on his web site (I’m talking plenty of stories, photos and HD video about it all). You can head over to his blog and relieve it all again.
As I previously mentioned, Willie is rather knowledgeable in the world of (serious) photography. This is why I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to learn how to take decent photos with a proper DSLr camera from someone who already knows how to and does it very well. After all, having the chance to learn from someone directly is something I’ll always favour (over reading books or even watching instructional videos).
What you see here is the shortlist of the hundreds of photos I took in Lisbon alone. You can enjoy it by going through the embedded slide show –but I would recommend you experience it in full, directly via Flickr.
Soon, you will see the rest of the sets displayed here. I will try to speed up the rigorous selection process every photo has to through so they can be Flickrd up to the “series of tubes” before I depart to southern North American lands for Interaction 10.
I hope you enjoy taking a look at these photos (as well as the ones to come). I´ve certainly enjoyed capturing every single moment.
…the iPad.
Taken from the Baltimore Sun: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/technology/2010/01/apple_ipad_pros_cons.html
A couple of days back I wrote a little something about it over at TaskFlo.ws
It’s just my take –just like any other blog of anyone concerned and/or passionate about Apple’s latest and greatest.
As part of my defence presentation for my Master’s thesis project, I was required to make a short demo on video showing how this new proposed prototyping technique called “Paper in Screen” works during a usability test.
This video is made to fit within an already-tight 30 minutes long presentation (taking place this coming Thursday, 3 December, 2009). So, if the voice-over appears to be a little “rushed”, it’s because the video that was originally meant to be only 30 seconds long, could only be made in 2:01 min. (for it to at least make *some* sense).
This brings my thesis project practically to an end –pending a few extra revisions of the final document and a couple of much needed rehearsals of the presentation itself. Hopefully it will all come to a nice, smooth end soon.
Thank you for watching.
