vanderwal.net

Sydney Update

A little update... The trip to Sydney has been fantastic, even if I have been working, preparing for presenting, prenting or deeply enjoying other's presentations at Web Directions and OZ IA. I am finally getting out to see Syndey and the bits around it today. I have been here since Monday morning and it is now Sunday, but that is the way it is and I would not change it.

Oddly, I not only lost a day getting here, crossing the dateline, but I lost a day once I got here as Monday and Tuesday really blurred into one another. This trip was one of the more brutal trips, as far as personal disconnectedness (jet lag to some), that I have experienced. It took until about Wednesday night for all my bits to start feeling like there were all in the same place. By Thursday everything was running "normal".

I have been spending a fair amount of time with people from the Web Directions conference, as they are the ones who made this fantastic trip possible. I have met many incredible people and I have been made aware of the vast talent that is in Australia. Count me stunned as I wash of the paint of ignorance that has kept my eyes from noticing this sooner. But, on the web I have no idea where anybody is (this year I have not been sure where I am at times). I have been really impressed with the people that are here from Western Australia both in their knowledge/skills and friendly nature. I became aware of the incredible Port 80 on this trip, which seems to be one of the most vibrant web sharing groups I know of. I was surprised to learn that Site Point is from Melbourne as I have been reading their site and books for years. I even found out that Google Maps was started here before being bought by Google (is Google the new Microsoft with the "not invented here" tag for all their killer services?) and is still driven from here.

To all I me at Web Directions and OZ IA, please keep in touch. In fact, just shoot an e-mail from the contact button/link to make this easier. I met many people who have inspired me and light a fire under my desire to spend time projects I care about and be the best I can be. The passionate discussions about things we all care about have been wonderful as well. The world on this trip became insanely flat, as I have had a really difficult time sorting out where I am (that should change shortly as I get out and actually see a little of Sydney and what makes Sydney unique).

I am already thinking about how I can get back to see more places and the people again, but on their home turf. It would be nice to see people in Western Australia, Melbourne, ACT, Brisbane, etc. There is so much greatness here in Australia, I am glad much of what I have learned and discovered is only a mouse click away, but seeing people face to face and hearing stories of their efforts to make a better web for more and more people is what it is all about. I am going to come away from this trip deeply inspired. Thank you.

OZ IA Presentation - Folksonomy for IA is Posted

My just delivered presentation to OZ IA on, Folksonomy for IA (PDF 4.3MB).

Now it is time to focus on other's presentations and get then finally enjoying Sydney and the surrounding area. I am thinking of heading to Manley for the Jazz Festival on Monday.

Web Directions Presentations Posted

I have posted my two presentations from Web Directions for download: IA for Web Developers (PDF 14MB); IA for the "Come to Me Web" (PDF 3MB). Please e-mail questions and comments (found under the connect button (JavaScript needs to be on).

I will have a follow-up post in the near future (hopefully), in short Web Directions has been a great conference, run by and attended by utterly fantastic people.

Now in Sydney with Minor Trials of Travel

I made it to Sydney today. The flight, all 14 hours was not so bad (in part because I sat next to Derek) as the seats and services were good. I was surprised by bag made it as it started out on another airline. But, when I checked into the hotel my computer connector bag had gone missing on the trip, which had international power converters, connectors, dongles, headphone adapters, and a little widget I rely on for business. I was able to replace some of the important connectors (video to VGA and an iPod connector), but the other things will take some time.

One of the things that struck me is how much it seems like the West Coast of North America with the architecture and city layout. There were parts today that felt like Vancouver, Seattle, or San Francisco, but it is not. One thing that is odd is the sun is in the Northern part of the sky and the trees are do not have leaves as of yet. One things that is good is the time and date of this blog post should be accurate for the first time in months (I am working on fixing that as it is not tough, but it just takes a little time).

As I write this I am realizing my brain and soul have not quite caught up with where my body is at the moment. I am really looking forward to going to sleep tonight. I mean really really looking forward to it.

One thing I learned so far on this trip is how much of a mess the Los Angeles airport is. I have seen a lot of airports the past year, but LAX is really the pits. Nobody knew what terminal I needed to get to so I could make my connecting flight. The police officer sent me to the international terminal and pointed out that changing terminals means you go out of the terminal and walk outside to get to the next one or pass many to get to the one you need. After I was directed to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, I tracked down an "information person" who was holding a sign saying that. He had not heard of United, nor had he heard of Sydney, nor Australia (yes, I did say he was the information guy in the international terminal).

I flew in to the one with American Airlines and it was decent. But, where I needed to go was United and that was a dump. The security screening set-up is pathetic as they have very little space and had TSA officials nearly falling asleep. The signage in the terminal had to have been the worst of any airport I have been to. Not only that, but I was able to get into the premium flight lounge, which was falling apart, as the electrical sockets were falling out, the bathroom has holes in the wall, and the lights were burned out in one part of the main section. This was a premiere lounge? Meh.

I am very happy to be in Sydney and looking forward to seeing people at WebDirections 2006 (wd06) and OZ IA.

Understanding Folksonomy: Tagging that Works presentation posted

I have finally posted my Understanding Folksonomy: Tagging that Works (4MB PDF) presentation from d.construct. I have been presenting the content in this for nearly 2 years and have been iterating it. I have been wanting to get the Folksonomy Triad out in public as it has been getting really strong response in the 18 months that I have been using it (in the last 9 months I turned it into an animation that really drives the point home). I have not done a movie of the presentation yet, but that could be coming in the next few months.

I have not been posting the presentations, as the size has been increasing and when they get blogged elsewhere the bandwidth shoots up. But, I have been playing with Amazon S3 to store these files at lower cost and eat less bandwidth. I have been playing with the Python and Ruby scripts, but when Jeff Barr demonstrated the S3 Firefox Organizer I knew it was made really simple to upload, set permissions, and grab a sharable URL.

Update and Austrialia Preparations

Things here are a wee bit busy of late. I have been getting myself accustom to local time again and doing final preparations for the trip to Austrialia to speak at Web Directions and the OZ IA. I will be presenting "IA for Web Designers/Developers" as well as "IA for the Come to Me Web" at Web Directions (a few tickets may still be available, check soon - I could not urge you enough to go to Web Directions as the quality and subject matter is stellar and well worth the price) and a Folksonomy and Tagging that works presentation at OZ IA.

If you are in the Australia region and heading to the event or just want to meet-up, please let me know (using thomas at this domain as an e-mail address). I will be around in Sydney through Labor Day.

I have also been tightening the schedule for Fall work at InfoCloud Solutions, please contact me soon as I have some limited time still available.

Trip and d.construct Wrap-up

I am back home from the d.construct trip, which included London and Brighton. The trip was very enjoyable, the d.construct conference is a pure winner, and I met fantastic people that keep my passion for the web alive.

d.construct

The d.construct conference had Jeff Barr from Amazon talking about Amazon Web Services, Paul Hammond and Simon Willison discussing Yahoo and its creation and use of web services for internal and external uses, Jeremy Keith discussing the Joy of the API, Aral Balkan presenting the use of Adobe Flex for web services, Derek Featherstone discussing accessibility for Javascript and Ajax and how they can hurt and help the web for those with disabilities, myself (Thomas) discussing tagging that works, and Jeff Veen pulling the day together with designing the complete user experience.

Jeff Barr provided not only a good overview of the Amazon offerings for developers, but his presentation kept me interested (the previous 2 times my mind wandered) and I got some new things out of it (like the S3 Organizer extension for Firefox.

Jeremy was his usual great presenting form (unfortunately a call from home caused me to miss the some of the middle, but he kept things going well and I heard after that many people learned something from the session, which they thought they knew it all already.

Paul and Simon did a wonderful tag team approach on what Yahoo is up to and how they "eat their own dog food" and how the Yahoo Local uses microformats (Wahoo!).

Aral was somebody I did not know before d.construct, but I really enjoyed getting to know him as well as his high energy presentation style and mastery of the content that showed Flash/Flex 2.0 are fluent in Web 2.0 rich interfaces for web services.

Derek was fantastic as he took a dry subject (accessibility) and brought it life, he also made me miss the world of accessibility by talking about how JavaScript and Ajax can actually improve the accessibility of a site (if the developer knows what they are doing - this is not an easy area to tread) and made it logical and relatively easy to grasp.

I can not comment on my own presentation, other than the many people what sought me out to express appreciation, and to ask questions (many questions about spamming, which is difficult if the tagging system is built well). I was also asked if I had somebody explain the term dogging (forgetting there was a rather bawdy use of the term in British culture and using the term as those people who are dog lovers - this lead to very heavy laughter). Given the odd technical problems at the beginning of the presentation (mouse not clicking) things went alright about 5 minutes or so in.

Lastly, the man I never want to follow when giving a presentation, Jeff Veen rocked the house with his easy style and lively interaction with his slides.

I am really wanting to hear much more from Aral and Derek now that I have heard them speak. I am looking forward to seeing their slides up and their podcasts, both should be posted on the d.construct schedule page.

London Stays

The trip also included an overnight stay in London on the front and back end of the conference. Through an on-line resource I had two last minute rooms booked at Best Western Premiers that were great rooms in well appointed hotels. The hotels even had free WiFi (yes, free in Europe is a huge savings), which was my main reason for staying at these hotels I knew nothing about. I really like both locations, one near Earls Court Tube Station and the other Charing Cross Road and SoHo. The rooms were well under 200 U.S. dollars, which is a rarity in central London. I think I have a new place to track down then next time I visit London.

London People & Places

I had a few impromptu meetings in London and an accidental chat. When I first got in I was able to clean-up and go meet friends Tom and Simon for lunch at China Experience. We had good conversations about the state of many things web. Then Tom showed me Cyber Candy, which I have been following online. I was then off to Neal's Yard Dairy to pick-up some Stinking Bishop (quite excellent), Oggleshield, and Berkswell. I then did a pilgrimage to Muji to stock up on pens and all the while using Yahoo Messanger in a mobile browser (a very painful way to communicate, as there is no alert for return messages and when moving the web connection seems to need resetting often).

That evening I met up with Eric Miraglia for a great chat and dinner, then included Christian Heillmann (who has a great new book (from my initial read) on Beginning JavaSctipt with DOM Scripting and Ajax) in our evening. The discussions were wonderful and it was a really good way to find people of similar minds and interests.

On my last day in London I ended up running into Ben Hammersley as he was waiting for a dinner meeting. It was great to meet Ben in person and have a good brief chat. Somehow when walking down the street and seeing a man in a black utilikilt, with short hair, and intently using his mobile there are a short list of possibilities who this may be.

Food

My trip I had a few full English breakfasts, including one in Brighton at 3:30am (using the term gut buster), which was my first full meal of the day. The breakfast at the Blanche House (the name of the hotel never stuck in my head and the keys just had their logo on them, so getting back to the hotel was a wee bit more challenging than normal) was quite good, particularly the scrambled eggs wrapped in smoked Scottish salmon. The food the first night in Brighton at the Seven Dials was fantastic and a great treat. Sunday brunch at SOHo Social in Brighton was quite good and needed to bring me back from another late night chatting, but the fish cakes were outstanding. The last evening in London I stopped in at Hamburger Union for a really good burger with rashers bacon. The burgers are made with only natural fed, grass-reared additive free beef. This is not only eco-friendly, but really tasty. I wish there were a Hamburger Union near where I work as I would make use of it regularly.

Too Short a Visit

As it is with nearly every trip this year, the time was too short and the people I met were fantastic. I really met some interesting and bright people while in Brighton and I really look forward to keeping in touch as well as seeing them again.

Refreshed and Connected

I am back from a little break and refocussing on real stuff not related to ocean waves. I have connectivity and have the ability to send e-mail out. I had quite limited connectivity the past week, even from my mobile.

Give a shout if you are in town for the Adaptive Path UX Week give a shout. I am around for the most part, but will be unavailable for work one day.

WebVisons and MIT TechReview

Back from WebVisions

I am back from WebVisions in Portland, Oregon (the most enjoyable city in the U.S. for me) where I presented on Tagging in the Real Web World (my slides will be available at the end of this week). I loved WebVisions again as it is a great developer/designer to developer/designer conference with people sharing methods and frameworks with others to raise the level of everybody. It is a wonderful open sharing conference in the spirit of SXSW Interactive on a little more manageable scale.

MIT Technology Review Mentions Personal InfoCloud

I came back to a really nice mention in the MIT Technology Review article by Wade Roush on The Internet Is Your Next Hard Drive, which points to the Personal InfoCloud as its framing idea. I am increasingly seeing people wanting to store and have access to information across devices and services (or control their own destiny, as Gina Tripiani wants). It is about personal choice where and how their data, information, and media is stored. We are wanting continual access to the information, but may not want or have continual access to the internet or may not want it stored on us. Wade's article brings up some interesting options for those that want some or all of their storage on-line. It is time to dig into these options and see how close they get from a Personal InfoCloud perspective and personal aggregation, when we want and need the information at our finger tips (you know, the technical nirvana we have always dreamed and talked about).

Preparing for Web Visions and Other Stuff

Things have been quiet around here as I have been working on my 'Tagging in the Real Web World' presentation for WebVisions in Portland, Oregon (you are going aren't you?), bring on some new clients at InfoCloud Solutions, and working on longer (okay, my normal length) pieces for Personal InfoCloud and some other places that flesh out single slides from recent, and not so recent presentations.

The Tagging in the Real Web World is a new presentation, it has a handful of slides from recent folksonomy presentations that helped the tagging light bulb click. I am not fully focussing on folksonomy, but looking at tagging services and tagging that is being included in other web services.

In September, I will be doing a deeper dive into Understanding Folksonomy at d.Construct in Brighton, England. More on this a little later, but you should note tickets go on sale (they sold out in 30 minutes last year) Tuesday, July 18th at 10am (GMT).

Expansive Web 2.0 Conference List

Eric Weaver has put together a killer list of upcoming conferences for Web 2.0 related subjects. Now to get this list in Upcoming.

More XTech 2006

I have had a little time to sit back and think about XTech I am quite impressed with the conference. The caliber of presenter and the quality of their presentations was some of the best of any I have been to in a while. The presentations got beneath the surface level of the subjects and provided insight that I had not run across elsewhere.

The conference focus on browser, open data (XML), and high level presentations was a great mix. There was much cross-over in the presentations and once I got the hang that this was not a conference of stuff I already knew (or presented at a level that is more introductory), but things I wanted to dig deeper into. I began to realize late into the conference (or after in many cases) that the people presenting were people whose writting and contributions I had followed regularly when I was doing deep development (not managing web development) of web applications. I changed my focus last Fall to get back to developing innovative applications, working on projects that are built around open data, and that filled some of the many gaps in the Personal InfoCloud (I also left to write, but that did get side tracked).

As I mentioned before, XTech had the right amount of geek mindset in the presentations. The one that really brought this to the forefront of my mind was on XForms, an Alternative to Ajax by Erik Bruchez. It focussed on using XForms as a means to interact with structured data with Ajax.

Once it dawned on me that this conference was rather killer and I sould be paying attention to the content and not just those in the floating island of friends the event was nearly two-thirds the way through. This huge mistake on my part was the busy nature of things that lead up to XTech, as well as not getting there a day or two earlier to adjust to the time, and attend the pre-conference sessions and tutorials on Ajax.

I was thrilled ot see the Platial presentation and meet the makers of the service. When I went to attend Simon Willison's presentation rather than attending the GeoRSS session, I realized there was much good content at XTech and it is now one on my must attend list.

As the conference was progressing I was thinking of all of the people that would have really benefitted and enjoyed XTech as well. A conference about open data and systems to build applications with that meet real people's needs is essential for most developers working out on the live web these days.

If XTech sounded good this year in Amsterdam, you may want to note that it will be in Paris next year.

Light Overview of XTech and Amsterdam (including BarCamp Amsterdam)

This trip to Amsterdam for XTech 2006 (and now bits of BarCamp Amsterdam II has been quite different from previous trips, in that Amsterdam is now getting to be very familiar. I also did not spend a day on the front end of the trip walking around adjusting to the time change and spent it inside at XTech, where I saw many friends, which really made it feel more like a floating island comprised of geographically distributed friends that I see when I travel.

It has been great seeing good friends that I really wish I could see more and/or work with on projects as I believe some killer things could get done. I also met people and got to hang out with many new people, which is always great. I was pleased to spend time with people I have only partially spent time with in the past.

I quite enjoyed XTech as it was a good amount of geekery, which provided sparks of inspiration, very good feedback on the "Come to Me Web" and "Personal InfoCloud" stuff I presented. The session had Paul Hammond, Tom Coates, and then myself presenting ideas that focussed on open data, using open data, and building for personal use and reuse of information in our three presentations. It was a fantastic set up.

There were many Mozilla folks around, which was fantastic to hear where the Mozilla/Firefox development is going. This was a very good cross pollination of people, ideas, and interests.

I also realized I need to through out my presentation on Personal InfoCloud and Come to Me Web and rebuild it from scratch. I was finding that my presentation that I have been iterating on for the past year or so is something that needs restructuring and refocussing. I get very positive comments on the presentation, but in delivering the presentation I have made many minor tweaks that have disrupted my flow of delivery. I believe that starting from scratch will help me focus on what gets delivered when. I am really do not write out the presentation in long form as I think that would make it stale for me.

I am heading home tomorrow, but I have not quite felt like I was in Amsterdam as it is really no longer a foreign place. It is still one of my favorite places to be. I spent much time exploring thoughts, spending time with people, playing with digital things, but not deeply finding the new bits of Amsterdam (outside of a few hours this morning). Ah well, I am back in a few short weeks.

Upcoming Conferences I am Presenting at and Attending

Okay, things have been quite busy here. But, here will be changing as I am hitting the skies a bit in the short term. This means I may be near you so reach out and we can hang out and chat. I am completely looking forward to all the places on my schedule and seeing all of the people.

XTech

I am off to Amsterdam, Netherlands (no not that other one) this week to speak at XTech. I will be presenting Developing for the Personal InfoCloud on Thursday at 11:45 in the morning.

BarCamp Amsterdam

On Saturday I will be attending BarCamp Amsterdam for part of the time.

Seattle Area

Following the Amsterdam trip I should be in the Seattle area for work. I don't have dates as of yet, but if you shoot an e-mail I will be sure and connect.

Microlearning 2006 Conference

I will be heading to Innsbruck, Austria for the Microlearning Conference and preconference (June 7). I will be talking about microcontent in the Personal InfoCloud and our ability and desire to manage it (one means of doing this is folksonomy, but will be discussing much more).

Following Innsbruck I may be in Europe a bit longer and a little farther north. I will be in Amsterdam just following the conference, but beyond that my schedule has not yet fully jelled.

WebVisions 2006

I will be heading to WebVisions 2006 in Portland, Oregon July 20th and 21st. I will be speaking on Friday the 21st about Tagging in the Real World. This will look at how people are making use of tagging (particularly tagging services) and looking at the best practices.

The Fall

In September it looks like I will be in Brighton, UK for a wonderful event. I should also be in Australia later in September for another conference.

As these events get closer, I will be letting you know.

Yes, I know I need to be publishing this information in hCal, but I have been quite busy of late. But, I am moving in that direction very soon. You can also follow what I am watching and attending in Upcoming for vanderwal.

Off to Hang at the Jersey Shore with Librarians

I am off to the New Jersey Library Association 2006 Conference to do a presentation on tagging and folksonomy. If you are there stop by and say hello. I am really looking forward to this event.