jeffrey

This is what Wellington looks like in summer:

Very sunny. The harbor is filled with people who love water.

And in winter:

That’s pretty dark.

Winter starts now and ends around November. Hopefully it won’t be that bad.

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Last night at Webstock mini the Codeblacks competed against Silicon Wellie.¹

Before the event there was smack-talk between myself and John Lewis. He defected the day before the competition, so our words were bitter!

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“You’re going down this evening… it’s cute you guys think you have a chance,” John said.

“I’m still not convinced the members of your team can wake up from their afternoon naps in time. Age has its price I guess,” I replied.

“Age and experience always triumphs youth and beauty, but I can see how they haven’t taught you that in 5th grade.”

“That’s so colonial of you! Emancipate yourself from England or be brainwashed forever! Your history books are obviously doctored.”

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The outcome? Victory!

Sarah Lewis pitched our idea to the judges and audience. Our business was about advising angel investors, and their business was about sex and porridge.

Now I know what you’re saying, “Sex and porridge? That sounds exciting!”

Yes, it may sound exciting, but it’s not like mixing peanut butter and jelly to make an awesome sandwich.

It’s more like mixing red wine and Coke. Serfs were guillotined in France for less. Baguette!

Congrats to both teams. It’s not easy creating a presentation in twenty minutes. Afterwards the Wellington Ukulele Orchestra played and they were awesome.

_{1. I wonder, why silicon? Why not polonium or rutherfordium or krypton? Is it to reference Silicon Valley? Do they know that Silicon Valley was named so because it has the largest number of breast implants per capita? That’s so hot!}

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Deluxe is my favorite cafe in Wellington and it’s also the place I sold my first turtle tiki necklace.

If you’re in Wellington this weekend you must attend Craft 2.0 at the New Dowse between 11:00 and 3:00.

I’ll be making badges for Sue, and selling some necklaces too.

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Today the government of New Zealand granted me indefinite residency. This affords me certain inalienable rights:

1. to enter and leave New Zealand indefinitely
2. to work for any employer or setup a business
3. to walk anywhere in Wellington without shoes or socks
4. to say “bro” and “choice” and other colorful words found in the vernacular
5. to buy groceries at New World without wearing a shirt
6. to use verbs and nouns, e.g. “have a feed”
7. to eat sandwiches made from french fries and tomato sauce
8. to sing the New Zealand national anthem without feeling phony
9. to bicycle to work in Lycra

I’m sure there are other privileges, so feel free to add to my list.

And to my American friends, if you find America collapsing like a Jenga game from economic ruin, you can stay with me in New Zealand.

You’ll like it, I promise.

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Finally, this week is the 2008 Webstock conference (the same team produces the FullCodePress competition, bless their souls).

Unlike normal web conferences, Webstock is cool. The speakers are competent, the presentations are almost perfect and the lessons are memorable. (And thankfully Webstock is not a sausage fest¹ like most web & technology conferences. Does anyone actually enjoy networking at TechEd more than networking at Webstock? But seriously, gender aside, Webstock is unique because it attracts an equal amount of designers, developers, usability gurus, etc.)

This conference is special, which is why I volunteered my time for the entire week. I’m helping the Clockwork team ensure the event runs smoothly. This is how useful I am:

“Excuse me, where’s the loo?” she asks.

The loo! Your strange word² intrigues me, colonial! “Down the hall and to the left,” I answer.

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“Is the wireless network down?” they wonder.

“Well it certainly isn’t up! I’ll find out ³ when they expect to fix it, no worries.”

So on and so forth. I do feel helpful, usually. But down to the nitty-gritty, for the first three days I attended workshops by:

• Amy Hoy, who showed me that people are oblivious. She was lovely, but her personality was more powerful than her presentation (I remember her more than the content of the workshop). She’s a fan of exposing information (e.g. display a list of links instead of using a select menu) and her vocabulary was refreshing, too. I can’t remember the last time I heard someone say egregious.
• Kelly Goto, who gets shit done! (e.g. she stood on an American highway stopping truck drivers because she needed them for a usability test). She focused on iterative application development (agile development) and the importance of usability testing (painfully obvious to knowledgeable designers). Her presentation was too high-level for me, but it was appropriate for the workshop audience. I would like to see her speak about product management methodologies.
• Luke Wroblewski, who knows how to make the most of a bad conversation between a user and a form. I met Luke in 2002 because I helped produce his first book, Site Seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability. Yea, he didn’t remember me (after all, it was six years ago). His workshop on form design was excellent because it’s based on research,⁴ instead of opinion (research always makes a presentation interesting for me, because design and development practices are often expressed as opinions).
• Jill Whalen, who showed me my website through the cold, heartless eyes of the Google. Did you know that search engine bots ignore the title attribute in images or links? I didn’t. After the workshop I felt that search engine optimization is vague, and possibly fruitless.

My coworkers can expect a presentation about this juicy information next week. The workshops learned me well, they did!

A note to my readers: Hi! If you read this thinking “what the hell,” I’m sorry… (hello, family!). At least now you see the geek in me.

_{1. Sausage fest: when the number of males in an environment overwhelmingly exceeds the amount of females present. For example from the urban dictionary, He told everyone he was bringing 50 hot bitches from Arizona State to his house Saturday night. But it was just a bunch of dudes watching “The Matrix.” We blew that sausage fest right away and never went back.}

_{2. I guess it makes sense, considering loo’s rhyming word.}

_{3. The team communicates through radio headsets. The first day I felt like a member of the secret service. I said, “Mission Control we need a bucket of ice up here A.S.A.P., over.” They didn’t laugh. I did. The next day they called me “cheeky monkey.”}

_{4. This is why Kathy Sierra’s 2006 workshop was enthralling. She made sense of the research about how our brains work, and applied the findings to product design. Holy shit.}

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