In the first of our speaker interview for Webstock 2010, we talked with Brian Fling. In addition to speaking at the main conference, Brian is also taking a workshop, ‘Designing mobile experiences‘.
1) The past year has been pretty busy for you. Tell us what you’ve been up to.
What? It has been a year already? Wait… it is 2010 already? Actually the past year was crazy, challenging and fun all at the same time. The first part of the year I was finishing up my book, Mobile Design and Development followed almost immediately with starting up the mobile agency, pinch/zoom.
Since then we’ve had the opportunity to work on some fantastic projects with some amazing clients. While iPhone apps have been our mainstay, we are certainly seeing an increased need for other app platforms and a renewed interest in the mobile web.
But my main focus these days is helping people “get” that the interactive landscape is not the same as it was one or two years ago. These little mobile devices, that we sometimes call “phones” are changing everything.
2) Nexus or iPhone?
I’m an iPhone guy. I bought a Nexus One and while it is a pretty sweet little device, I still think the Android user experience is lacking. It is as if it is living in a time prior to the iPhone. And I don’t just mean the user interface, I mean the total experience. People are expecting a lot out of these smartphones these days, from form factor, to UI, to services, and I think the iPhone is the only one that offers a complete package.
3) Looking further ahead, give us a snapshot five years into the future. What’s the relationship between mobile, web, ubicomp look like? Who are the players in this space? What’s the endgame?
You didn’t just say five years did you? If you think about it, it took us nine years to put all the guts of the original iMac into what we now call the iPhone… and it is a phone too!
I try to look at the future as what we know now:
• We know that the always on, ubiquitous network is here. The pipe is pretty constrained today, but there is new tech on the horizon that has the opportunity to fatten it and change the way we look at the network in the process. I think roaming data plans and mobile payments are the next big hurdles that we face, but I expect more here within the next few years.
• We know the cloud is here to stay, but I think instead of thinking as one big amorphous cloud, I think we will see lots of small local or regional clouds emerge. Basically information and services that are highly relevant to my location, but are also highly connected to everything else.
• We know that all devices will increasingly be on the network, and they won’t just be phones. Machine to Machine (M2M) communications is growing fast, especially in the US where billions of stimulus dollars are infused to put everything on the network. But I think of it this way: If it has power, it is on the network. If it has a screen, it has a web browser.
So to answer your first question, I no longer see a difference between mobile and web. It is all mobile, and it’s all on the web.
As far as players, I think we will continue to see Apple play a crucial role in the space for many reasons that a lot of their competition hasn’t even begun to rival. They have redefined the mobile ecosystem in a way only Apple can. Even big names like Nokia, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung and RIM will be hard pressed to compete as long as they serve the operators first and users second.
An endgame? The user… always. Mobile, like no other medium, highlights the importance of user needs. I’ve seen even a basic mobile strategy cobble large companies because they can’t figure out how to shift to being a more people-centered organization.
4) You were a judge in this year’s ONYAs. How did you find that? Any comments on the quality of what you saw?
Overall the entries were pretty awesome. Some of the design was some of the best I’ve seen. However I was a bit disappointed to how some interpreted what is means to be “accessible.” Accessibility isn’t just about technologies like screen readers, it is how your content will be interpreted by things other than humans, like mobile devices, search engines, or even other websites or applications. Poor accessibility traps your content into a single presentational format, the death knell of a by-gone era. With devices like the iPad, eReaders and other mobile/netbook hybrids looming, content must be fully accessible or die.
I also have to admit that while reviewing the entries I went into a prolonged and ill advised tirade on Twitter about Flash. Tasty nuggets like: “The future of the Web simply doesn’t have Flash in its roadmap. Devices that can’t support will become the major mode of access on the web.” and… “Flash will never come near to being ubiquitous on the *thousands* of different types of devices on the network.”
5) You’re giving a workshop at Webstock on “Designing Mobile Experiences”. Who should attend and what will they learn?
Anyone. I try to make sure I have something for everyone. In fact I make a point to talk to everyone before we begin to make sure I understand their background and needs and adapt the workshop of the fly to the people in the room. So no two of my workshops are ever the same. We will cover a lot of ground from how to create a cross platform mobile strategy to building prototypes and testing them. In some workshops we make awesome prototypes and in others we coded up apps.
We’ll cover some things that are specific to iPhone and even the iPad, but I always make sure to abstract it out to the patterns I’ve seen in other mobile application platforms I’ve worked with over the years. My goal is to make sure that everyone, regardless of their level walking into the workshop, walks out with a firm understanding of mobile, gets the basic principles of strategy and design and how to take it back to their organization and take it to the next step.
Thanks Brian. We’re really looking forward to having you here! And re the future for Flash, well, you’re not the only one. *cough* Steve Jobs *cough*
So we have some good news and some bad news.
Let’s start with the bad. We’ve received some news. Bad news. Two of our wonderful Webstock speakers, Khoi Vinh and Jessica Jackley, told us they were unable to make it due to unexpected, Bigger-than-Ben-Hur work commitments. Webstockers – we’re sorry. We know this is a real disappointment. We’ve been pretty devastated. Tash cried.
We’re committed to giving you the best Webstock experience possible and we’ve been working super hard to try to find two kick ass speakers to step in.
And the good news is, we believe we’ve found them….
Introducing:
Mike Davidson of Mike Industries and CEO of Newsvine
-and-
Scott Thomas, Design Director of the Obama Presidential Campaign.
We are beyond thrilled to have Mike and Scott join our line up. We hope you are too.
For this interview we chatted with Brian Calhoun, CEO of SilverStripe, the Gold sponsor for Webstock 2010.
1) What’s the brief potted SilverStripe history and how did you come to be involved with SilverStripe?
We’re a web development company based in Wellington and we were founded in 2000. We open sourced our web Content Management System in 2006 and that’s when the company really started to grow. Since the open sourcing, we’ve been averaging 70% year-on-year growth and we’re going to grow by that much again this year. When we open sourced our CMS and framework we wanted to allow people all over the world to grow and enhance the web in exciting ways. We’ve also been helping New Zealand government adopt our technology. Last year we opened SilverStripe Australia in Melbourne. And we have a lot of exciting things to announce over the next few months.
I started working for a client of SilverStripe’s in 2006. As I got to know the SilverStripe team and product I really started to get excited about how I could help out. Over a span of about a year, I joined the company and worked my way into the CEO role. There was a great fit between my experience in Silicon Valley and what the company needed. I was originally attracted by the team and the possibilities of the software, and I’m even more excited about our prospects today.
2) How important has being based in Wellington been to SilverStripe’s success?
It’s been crucial. There is a wonderful ecosystem here of creative design firms, government, entrepreneurs, large and small businesses, all who use the web more and more every day. Wellington is also small enough so that you can walk to most clients or meet partners for a coffee down the block. Having that easy face-to-face contact is important because even with all the current communications technology, a meeting among people is still the most high-bandwidth form of communication. We’re expanding internationally, but we will always be based in Wellington.
3) You’ve described SilverStripe as a platform, rather than a CMS. What do you mean by this?
When we started we needed to provide a way for our clients to manage their own content for their websites. That’s how the CMS was born. Since then, web sites have gotten more complex to where the owners of sites need to do more than just update a “What’s New?” area of their site. For example, they might need multiple administrative interfaces for their customers, partners, and employees. Or they might need to add an ecommerce integration or a connection to a back-office system. Because of the changing nature of the needs of our clients, we started to talk about our framework, Sapphire, more and more. It’s always been there, under the covers of the CMS, but people who build websites need something more powerful than a CMS for their sites in today’s web world. Sapphire is a modern, clean, fast, extensible framework on which you can build anything for the web.
4) To someone who’s never been before, how would you describe Webstock? And why did SilverStripe decide to become major sponsor?
Webstock is inspiration. There are more great ideas floating around at Webstock than at any other time or place on the planet. That’s what we love about it. You get this wide cross-section of web industry professionals that you just can’t get anywhere else. And I’m talking about the attendees. The speakers are world-class, but it’s the event as a whole that really shines. We decided to be the main sponsor because we believe strongly in pushing the boundaries of what the web is. We believe in promoting Wellington as a great place for web innovation. And we wanted to give back because we’ve gotten so much from Webstock in the past.
5) You gave a brief talk at Webstock 08 on “Being human” and this is a focus of SilverStripe’s Webstock sponsorship. What does this mean and why is it important?
We all stare at computing screens for many hours a day. It’s easy for any of us to fall into the trap of elevating technology beyond what it is: a tool. Put another way, why do our clients pay us money? They pay us to solve human communication problems. Those humans happen to work for a particular company, or live in a certain region, or have some other commonality, but in the end, we in the web industry are still solving human communication needs. Our mantra at SilverStripe is Be More Human. It’s a reminder to us to focus on the human needs of our clients and each other as employees. We thought it might be fun to explore this concept a bit at Webstock so that we all can make sure that humans win.
We extremely pleased to welcome Lachlan Hardy as our final speaker for Webstock 2010!
Lachlan is a Design Engineer at Atlassian and a passionate advocate for the Open web. The title of his presentation is Building The Open Web.
Having Lachlan join Lisa Herrod in speaking at Webstock also continues our tradition of having partners speak at every conference: Steve Champeon and Heather Hesketh in 2006; Liz Danzico and Jason Santa Maria; and in 2008, Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic, Heather Champ and Derek Powazek, and Fiona Romeo and Matt Jones.
Webstock – doing our part to keep alive romance amongst the web community!
We gotta confess, things were going downhill for Webstock. We were as stress-free as a good-looking dame in a bar on New Year’s Eve. It had been a rough summer. Summer in Wellington had been like nails drawn down a blackboard. And then this appeared. We needed it in the same way Charlie Bird needed a tailor. We choked on our flat whites and headed downtown to investigate.
1) What’re troublemakers like you doin’ muscling in on Webstock turf? We’ve heard rumours, but we didn’t think anyone would be this brave, this soon.
This summer’s been more disappointing than a video promising an awesome back-flip but delivering Rick Astley. We’re lookin’ to shake things up a bit in this town and make people ignore the rain.
The Case of the Midnight Note is a project to raise money to help folks attend this year’s Webstock conference. The project is a collaboration between Cj Wells, Chelsea Hughes, Hadyn Green, Jed Soane, Jem Yoshioka and Timothy Greig.
Webstock is basically *the* web event of the year. We can’t even begin to describe what it is or what it means to web folks. It’s something special. Most of us work for The Man and he’s sending us to Webstock for free. We’re interested in helping folks (starving digital artists/students/awesome-deserving-people), who don’t work for The Man, and who can’t afford to go, go. So we’re holding a fundraiser to raise money for them.
The project includes two major parts: a noir-themed semi-interactive transmedia storytelling game and a noir-themed fundraising tweet-up.
The storytelling game began a few weeks ago. You’ll find updates from the story collected on The Case website. Updates are published chronologically and you might have to scroll back through time to catch up.
The fundraiser will be held on January 28 at an (as of yet) undisclosed, secret location in Wellington and will cost $10-$20 (depending on how much you want to pay). All proceeds will be gifted to those in need of financial assistance to go towards the cost of a Webstock registration.
2) You call it “The Case of the Midnight Note”. It’s a name redolent of roses dying in the sultry night heat. What’s in a name?
It’s late at night, our cigarettes are running low and we’ve got whiskey, but no ice. Just before the clock hits all zeroes we get the name we wanted.
We decided the name should follow the same pattern as other noir-ish stories, like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep: adjective plus noun. We combined this approach with the idea that lots of noir stories begin with the anti-hero getting approached to solve a mystery. In our opening scene, Sam gets a note asking him to solve a case, and voila, we had it: The Case of the Midnight Note.
In retrospect, we should have called it The Case of the Midnight Email – The story is developed organically. We meet, we discuss, we tweak, and then we produce. Often in snatched and stolen hours (midnight!) because everyone has full other lives. We’re hoping that by following Sam on The Case, we’ll generate interest and excitement for the fundraiser and we’ll have a good turnout on the night.
3) Crowd-sourcing is generally as useful as an amputated leg. We see your gumshoe, Sam, needs some help with the case…
A detective is only as good as his leads and Sam’s have evaporated like a cold beer on a hot day.
So he’s reached with the only means he has at his disposal, the internet. He needs contacts all over the city and internet in all walks of life sending him tips, clues, and hunches. Occasionally he’ll need errands run too. Everyone thinks he’s a killer so he can’t be seen out and about too much, so he needs some friendly followers who will drop off notes or pick up information for him. Sam also needs you to keep an eye on Betty. Let’s face it, she’s hawt. He’s a boy. He’s not thinking too straight and he needs your help.
4) The night of January 28. At a local speakeasy. What’s going down then?
We don’t want to have shoot up the gin joint but if they come packin’ heat then… whatever goes down, goes down. Luckily, in this town the weapon of choice is usually a cell phone.
The Case of the Midnight Note creates an alternative Wellington, where shadows dance in the moonlight, everyone’s a suspect for something, and dodgy dealings are the norm (so maybe it’s not as alternative as we thought). We’re holding a tweet-up fundraiser that dives deep into this parallel universe, but don’t let the fantasy fool you: we’re basically just looking for any excuse to dress up and party. It’s a noir theme, so dress accordingly!
The idea is that the story will create intrigue leading up to the fundraiser and generate interest in attending.
The fundraiser is designed to continue the theme of mystery and intrigue found in The Case of the Midnight Note story, so the details of the location are being kept a secret until the last minute. Don’t worry though, it’ll definitely be somewhere in the Wellington CBD! Otaki’s not very accessible…or noir-y! We’re also keeping the exact details of the night under wraps to add to the mystique, but we can say there will be live music, and The Case will conclude that night. You might even rub shoulders with some of the characters from the story!
5) So the case is really about sex, murder and money. Where’s the money going? It’d better be on the straight and up. Remember, Webstock is connected like a roadhouse blonde. We can make things happen if you know what we mean.
Woah easy there. We’re your friends.
This project is about friends helping friends get to Webstock.
We’ve had some questons about how funds raised would be distributed.
Because we don’t yet know how much will be raised on the night of the fundraiser, we cannot disclose the amount of money available for distribution nor can decisions be made about who should receive funding assistance.
After the fundraiser and once we know how much money we have to distribute, we will put out a call for nominations of people in need of partial funding to go toward a Webstock registration.
We do not anticipate raising enough funds to support a full registration for anyone. We will likely be able to provide *some* of the money needed. The nomination process will be very light-weight and involve nominating someone and writing about why the money should be used to subsidise them.
The project team will review nominations and may consult with Webstock organisers for assistance in selecting worthy nominees. Where the nominated person is also project team member, they will be excluded from selection discussions to ensure fairness. And we’ll tell you about it.
The biggest thing you can do to help if you are in Wellington on the January 28 is to attend. Add your self to the facebook event or twtvite. We’ll promise you you’ll make some new friends, and you’ll have a swell time. So what’dya think? Ya think ya might want a help a private dick down to his last dime solve a case that could set him back on the path to Cleansville and maybe even get the girl?
So, colour us convinced. We went in as cynical as an ambulance lawyer. We came out thinking that there’s still romance and goodness and altruism alive in this cold world.
We came out thinking that down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
