Archive for April, 2009
- By Scott Berkun on April 30th, 2009
- 14 Comments »
- On Tour
Travel: Any Brussels or Oslo advice?
I have a few days of fun travel to new places coming up.
If anyone has been to Brussels, Belgium or Oslo, Norway, or is a local, and has some advice for good eats or places you think I’d dig, please leave a comment or drop me a line. Thanks!
- By Scott Berkun on April 30th, 2009
- 4 Comments »
- Seattle
What I learned at Seattle Ignite 6
The cool thing about Ignite Seattle, beyond the crazy fun format (5 mins, 20 slides, 15 seconds a slide), is how positive and supportive the vibe is. Everyone talks about cool things they’ve seen and heard, and there’s a buzz of learning and doing that’s superior to most conferences. It’s geekish, for sure, but it also surprisingly cross-discipline. There were talks about parenting, libraries, biology, medicine, raising chickens and more.
Perhaps part of the magic is that it’s just one intense night – the fact that’s an evening thing and there’s always a bar at the venue perhaps changes who comes and why. Kudos to @Brady and @BryanZug and the all the folks that volunteered to help out.
Last night I was lucky and got to a talk on how to give an ignite talk, and if the video makes it online I’ll post.
In the meantime here’s what I learned last night (from memory – forgot my notebook):
- Creativity is fueled by contact with weak social links – you need points of contact that are not your primary circle to stimulate you (Shelly Farnham)
- Assuming your users have Alzheimer is a hack for better design thinking (Roy Leban)
- There are many people with Lego-addiction and Hillel is one of them (Hillel Cooperman)
- I learned about clipping (drop vowels) and thesauri (vocabulary wins) for twitter (Jason Preston)
- If you think you’re competent, you probably aren’t (Ron Burk)
- Native Americans/?Micronesians had cool map technology (@kbeegle)
- All good marriages are creative partnerships (Jen Zug)
- By Scott Berkun on April 29th, 2009
- No Comments »
- linkfest
Wednesday linkfest (+ Confessions)
Here’s this week’s roundup of good stuff.
First some new stuff up on speakerconfessions.com:
- Should speakers ban or support twitter? – some nice data about how twitter was used at one popular talk.
- Learning from Make TV’s Bill Gurstelle – He’s the author of Backyard Ballistics and does live lectures as well as appear regularly on a TV show. Good stuff here.
- The myth of the tough crowd - What makes a tough crowd so bad? Do speakers create their own problems? Here’s my opinion.
And the regular web round-up:
- In defense of eye candy. Some great examples of why making things ‘pretty’ isn’t of trivial importance, and does effect people’s behavior.
- 13 things that do not make sense. It’s a great mystery to me why, given how little we know, how little time we spend talking about all the stuff we have not figured out yet. I love these lists.
- Empowerment, whether you like it or not. This hits at one of the roots of micromanagement – often the boss has less information than their report on something and needs to force them to make the call. Good stuff.
- By Scott Berkun on April 28th, 2009
- 3 Comments »
- Design
Innovation case study: Opera Web browser
Of all the stories in the web world, the story of the Opera web browser is one of the most interesting, and least frequently told when it comes to understanding innovation.
Today they’re celebrating their 15th year, and it’s clear they’re going strong, claim to have market share growth and still have a sense of humor.
They’re a fascinating story because in the early browser wars (‘94-’00) they were the third horse, but they consistently took larger risks, made bigger bets on design changes, bet heaviest of all players on web standards, and were the first of the major browsers to implement now standard features like tab browsing. But they rarely got much credit for their innovations or their intensely progressive attitude then, or perhaps even now.
Why? Did they not innovative enough? or too much? Do they need to be in the U.S. to get more attention? Or are there other issues? There are tons of lessons to be learned from the case study of Opera, both for the 90’s and for the present.
Until someone writes one, you can do a small, fun one of your own.
If you’re interested in UX design or understanding innovation, I highly recommend giving their latest release a spin: it will be the most interesting software you’ve installed in some time.
Related:
- Here’s my older review of Opera 9.02
- My other posts about web browser design, including reviews of major browsers
- I’ll be speaking at Opera next month and look forward to learning more from these folks
- By Scott Berkun on April 28th, 2009
- 1 Comment »
- On Tour
Speaking at Ignite Seattle, Wed Night
Ignite is always an awesome time. There is something so fun about the crowd that comes, and then of course there’s all the crazy stuff that happens on stage.
If you’ve never been, the format is 5 minutes per speaker. The catch is the slides are automated: 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide. The results are, shall we say, unpredictable.
It’s this Wed, 7pm at the King Kat Theater in Seattle.
Here’s Wednesday’s awesome lineup:
7PM – Doors Open
7:30 PM – Paper Tower Contest Begins – Build the tallest tower you can out of just 5 sheets of paper and tape (See Details)
8:30 – First Set of Talks
Hillel Cooperman (@hillel) – The Secret Underground World of Lego
Dawn Rutherford (@dawnoftheread) – Public Library Hacking
Roy Leban (@royleban) – Worst Case User Experience: Alzheimer’s
Shelly Farnham (@ShellyShelly) Community Genius: Leveraging Community to Increase your Creative Powers
Dominic Muren (@dmuren) – Humblefacturing a Sustainable Electronic Future
Jen Zug (@jenzug) – The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom
Ken Beegle (@kbeegle) – Decoding Sticks and Waves
Maya Bisineer (@thinkmaya) – Geek Girl – A life Story
Scott Berkun (Scottberkun.com)- How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk
9:45 PM – Second Set of Talks
Scotto Moore (Scotto.org)- Intangible Method
Secret Guest Speaker from Ignite Portland
Mike Tykka – The Invention of the Wheel
Jason Preston (@Jasonp107) – Goodbye Tolstoy: How to say anything in 140 characters or less
Chris DiBona (@cdibona) – The Coolness of Telemedicine
Ron Burk – The Psychology of Incompetence
Katherine Hernandez (@ipodtouchgirl) – The Mac Spy
Jamie Gower JamieGower.com) – I Am %0.0002 Cyborg
Beth Goza (@bethgo) – Knitting in Code
Hope to see you there.
- By Scott Berkun on April 24th, 2009
- 8 Comments »
- Making things happen
My books are now on Kindle
Thanks to the fine folks at O’Reilly Media, both of my books are now available on Kindle:
The Myths of Innovation (Kindle)
I think it’s silly that the customer reviews for the regular editions don’t migrate to these kindle pages, but then again I’m still bummed all the reviews for The art of project management didn’t get migrated over to Making Things Happen, as it’s the 2nd edition of the same book.
SCOTT'S NEW BOOK
A provocative collection of behind-the-scenes tales from the life of a successful public speaker, bestselling business author Scott Berkun offers a unique insider's take on what public speakers do, how they do it, and how anyone can do it well. Book Details
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