Cloud Four Blog

Lyza and I are giving a mobile web workshop next week at WebVisions NYC. We’re preparing an outstanding workshop for web designers and developers who want to learn how to build for mobile devices. We’re very excited about the workshop. It’s going to rock, but we need your help!

But we’ve got a problem. We came up with a fun theme (Zombie Apocalypse!) to make the workshop interesting, but we’ve heard people were reluctant to register for the workshop because they didn’t get it.

Since we heard about the registration problem, we’ve lept into action:

• We’ve rewritten the workshop description so it is clearer what people will learn at the workshop.
• We’ve posted a fun preview of the talk. The preview made me giggle multiple times when I read what Lyza had wrote.
• We’re here asking for your help.

We need your help getting the last minute word out. If you can take a moment to share the event, we would appreciate it. Particularly if you know people in New York who would benefit, we would be grateful if you pass the word onto them directly.

And of course we have discounts to share

WebVisions has provided us with a way to save 40% on conference passes. There are two options:

1. Save 40% off a conference pass, get a FREE pass to Thomas Phinney’s “Web Typography Best Practices” workshop ($250 value) and a 60-day unlimited WebINK account (register at http://wvnyc-webink.eventbrite.com/), OR
2. Save 40% on conference passes to WebVisions NYC and receive a FREE Workshop pass ($250 value) to Kevin Hoyt’s “Web Standards Playground” (register at http://wvnyc-adobe.eventbrite.com/).

I honestly had to read that a few times to make sure I understood the deal correctly. Seriously, 40% off and you get a free workshop? My guess is that Adobe and WebINK are helping sponsor the discounts which is pretty cool way to get into a workshop and save money.

WebVisions is a fantastic event

WebVisions is new to New York, but it has been going on in Portland for several years now. It always has fantastic speakers and the line up in New York is no different. Please help us make the event a success.

Thanks in advance for spreading the word. We greatly appreciate it and promise we’ll be less cutesy and more descriptive in our workshop abstracts from now on.

Hi, everybody! Last night I gave a presentation to the Portland, Ore., Drupal Users Group (PDXDUG) about the vast topic of the mobile Web on Drupal. There’s a whole lot crammed into this 94-slide deck (and I delivered it in 45 minutes—whew!), and some of it will be old hat to mobile Web folks.

General contents:

• Overview of current leading Mobile Web development philosophies
• The chaotic reality
• A couple of core tenets I try to stick to
• Drupal for mobile: the good and the bad
• Some early 3rd-party Drupal mobile modules
• Code: Framing out our own hypothetical mobile Web module to detect devices, theme-switch, etc.
• Where to from here/further reading

One conference I’ve been looking forward to all year is the Design4Mobile conference coming up September 20-24th in Chicago. I was excited before I saw the speaker list. Now, the conference can’t come soon enough!

(This was supposed to be a short post, but I got excited about all the cool speakers and wrote too much. So skip to the bottom to find out how to get a limited number of 15% discount codes for registration.)

I’ve attended a lot of conferences over the last few years. The conferences I’ve attended either have a broader focus and if I’m lucky, they have a mobile track. Some simply have have a session or two on mobile.

Other conferences that are focused on mobile tend to be of two different types. They are either focused on one platform exclusively (e.g., Apple’s WWDC) or are older conferences focused on telecoms (e.g., CTIA).

I’ve enjoyed the majority of the conferences I’ve attended so I can’t complain much about the format. But what has me excited about Design4Mobile is that it is the only conference I know of that is focus on mobile design and user experience. Four days of in depth conversations on these topics.

The conference is organized by Barbara Ballard and Little Springs Design who have been working on mobile design long before the iPhone. They are experts who I follow closely.

That alone would be enough, but come on, the speaker list is just insane. Here are just a few highlights:

• Josh Clark, Global Moxie and author of Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps — I saw Josh speak at SXSW long before I met him on Twitter or knew of his book. His session was the best one I saw. Phenomenal.
• Suzanne Ginsburg, Ginsburg Design and author of Designing the iPhone User Experience: A User-Centered Approach to Sketching and Prototyping iPhone Apps — I saw Suzanne speak earlier this year in Seattle before her book was published. She interviewed a lot of designers and developers in the process of developing her book so it’s great to hear the stories of how different people tackle problems.
• Scott Jenson, Mobile UX Designer at Google — Scott was on a panel with Barbara Ballard at SXSW. He has a practical approach to mobile, has a quick wit, and was talking about how phone can be used without taking them out of your pocket which I found fascinating.
• Corey Pressman, Exprima Media — It’s strange to look forward to seeing someone speak who works down the hall from you, but Corey spoke last week at Mobile Portland and I learned two things. 1. I learned just enough about his thoughts on mobile in education and the future of textbook publishing to want to know more. 2. That he is an excellent presenter and very funny.
• Katrin Verclas, MobileActive — I admire Katrin and her work at MobileActive so much. It is this sort of work that inspires me for what mobile technology can mean for society.
• Luke Wroblewski, Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital — I saw Luke speak at Web Visions a few years ago before he got bitten by the mobile bug. His talk was full of both data and insights. Can’t wait to hear more of his thoughts on mobile and try to figure out what his is up to next (ssshhh… It’s a secret!)

And there are many more people I can’t wait to see. I’ve meant to write this for quite some time to say simply, if you are interested in mobile—particularly mobile design—this is the conference you should attend.

I have a limited number of 15% off registration codes for the conference. If you are interested in a code, please leave a comment or fill out the contact form and I’ll send it to you.

I hope to see you in Chicago!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend and speak at SXSW’s Interactive Festival for the first time. After hearing about SXSW for some many years, it was interesting to see what the conference was all about.

I’m not sure I’ll attend SXSW again.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the conference in many ways. I got to see friends that I haven’t seen in months. I met people that I’ve always wanted to meet. I had fun speaking with people about the iPad, and it was great to experience Mobile Monday in another city.

Austin is an amazing city. I had a blast in the city, and I feel like I saw and experienced more of the city than I typically do at conferences.

Unfortunately with a few notable exceptions, the conference itself was not terribly good.

I’m not sure why this is. I have read others talking about how this conference was worse than previous ones. It saddens me to think that when I finally manage to attend the reknowned SXSW, that it has jumped the shark. But it appears that may be case.

One of the main problems in my opinion is the dominance of panels at the conference. I find panels to be of lower quality overall than presentations by a solo presenter.

I’m not sure why SXSW has so many panels, but I have a few generous and not so generous theories.

The generous theory is that SXSW values the input of the community. It starts with allowing anyone to vote for session, continues with selection of panels, and is demonstrated by their core conversation sessions designed to foster discussion instead of presentations.

The less generous theory is that people propose panels solely to get free passes for themselves and their friends.

I was told essentially that on my return trip to the airport. I took a shuttle and bumped into a friend. He asked what I thought of the conference, and I lamented the fact that the sessions had been so poor.

Two of the other passengers in the shuttle told me that my mistake was that I didn’t get a pass for the conference. They didn’t know that I was a speaker at the conference so they proceeded to tell me how I needed to get on a panel so that I could get a free pass.

Then they laughed about how once you have a pass and are on a panel, you don’t have to prepare anything. You just roll into your panel, answer questions, and then use your pass to network and party.

I was extremely offended. I couldn’t believe that they could have such disrespect for people’s time and money.

Even though I only had four minutes to present during my panel, I started researching as soon as I knew I was going to be on the panel.

I had several pages of notes in addition to my slides. I decided to hack the format to make the panel more interesting by treating my presentation like an Ignite talk which meant I had to practice extensively to get the timing right. I also set up a script to tweet background information during my presentation.

And I wasn’t the only one. Everyone on our panel took it seriously. We prepared ahead of time. The audience response to our session was great.

I know a lot of people don’t attend conferences for the sessions. My friend Aaron Hockley’s recap of SXSW is talks about how the value of conferences is not the sessions, but in the connections that are made.

I agree with Aaron that tremendous value comes from the connections, but that’s no excuse for treating the people who attend your session poorly and wasting their time.

The contrast between the attitude of the fellow passengers on my shuttle and the work that Jay Rosen and his fellow panelists put into their SXSW session couldn’t be starker. In fact, it seems completely inappropriate that those who treat SXSW panels so disrespectfully should be able to share the metaphorical stage with Rosen and others who take the conference seriously.

The attitude that some have towards SXSW reflects poorly on those of us who take our roles as speakers and educators in the technology community seriously.

I don’t know if this is a pervasive attitude of speakers at SXSW, but I can say that the quality of content way not what I expected. I expected to be inspired as Jeremy Keith was. That’s what I want from any conference.

Perhaps I just picked sessions poorly, but instead of being inspired, my final and lasting impression was of a conference that didn’t deliver.

Unbeknownst to me until now, Spring is conference season. For the next two and half months, I’m attending a conference every two weeks. I’m already looking forward to June when the conference gauntlet ends.

One of the conferences I’m looking forward to the most is the Voices that Matter: iPhone Developers conference on April 24-25 in Seattle.

Why am I looking forward to it? A few reasons:

• There are some great speakers like Erica Sadun (who I had the pleasure of meeting at Foo Camp and is an absolutely brilliant iPhone developer), Aaron Hillegass, August Trometer, Suzanne Ginsburg, Erik Buck, Michael Daley, Joe Conway, Jonathan Rentzsch, Kevin Avila, and the list goes on.
• The schedule looks very focused and intensive. It is focused on getting people up to speed on building apps.
• It is only three hours away in Seattle so I get to see my Seattle friends and attend the conference.
• It is the only conference on my schedule that I’m NOT speaking at. I’ll actually get to relax and enjoy this one!

If you’re interested in attending the conference, I recommend signing up soon. The early bird rates end on March 12th and the conference organizers gave us a discount code that they said I could share with Mobile Portland and readers of our blog. The priority code PHBLOGS saves you $100 off the registration.

If you sign up before the early bird rate ends and use the discount code, the conference only costs $395 which is a great price for a two day conference. If you end up attending, please say hello.

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In the interest of full disclosure, the conference organizers have given me a complimentary pass. As a general rule, when people offer discounts or good deals to Portland’s mobile community, I like to pass it on. I’ve done so in the past for other conferences and webinars that seem relevant.

While the complimentary pass is unrelated to passing on this information to you (I would would have shared it regardless), I thought it was important to disclose.