Does the world make sense
Or
Do we make sense of the world

TheNextWeb 2010 was an amazing experience. Coming from a somewhat more nerdy background and visiting several tech conferences, i found TheNextWeb 2010 to be a nice mixture of elements.
First of all the setting was great.
The conference took place at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam which is an old industrial monument giving it a genuine touch.
There was room for fun, hanging out and each day had an evening program which you could attend and thereby talk to some people that might be interesting to you or interested in you.

Last but not least: the program itself had a nice balance as to the amount of speakers, the amount of presentations etc.etc.

Ahh almost forgot: the food and drinks were well taken care of.

So what where my personal highlights of this event
Keynotes:

• Florie Brizel on Mobilology, the effect of usage of mobile devices on our life’s.
• Robert Cailliau (co-developer of the World Wide Web) on World (wide web) as sustainable platform
• Werner Vogels on Amazon cloud solutions

Startups:

• fashiolista.com Social shopping platform
• Prey project Lost and found tracker software, free
• Brainient Video advertising, simple but effective
• Shutl A actual package tracking solution

In general I noticed a lot of the startups evolved around integrating multiple communication lines and social platforms into one service. So it looks like a lot of people are having troubles managing these types of media.
Besides the aggregation of social networks and other internet based communication there were a lot of initiatives for sharing and creating new music.

Improvements for next year:

• more in depth keynotes
• interactive sessions

Would i go again next year: YES

The true beauty of scrum dawned on me again. This is the second time I am in the role of product owner for a relatively small project. The customer is not so much into internet so I have to pull the information out of them.
It also implies that the customer does not clear view on ‘linked’ and related elements that might also be sucked in into the changes.
Again scrum aims to have the specs ready before the team has to work on them. As you try to figure out the complete scope of the project and who your stakeholders are you might not be able to get the job done on time. This is especially the case in short project where your horizon at the start of the project is already on the end of the project. This means you’ll have to find a way to get everything just in time.
What I found was that this mission impossible is well solvable with the help of the team.

How?

Well first of all the need to have enough information to make a correct estimation, as scrum dictates. This is the basic and there is no way of skipping that. However you can play around with the amount detail you provide. How much is enough to get the job done.

During the sprint the team will (especially in this case) start asking questions, questions you couldn’t have possibly imagined. This is where jit requirements kick in.
You cannot foresee all the elements. Even if you try you would still be off a third of the time. This time is better spent when the team actually needs it.

So bottom line:
-Try to get all stakeholders in the picture
-Identify problem areas and make sure everyone is aware of that (start rubbing the painful spots as early a possible and keep them flexible)
-Try to gather information, just enough for the team to make an estimation and start working
-Accept questions as often as needed..

Cannot help it but I never was much of a Flash fan. For a very long time Flash was the only solution to creating very rich websites.
Now with HTML5 supported on most browsers this is history. Many cases are on the internet showing we don’t need Flash any more.

Even big players are moving away from Flash (Apple, Microsoft)

My bet is on:
HTML5

The main problem with flash was (yes past tense) its lack of proper support on all platforms and browsers. How do you ever expect to get sympathy vote’s that way.

[openbook booknumber=”0316346624″]

After reading “Blink” this is a disappointment. There is no real clear line and a lot of times you’re overwhelmed by stated facts.

I’ve been to Athens, Greece several times but my last visit disturbed me a lot. Although i am from the Netherlands where we tend to over organize a lot of the public services and public areas i’ve never been so shocked about the state the city of Athens is in right now.

First of all I was amazed by the amount of graffiti. Everywhere you see tagging, spraying, paintings etc. etc. It is really horrible. I also sends a signal that people don’t care any more about their cultural heritage. Maybe i don’t know enough about how to deal with these kind of situations, but it seems to me that immediate cleaning of the graffiti will prevent the next graffiti being placed at all.
In combination with regular and strict police surveillance you can overcome this problem and make it a place worth visiting again.

Secondly the amount of immigrants. My expectations toward visiting the small shopping streets of Athens is authentic greek boutiques and some tourist shops. What I did find was zillions of immigrants selling fake replicas of expensive bags, sunglasses and phones.
The funny thing is that it is illegal. A situation sketch:
I am walking on the street seeing all these immigrants trying to sell there properties. Suddenly they pack their stuff as they see a police officer closing in. They do this very quickly because their showroom is nothing more than a blanket which they can quickly pick up and walk away. The officer arrives and the immigrants stay not to far away (10 meters or so) more laughing at the officer for he cannot/will not do anything (they are not actually selling anything at that moment). Walking down the street a little more, where the officer must have passed, and the first immigrants start to unpack their properties again.
This way the presence of the policy is completely useless. Either do something about it or quit your jobs because you are spending public money.
Even worse so: if the immigrants would not sell anything they would not be there. So apparently people do buy their goods, thereby supporting their of downfall.

We could blame the economical crisis or put the blame on anything we can come up with, but I think that more strict policies toward small ‘crime’ could easily solve the problem and make Athens at least a bit more beautiful as it is supposed to be.

[openbook booknumber=”0321607376″]

I expected somewhat more about the principles behind creating a good design with interaction models… instead it just focusses the things a (interaction) designer might run into as he starts working at a company. Lots of stuff on processes and how to fit design into the processes.

[openbook booknumber=”9780321579362″]

[openbook booknumber=”032145345X”]

Nice, simple and well explained.