Webstock words — Code for Freedom

Be more human

18 February 2010

Webstock’s gold sponsor SilverStripe have again put an impressive amount of thought and hard work into their presence at Webstock. It includes a fantastic booth, eyecatching material in the Webstock bag, and a website created specially to complement both of these. We caught up with SilverStripe CEO Brian Calhoun and talked about their imaginative contribution to Webstock this year.

1. Your booth and satchel content asks the question, “How do humans win?” Tell us more about that.

On the back of our business cards is our mantra: “Be more human” which we’ve had for a couple years now. It’s a reminder to us that we’re solving human communication problems first and foremost. For Webstock we wanted to do something interesting to us that tied in with our mantra. We think it’s a fun question: “How do humans win?” It can be interpreted lots of different ways and when we ran a trial run at our company, we had a huge variety of responses. So we thought it would be fun to have Webstock attendees think about what humans winning means to them. This is a longer-term effort by our company — Webstock is just the beginning. The ideas & responses will live on at bemorehuman.org

2. Every Webstock bag contains two postage-paid postcards from SilverStripe which feature stunning photographs. Why did you choose the images and where did you get them from?

We asked SilverStripe employees to submit pictures of humans winning. The only criteria was that it had to be a picture that the employee took. We then sifted through the responses and picked the ones we thought were great answers to the question “How do humans win?” We thought it would be fun to turn them into postcards and put postage on them so Webstock attendees could just write a note to someone, address it, then drop it in the post.

3. Why the grass?

The goats have to eat something! If they don’t eat grass, they’ll eat anything else they can find. In the end, the people at the venue didn’t much like the idea of goats, so now all we have is the grass.

4. This morning you launched a website, bemorehuman.org. What’s that about and how does it relate to the physical wall in your booth?

We wanted people who aren’t at Webstock to be able to participate in the “How do humans win?” experiment. People who visit the site can upload a photo, they can add the “bemorehuman” tag to a Flickr image, they can Tweet with the #bemorehuman tag, or they can type in how they think humans win. SilverStripe staff in the booth will monitor the site throughout Webstock and print out compelling answers / tweets / pictures and place them on the wall in the booth. The website also has a snapshot of the wall taken every ten minutes so people on the site can see how the wall evolves over the course of Webstock. The site will live on beyond Webstock because humans winning is an important idea to us and we want others to keep on sharing their ideas too.

5. You’ve sponsored John Resig and Mark Pesce. How does this fit into your “Be more human” theme?

We have huge amounts of respect for both of these technology visionaries. At SilverStripe, we use John Resig’s JQuery extensively and our developers love it. JQuery is the first Javascript library our developers have responded to in this way. That’s saying a lot. With Mark Pesce, I’ve been following his work since his VRML days and even at that time I knew he was a visionary who helps others see what’s coming. Both Mark and John are inspiring to us and they both show how humans win by doing work that resonates deeply with other humans.

Thanks for you time Brian. We really appreciate the support that you’ve provided Webstock. Without organisations like SilverStripe, Webstock simply wouldn’t be the same!

Tags: Webstock 2010
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The sponsor interviews: Springload

13 February 2010

We recently caught up with Bron Thomson, founder of Springload.

1) Tell us about Springload. How long have you been around, how did you start, what sort of work do you do?

It’s hard to say when Springload truly started to be honest. I started working on websites waaaay back when the Internet was just a wee young thing in New Zealand, around 1994. Over the years I’ve gathered more and more cool people around me, including my business partner Carl. Springload is the result, with a current team of 20 people dedicated to designing and building websites that have a strong focus on user centred design.

2) If you had to boil down the essence of Spingload’s philosophy or methodology to a few sentences, what would you say?

Love the web! It’s our Springload vision and the philosophy that we work by. We love the web and everything about it – the technology, the design, the interaction. And we want others to love it too. We also love the people that we work with – our team, and our clients, and the extended Springload family.

It is our team that make coming to work each day a joy, and it is our clients that inspire us on each project we work on. So to us, Love the web really sums up pretty much everything about what we do.

3) We noticed there were a number of Springload entries for the ONYAs. What’s been your impression of the ONYAs to date? Are they good for the industry?

Well, it’s a brand new gig, but we’re really very excited about the ONYAs. There aren’t that many awards that recognise and honour websites from a fully rounded perspective; not just the visual design, but also interaction, content, architecture and functionality as well. Web awards should be about the whole package! And we think the ONYA’s are going to be just that.

4) What speakers at Webstock are you personally most looking forward to seeing and why?

Woah, that’s a hard one, am I allowed to say them all? ;-) We’re thrilled to be sponsoring Daniel Burka, and I’m particularly interested in hearing about his Creative Director role at Digg. Others that I’m looking forward to are Scott Thomas and his focus on design and content to capture an audience; Esther Derby to get some management tips; Amy Hoy for some inspiration on avoiding same-same design; and Sebastian Chan for keeping content fresh by analysing users on the fly. Lots to learn!

5) What do you most love about working in the web?

I’ve got one of those strange brains that likes both the logical and the creative as much as each other (I did a maths degree and a music degree). This seems to me to be what the web is all about – the merging of form and function. You can’t have one without the other, and I love the challenge of meshing the two and creating an experience that is so good you almost don’t even know it’s there.

Tags: Interviews · Webstock 2010
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The meaning of geek designer formal

12 February 2010

The dress code for the ONYAs is: ‘Geek designer formal – you’ll know it when you see it. But don’t be that guy who shows up in jeans, t-shirt and sandals.‘

We’ve had a few queries as to what this means, so though it might be apposite to outline our thinking.

So the first thing is that we made a little mistake – it should read, ‘geek/designer formal‘, rather than ‘geek designer formal‘. [Ed note: I've just realised this is the internet. I could actually go and change that!]

It’s an important difference. What we mean is that it’s appropriate formal wear for ‘geeks’ and ‘designers’, rather than ‘formal wear for geeks that is designer-y’.

Broadly (also unfairly and lazily) the Webstock audience has lots of geeks and lots of designers. And working in the web is where the two tribes meet. We appreciate and embrace that. We’re also aware that the word ‘formal’ (in relation to dress) might cause some stress to both parties. The web doesn’t really do formal. But awards, of course, do!

All of which is a roundabout way of saying we’re expecting a wide and unique variation of dress at the ONYAs. We’re looking for you to define ‘formal’ in a way that suits you and in a way that’s appropriate to a night celebrating the best of the New Zealand web industry.

We know, for example, that your host for the evening, MC Russell Brown will be wearing a tux. We know that certain members of the Webstock crew have already been on numerous shopping expeditions in preparation for the ONYAs. And we know that dressing up for an evening like this is fun!

All of that said, we won’t be turning anyone away on the night!

We’re also aware that most people attending the ONYAs will have been at a conference (a most awesome one if we do say so ourselves) all day. We can help with that.

There’ll be a room set aside on the Friday of Webstock to store outfits you might want to change into for the ONYAs. And there’ll be changing rooms available between the time Webstock ends and the ONYAs start.

To help you further, we asked Charles Bird, Director, International Markets and Business Development for Webstock to model appropriate and non-appropriate ONYA attire.

Not appropriate