Bobulate

On Sunday, SXSW Interactive brought the unexpected: inside, the first onstage marriage proposal, and outside, a downpour. Austin typically gets just over two inches of rain in March, but Sunday, just in time for thousands of web people to descend on the downtown area for lunch, it poured. And while a few came prepared for the weather, most did not.

Of all people, Zappos, the online shoe seller, stepped in to help. Zappos representatives, posted at key doors to the conference center, handed out perfectly packaged Zappos-branded ponchos. More…

Last week at An Event Apart Chicago hosted by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer, I had the pleasure of meeting a huge number of approachable and impassioned attendees. I heard talks ranging from the high-level-inspiration kind to the get-your-hands-dirty kind that define the event.

For the first time, I gave a talk on The Seven Lies of Information Architecture. I wasn’t sure how it would fare, as I’m an IA myself, and contesting principles is always tricky. I got good feedback from some nice attendees and look forward to refining the ideas, providing more examples, as I develop the Lies. More…

I don’t speak French nor do I know my way around France. That’s mostly why I was happy to find myself fending for myself alone, by car, in the southern part of the country. There were a good number of navigational lessons to be learned — navigating unknown roads with the only way of communicating involving gestures and illustrations — but what struck me most was a kind of sign I saw. More…

Later today, I’ll be giving a talk at WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco on “How Not To Get Noticed,” an analysis of the usability for WordPress. The analysis is part of a larger project I’ve been working on over the past few months, and I’m excited to talk about it with the people attending. More…

When people say things like “it changed my life” or “it was the greatest experience ever,” I tend to distrust them. I guess I don’t trust superlatives in general; they seem like placeholder descriptions that preface what people are really trying to say. More…

I’ve been invited to participate in the new tradition of CanUX 2006, the Canadian User Experience workshop. Not only is it about good things like user experience and interactivity, but it takes place in Banff, Canada, one of the lovliest places on the continent.I’ll be exploring the new role of editors and readers in a presentation, “Part Today, Sum Tomorrow” and just tickled about digging into the ideas with a small group. More…

For the first time, I’m attending the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, and I’m sleepless with excitement. And I’ve found myself involved in a few things. First, “Traditional Design and New Technology,” a panel that kicks off the conference on Saturday at 10 AM, is promising to be a fantastic discussion. More…