Alex Jones: Web Technologist, Barbecue Acolyte, Information Junkie, Austinite

Non-linear Scheduling

Photo from the Muji Web site

LifeHacker points to the yet-to-be-released Muji Chronotebook Non-linear Day Planner, which provides an interesting way to plan your day. Gone are the normal grids and standard sequence of hours and dates. They have been replaced by pages that display “time on an axis, like an analog clock.” One page is dedicated to the morning and the other to the evening. So you add your events to the AM or PM page, writing your “plans like spokes on a bicycle wheel.”

I don’t think it would work for me (I’m not a heavy user of day planners anyway), but I really love that they are forging a different solution to the problem of planning one’s schedule.

Posted in Design & Tagged: productivity, scheduling, time

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Portable Privacy Experiences

When you think about it, online social applications are bad places to put things that are meant to go unseen, and it makes the notion of privacy start to feel like the wrong idea. This brings us back to the words we choose, because I think we interact online not to keep stuff private, but to share it selectively. Setting up a privacy framework works as a force in opposition to the goal of sharing something. If instead we think about streaming shared actions (or gestures, if you like) and content to the right people and less about exception frameworks, things should work more smoothly and, I think, bring us closer to models that can cross networks without exploding.

Todd Sieling: Portable Profiles and Privacy: Choppy Ux Ahead

Todd’s insightful article has me thinking about privacy, expectations of and experience within our social media tools, online and off.

Posted in Social Groups, Web Development & Tagged: social software, user experience, web application, web design, Web Development

Creative Bridges, Coworking & Communities

This started as a quick comment on Alex Hillman’s post Creative Agency, which quickly grew so long that I realized that I had begun writing a post of my own, so I’ve shifted it to my site so I don’t hijack Alex’s discussion (plus I don’t post often enough).

Please read Alex’s post prior to reading this one.

So, Alex’s ideas set my mind-gears a’spinnin’. He covers several aspects of building a community that is beneficial to its members but also to its clients, uniting several concepts that drive me personally, and I believe drive communities around the globe.

A couple of coworking initiatives (LaunchPad, Conjunctured) are growing here in Central Texas, which I think will mesh well with our various Web and creative groups like Refresh Austin, which in turn play a large part in sharing knowledge and connecting members of the professional creative and Web communities. That said, we’re a disparate community, which can be both good (an abundance of creativity and different perceptions and solutions of challenges) and bad (harder to spread the word and unify), and often times the individuals, whether they work for themselves or sit amongst hundreds in large enterprises aren’t able to rely on each other to augment their strengths.

Some love design, others front-end development, or back-end coding. Some dig deep into the perfect turn of phrase, while others concentrate on the most effective way to monetize a product or service. Some of us like to translate between the various cultures. We’re different, which is very good. But we could do more to help each other.

Alex highlights some of the most glaring gaps amongst our profession:

• Creatives who don’t take responsibility for “leading the client just as much as we are leading the project and the result that the end user experiences”
• Independent creatives who may not have the business background, the time or the personality to look out for themselves on the business front

These are large gaps, but they are addressable by the right communities, some of which exist, others of which we need to being forming.

Bridges

So, we need to connect these communities:

• Independents and corporate designers/developers - it’s amazing how different these experiences can be, and both groups will benefit from the sharing of knowledge
• Experienced and new professionals - connect the energy, vigor and will-not-stop drive with experience and knowledge (business, and yes some political). We have to tap into the excited professionals - no cynicism
• Business professionals and creative professionals - business folks would love to tap into the fountain of ideas that make up a creative world and the designers and developers will gain valuable skills from their counterparts making it much easier to navigate the world of contracts, time lines and expectations
• Open source developers/communities and businesses - As Alex notes, “being an open source software developer does not, and should not, condemn ones self to a life of poverty”, which follows up on Whurley’s Opensville post.

Chief among my questions to the community is to learn what are the first steps we should take to move forward building this new creative agency platform and the other pieces required to move our communities forward? CitizenAgency and Indy Hall have an edge as established, physical spaces with strong communities, but I think Austin is an ideal setting for this as well and could quickly contribute.

So where to?

Posted in Social Groups & Tagged: austin, business, culture, Design, open source, refresh, refresh austin, social, web design, Web Development

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Party of One or a Movement?

Movements, from my experience, wouldn’t happen without a whole lot of people moving them forward. If there is only one person responsible, it’s not a movement, it’s a party for one.

Tara Hunt

Tara Hunt hits the nail on the ahead yet again, with her excellent post Heroes Don’t Work Alone. If you aren’t familiar with Tara, you should be as her writing, speaking and day-to-day efforts have a very large impact on the underpinnings of our online social networks, often bridging these networks with offline communities and brands. Her work helping to set up co-working as a viable alternative to large offices, is benefiting countless entrepreneurs and her efforts to boost the presence and influence of women in technology circles is laying the important groundwork needed to ensure we continue our exponential growth in technology and science.

Heroes Don’t Work Alone provides a concise, readable and important view into the shape of our community and the direction we need to move. We all have roles to play, but they aren’t necessarily the same, and in fact they should be different so we can compliment each other’s strengths and move forward together.

The lines aren’t distinctly cut, and in fact they may well vary per project or passion, but recognizing that we need Creators, Catalysts and Champions is the first step towards greatness, whether you are working in a large organization, or forming a group like Refresh Austin.

Posted in Social Groups & Tagged: organization, social