Thu 04-Mar-2010
Tuesday night I attended Ignite Wellington. This is the first time Wellington has had an Ignite event. Ignite is a world-wide event, and this week it has been a global event, with presentations in 35 cities.
It's a tough presentation process; speakers have 5 minutes to talk on a subject, with 20 slides, each auto-advancing after 15 seconds.There was a couple of technical issues last night, making it harder for the speakers concerned to time their speeches with the slides. The better presentations didn't rely so much on their slides, and didn't use highly detailed slides.
Some presenters seemed only interested in self-promotion; some wanted to inform; and some wanted to simply entertain. Most inspired.
A few things I learnt from the evening:
- Vikings probably never lived in Dannevirke
- World-wide there are twice as many mobile phones as credit cards
- Teach gradually and playfully
- Show users ways to engage with your site with a smile
- Venice Biennale is awesome
- Insights come later
- Travel light and trust the serendipity
- Wellington's shared car are hidden
- We're going to be screwed over to preserve the failing business model of large corporations
- Use your mind to drive yourself past your boundaries
- Hire for attitude; skills can be taught later
- Get into the zone to win
- The creative destruction process describes what is happening in the music industry.
- Make it fun to connect people to their local environment
- Ideas take up brain real-estate. Dumping them into a book means they're not lost.
- Mind -> book -> list -> story => essence of an idea => ideas that really work for many, not just you
- Positive thinking is a brain hack. Picturing a positive outcome makes the task easier
- Kiwis can successfully help in emergencies from half a world away
- Failure is the best option
- Sometimes following the rules is wrong
- Prepare to fail; then learn and connect
- When you fail is when the adventure begins
The Ignite videos aren't available as I write this, but I look forwarding to seeing them soon.
I think I might try presenting next time. I'll need to find a suitable subject that can be entertaining. Thought-provoking subjects need more than 5 minutes.
Wed 24-Feb-2010
Webstock has 3 places you can learn, in addition to the celebration that is The Onyas.
- Workshops - Monday - Wednesday
- Presentations - the 2-day conference
- Networking
I didn't go to any workshops this year. In hindsight there were a few I could have benefited from, though as a business analyst I don't see myself as the typical Webstock attendee.
The 2-day conference has been covered in earlier posts, day 1 and day 2. Some of the presentations allowed time for questions form the audience; this added to their value.
Networking is an optional extra of Webstock. The ability to meet people with a like mind. There were a few unofficial fringe events to help this, the games and the tweetups, in addition to the breaks and the official end-of-day events.
Thursday had cocktails in the West Wing of the town hall. Friday had cocktails in the Renouf Foyer prior to The ONYAs. Both were places I got to meet people.
When it was discovered there was no official Webstock Trading card game this year, a couple of groups sprung into action to create games.
- The Webstock Game – Organised by those responsible for The Case of the Midnight Note.
- Webstock Bingo – Credit has to go to @wrumsby and @johubris for the work they put into this at the last minute.
These games encouraged participants to talk to other attendees; including those not playing. I had a reasonable go at Webstock Bingo, but felt there was too much in The Webstock Game to be successful in.
The Case of the Midnight Note was a 3-week long noir mystery culminating with a fund-raising tweetup evening on Jan 28. I went along to the Midnight Note tweetup; I wanted to see how it ended. Dame lied, guns applied, Betty died, Sammy cried, drinks arrived, what a ride!
The tweetup on Wednesday 17 started the networking for me. The games started that evening too. I saw some people I hadn't seen for a year, or since the Open Govt Data barcamp.
Thursday, after cocktails in the West Wing was another tweetup. Originally organised for Southern Cross it moved to Mighty Mighty when Kevin Rose, not knowing about the plans, stated his intention to go there. In between cocktails and Mighty Mighty, I had dinner with 6 others, including a couple of presenters.
I handed out lots of business cards and Moo cards.
Photos
I took a few photos; nothing exceptional, but they can be found here on my Flickr page.
Other, better, photos can be found on Flickr tagged "Webstock".
Closing
In summary I'd like to thank the sponsors for supporting Webstock; my boss, for letting me go; the presenters, for coming to this part of the global village and sharing their experience, and Mike and Tash, for organising such a great event. One of the speakers (I can't remember who) said that Webstock is a highly regarded worldwide for web conferences. I'm glad it's local and I hope to be back next year.
Day 2 of Webstock - Friday 19 Feb. I saw the following presentations:
- The Lean Startup
- Iterative Design Strategies
- Double-Click to Edit
- When Your Idea Doesn't Suck
- Designing for Participation
- 10 Tips For New Web Entrepreneurs
- Elements of a Networked Urbanism
- How the Web Works
- Dense and Thick
I'm sorry for the length of this post. I wrote it to reinforce what I learnt at Webstock. I hope you'll read it anyway.
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries (@ericries) said there's three things you want to do in a startup:
- Change the world.
- Build an organization of lasting value.
- Make customers lives better.
Most startups fail, but it doesn't have to be that way. With better practices, they can succeed.
A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under condition of extreme uncertainty. It is this extreme uncertainty that means general management techniques are not the techniques you need for entrepreneurial management
Successful startups strip away the bad ideas, letting the good ideas flourish. These good ideas are not necessarily the ideas considered when starting out. Rapid iterations are necessary to do this.
Failure in startups can be caused by "shadow beliefs", which are never stated:
- We know what the customers want. Value is in the eye of the customer, but startups don't know the customer.
- We can predict the future. Waterfall software development works when the problem and the solution are both known. Agile works when the problem is known and the solution is unknown. Startups deal with the situation where the problem is unknown and therefore the solution is unknown.
- Advancing the plan is progress. The biggest waste of startups is building something that customers don't want. It doesn't matter if it's on schedule if no-one wants it.
The short iteration time is essential for a successful startup, but the time to optimise this the complete feedback loop, (Learn → Build → Measure → Learn) not just one part. Continuous deployment works by:
- Deploy fast.
- Identify bad changes.
- Revert bad changes (after human review).
- Work in small batches, no items more than 3 days work.
Iterative Design Strategies – Embracing Evolution
Daniel Burka (@Dburka) says to take chances and release your product. Don't try to predict everything your product will do. See the 'desire paths' of users and build with the expectation of change. Subtraction is iteration too. Don't be afraid to remove a feature useful by only a few users
Listen to your users, both explicit and implicit feedback.
Recommended reading: How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built
Double Click to Edit - Shift+Cmd+R: Hard Refresh Your Design
When? If not now?
Amy Hoy (@amyhoy) told us that no-one is going to invite us to be great. We have to build your own greatness. Creating an iphone to-do app, or an RSS reader is not going to be great, they all have a sameness. Understand how someone uses their tools and what their needs are, as opposed to just copying others.
Affecting (and improving) the quality of someone's day is the highest of arts.
When Your Idea Doesn't Suck: How to stop working for clients and launch a startup
Mike Davidson (@mikeindustries) asked that his presentation not be blogged.
Designing for Participation
Bek Hodgson (@bekini) said "curate by the community". Changing from taxonomy to folksonomy allows the community to curate the way they understand, making it useful for everyone.
Accept that user generated content may not suit the palette of your site.
Consider how your site will look like with a little or a lot of content, such as a user's profile page.
10 Tips For New Web Entrepreneurs
Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) detailed 10 useful points.
- Go build it
- Build and release
- Hire your boss
- Raising money
- Go cheap
- Connect with your community
- Hack the press - ways to get free PR
- Advisors
- Leverage your user base to spread the word
- Analyse your traffic
Elements of a Networked Urbanism
Adam Greenfield (@agpublic) reminded us we have no privacy is public, to assume any camera we walk past in public is on.
Computing devices are becoming more and more ubiquitous, we need to consider the social and ethical consequences. We are all surrounded with a network of things that know what is going on in their environment, and our actions are being shared, with someone.
Migration from small communities to a city, or from one city to another used to provide anonymity; but not any more.
How the Web Works
Jeff Veen (@veen) talked about the historical progress, from ice to refrigerators. Some industries transition, some don't, so get it out there.
Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration. As you release iterations you can get consensus from users as to what you should be providing.
Dense and Thick
Mark Pesce (@mpesce) reminded us, that like at primary school, sharing something makes it more valuable. He talked about how the web has revolutionised the world, and the next revolution could be anywhere. The future is in our hands, and the world is clamouring to get into cyberspace.
His words are available here.
These last three presenters covered a lot of material, too much for me to make good notes, which is why these are so sparse. I look forward to the videos of the presentations being released.
More coming soon. What was your experience of the Friday speakers? Is there someone else I should have seen?
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