A bit of a jetlagged and groggy day for me, so not really the best time to be sitting in a darkened room listening to people speak, but over all I enjoyed the day. The lack of power outlets in the auditorium was maddening, and meant I ended up missing two sessions so that I could go and power my MacBook.

Highlights certainly were the two Jeffs, Barr and Veen, whose talks were engaging and insightful. I managed to snag Jeff Barr at a break and have a bit of a chat about the way that people from the Amazon developer community (i.e. not from Amazon) are using their APIs to create things like virtual bookstores in Second Life. As will become apparent over the coming weeks, I am obsessed by Second Life at the moment, so a surefire way to get my attention is to mention words like ‘metaverse’, ‘avatar’, or ‘Linden Lab‘. Jeff is going to ping me some locations when he’s next online, so I’ll blog about them then.

The other Jeff, Mr Veen, gave possibly the most entertaining talk of the conference about user centred design. It was great – hysterically funny and very informative, just like I wish my talks were. More to the point, it made me think about how I work as a social software consultant, and particularly how I evaluate clients’ needs and how I assess project ideas. I shall have to investigate a little further, as I have some half-formed thoughts that need fleshing out.

Also a special mention must be given to Jeremy Keith‘s Joy of API talk, which was also very funny. As soon as he showed the photo of a ZX81, half the room sighed with giddy reminiscence of childhood/youth. My first computer was actually a ZX80, then we went to the ZX81 and then the ZX Spectrum. Ahh, those were the days. Remember those little silver paper printers, the ones that burnt the text onto the paper and smelt like the pit of Hell had opened up at the bottom of the garden?

Anyway, Jeremy’s talk was entertaining and I wish I’d been a bit more alert because I’m very interested in how APIs work, but it takes extra special attention for me to decode programmer speak into non-programmer speak. He was talking about how APIs are really only used by the alpha geeks at the moment and how it would be cool if we could make it easier for non-programmers to play with this stuff. I would certainly be one of those people who would love to play with APIs, but who lack the specific skill-set required to do so.

Someone from the audience asked why non-alpha geeks would care, but I think it’s really vital that some of this stuff gets translated across, because the people who try to help businesses grok APIs aren’t necessarily the same people who create APIs. (The point that you don’t need to spend six months creating an API if you use microformats and RSS was well made, but doesn’t entirely solve the problem.)

Jeremy also mentioned Overplot, a great mash-up of conversations overhead in NY plotted on a Google Maps. The other links he used are on his site.

Overall, a good day, however I’ll reiterate the point for any future conference organisers: fish need water; geeks need power outlets. I know venues like the Corn Exchange are too old to have been wired up with geeks in mind, but electricity is very important, as is wifi. Actually, regarding the wifi I’m not sure what was up with it, but we had to manually specify a DCHP address in order to get a connection. Not ideal, although once we knew that it became easy to get it working.

People who were on the web in the mid-90s were producing the web and so understood it. Now, most people who use the web don’t create websites so they don’t understand the technical issues and have very little interest in decoding interfaces that don’t meet their expectations.

When people can’t find information, they blame themselves and don’t think that it might not be their fault. Lots of companies have data that they are willing to tell customers, but which customers can’t actually access via the web. Yet customers assume that if they can’t find something, that they must be looking in the wrong place.

Venn diagram:
1. Viability: is there a business case for having this website?
2. Feasibility: is it even possible to build it?
3. Desirability: do people want it?

Napster was example of site with tremendous desirability; had the technology; but financially was a nightmare. These three things not in balance with Napster.

But the iPod is. Tech is right, business is right, desirability is right.

How can we use this on the web?

Usability is a balance between following the rules and ignoring the rules. Some sites break all the usability rules (such as those created by Jacob Nilsen), but are still successful. But simply following rules without understanding them just gives the illusion of competence.

We have many best practices, but too early to have a solid rule set for web design. There is no ‘One True Way’ or ‘Four Step Process’. Twelve years is a drop in the bucket and we should avoid the arrogance of ‘we know all this now’.

User centred design is about experience, not about making pages pretty. Doesn’t matter what it is that you’re trying to achieve.

Experience is based on users trying to accomplish goals and our stuff (whatever it is) getting in the way. So we need to enable that cycle of people getting stuff done. Solve that by looking for the patterns in our stuff that enable people to get stuff done.

Get a pile of stuff, look for the patterns which turn stuff into an experience, which through labelling turns into navigation that is intuitive to users.

But not all users have the same goal. A good designer lets all users access all stuff in any way that makes sense to them. But this is not easy.

Classifications differ, the way people classify the world is different.

Globalisation – needs to be in several languages, hard if you have no budget. And it’s not just internationalisation but localisation, so content specific to the region.

Accessibility issues are big.

Design suffers from jargon. Marketing often come up with weird jargon, and whilst there is no reasons for people to use identical nomenclature, unnecessary jargon gets in the way.

Politics get in the way, when the site reflects the internal org chart. Companies end up with silos, with no communication between, but that makes it into the website so that the sections have no cross-fertilisation, and a different user experience in each section. Does a disservice to the users.

Extensible. Amazon added a tab at the top of the page every time they added a new business area, but that is not scalable. They had to find another way to do navigation in order for their site to remain usable.

We don’t know what else is going on in the user’s life. We make assumptions about their experience which are usually wrong. People multitask and get distracted. So you have to have a sense of overall context, so have to do user research.

There is the top-down, understanding what people are trying to do;
– interview or observer users
– develop mental models
– match goals to features

And bottom-up:
– inventory what you have
– evaluate content and features
– organise with librarianship
– let users participate

Hard to figure out what people want unless we talk to them.

At Google Analytics, what do people do to figure out how successful their website is? Interviewed some people, had it transcribed, and then tried to figure out what people would do. Would write each bit on a post-it and try to group it, and tried to match stuff that people were saying with the stuff that Google had. Derived an architecture from that, and hopefully provide users with an intuitive experience.

Mental model. Try to work out what was going on in people’s minds when they do their work, (tasks), and then what the software does, (features).

Mind the gaps. Where isn’t there stuff? Look for tasks that don’t map to features you have, or tasks with no features. Good prioritisation plan.

Why? Helps you eliminate a lot of possibilities for your design early. Helps you narrow down the design so that it is what people want. Early on, easy to change your mind, later on the cost of changing your mind rises dramatically. This helps to convince people that, up front, they need to spend money to talk to people.

Jeff‘s presentation is up online.

Like an idiot, I left my MacBook charger at the Corn Exchange in Brighton yesterday at d.Construct. If anyone picked it up, can you please email me?

UPDATE: I’ve been told that my charger was indeed found, and handed in. I shall ring the Corn Exchange tomorrow to see what I need to do next. Thanks for your help, everyone!

d.construct 2006, dconstruct06, idiot

There’s been a lot of talk the last few days about Office 2.0, a conference that brought gender inequality in technology to a new low. Fifty three speakers and one woman was the original unpleasant statistic, and a few people got very cross about it. Rightly so.

But who is at fault? The organisers? The women? No one? Everyone? Someone else?

If the women think that it’s the organiser’s fault for not looking for more women, then we risk becoming passive, quietly waiting our turn. If the organisers think it’s women’s fault for not putting themselves forward, then they risk being lazy, and waiting for women to turn up on their doorstep. It becomes a tragedy of the commons, everyone blaming everyone else and no one doing a damn thing about it.

So, what do we do? I personally believe that the answer lies with all of us. We are ultimately responsible for our own lives, and our own experiences. As a woman, I am responsible for my own attendance at conferences, for submitting papers, and for assessing the invitations that I get. No one put me on some secret Speakers List – indeed if you look at all the lists of women speakers that have been drawn up these last few days, you’ll see I’m not on any of them. Instead, I went through a process of figuring out how to get to speak at conferences, and although I’m still learning, I think it might be helpful to share some of that knowledge here.

I also want to give organisers a heads up, but I’ll do that below. You people are also responsible for your own experience but you also, at the conference at least, help shape ours. You have a responsibility to pull your fingers out of your collective ass and start trying harder.

So… on with the program.

How To Become A Conference Speaker
1. Identify your interests. What subjects are you interested in? What are you passionate about? What do you do at work? What do you want to do at work? Where does your experience lie? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you are going to find it hard to crack the conference problem. You need to be focused – there are a lot of conferences out there, and you need to pick the ones that you will benefit from most.

2. Identify the conferences. This is easier said than done. I’ve yet to see a comprehensive conference calendar, and I’ve missed plenty of good conference action because I missed an announcement. So search Upcoming and the blogs and any other event-based site you can find. List out your conferences, look at when they are, how much they cost, who’s speaking, what the topics are, and then make a shortlist of ones that interest you most. Note: This is an ongoing process, because new conferences get announced all the time.

3. Pick which conferences you really want to go to. If any are work related, ask your boss if she or he will send you. You may think ‘They’ll never go for this’ but you won’t know unless you ask, and you might get a nice surprise.

4. If you can’t persuade your boss to send you, book off some holiday and go yourself. This is career development, and the investment will be worth it. You will learn new stuff, meet new people and have new ideas. How can that not be worth it?

5. Identify and become a part of the conferences communities. Conferences don’t happen in a vacuum, and you will do well to join the mailing lists associated with the subjects you are interested. You should also engage with bloggers writing about your subjects, and any wikis, forums, etc. that are relevant. Some conferences will even have social networking tools associated with the event, so use those too. Also join wikis like The Speaker’s Wiki. Get yourself out there.

6. If you blog, then write about the conferences you are going to, tell the world you are open to meeting up with people, and then follow through on any invitations you get. If you don’t have a blog, get one and do the above.

7. At the conference, participate. Talk to other attendees, the organiser, the speakers, everyone you can. You’re not there to observe, you’re there to take part and you can guarantee that no organiser is going to notice you if you just sit in the corner and watch. Make sure you mingle with everyone – don’t just hang out with your friends or other women. Go talk to strangers!

8. Ask questions. Speaking is a skill you may have to work hard to acquire. For some it comes naturally, for most it does not. But almost everyone is terrified by the thought of potential public humiliation and I know more people whose stomachs get churned up before speaking than who don’t. One way to ease yourself through this pain barrier is to make yourself ask questions from the floor – personally I find it harder to ask questions than to be a speaker, but maybe that’s just me.

9. When you’ve been to a few conferences and are familiar with the way that they work, start looking for ones that you want to speak at. If they have a call for papers then submit one. If not, then contact the organiser and say you’d like to take part as a speaker. Make sure you are clear about what you bring to the conference: What experience do you have? What projects have you been working on? What are you unique successes? Where does your wisdom lie? Don’t give them a huge long biography or CV, just a succinct summary of your experience and some ideas of how you could fit into the conference schedule. The idea is not to drown them in information but to show them how you make their conference better, and make them want to get in touch with you to find out more.

10. Be prepared to be turned down. It happens to everyone all the time. It may bruise your ego but it’s going to happen and you may as well get used to it. Don’t let it stop you from continuing to push yourself forward as a speaker, and don’t get a chip on your shoulder about it.

11. Improve your public speaking skills. If you’re not a natural (and you may not find that out until it’s too late if you do no prep), then you are going to have to work hard to becomes a good speaker. Most people in the tech industry – male and female – do not do this. They make no effort to learn how to present, and consequently they bore the pants off their audience. Yes, some of them keep getting invited back because they did something that everyone’s interested in, but if you didn’t just float your start-up or invent AI, then you’re going to have to make sure you are damn compelling when you get up on that stage. So be prepared!

12a. Knock their socks off, and keep knocking them off. Be interesting. If there’s one thing that will keep getting you invited back, it’s being interesting.

12b. GOTO 1.

Note for Conference Organisers
This doesn’t let you off the hook. If you aren’t more inclusive, you can expect to get the kind of flack that Ismael is getting over Office 2.0. If you don’t want to get hassled, then I suggest that you too follow a few tips.

1. Organise your conferences in advance. Don’t try and throw something together at the last minute, because people have lives and the best speakers aren’t necessarily going to drop everything just for you.

2. Look at the other conferences in your field. Who’s speaking? How many males? How many females? How many people from out of town? Or abroad?

3. Look at who’s blogging about your subject. Use Technorati or Icerocket, and spend significant time finding you who’s saying what to whom.

4. Look at your list of potential speakers. Are they all friends? If so, then you might want to hold a private party instead. Are they all men? If so, then you might want to put a bit more effort into finding some women, unless you want your balls handed to you on a plate. Does the gender balance reflect that of the industry? If so, well done.

5. Ask around. Dig a little. Find people who are new to you. Start to compile a list of subjects and possible speakers, and see how well you can balance new, familiar, male, female.

6. Talk to the community. They know people, y’know. Announce a call for papers, but be specific about what you want. I can promise you that ’email me if you want to speak’ is going to result in a whole world of pain for you – far better to have a formalised submission process asking for things like abstracts to make sure that you collect the necessary data.

7. If you have some names of speakers that you just don’t know, try having a conference call with them to try and get a feel for how they’ll be onstage. It’s very easy to see cross people off your list just because you’ve never heard of them, but try to actually investigate first. After all, you don’t know everybody.

8. For panels, consider mixing up some established speakers and some first-time speakers. Panel discussions are really good places for first-time speakers to cut their teeth, but make sure you have an experienced moderator to make sure everyone gets a say.

9. If you have a newbie who has some really good business experience to share, but no speaking experience, try setting up an onstage interview instead of giving them a keynote. But make sure you find a presenter who is good at interviewing (maybe a journalist?), as the only thing worse than one bad speaker on stage is two bad speakers on stage.

10. Stand up to your sponsors. Yes, we all know big names draw crowds. But not everyone on your schedule has to be famous and if your sponsors are pushing for more big names, you should push back. Some of the people on the conference circuit give new talks every time… some just trot out the same old same old every time. Ditch them, no matter how famous they are.

11. Have an expenses fund. Not all good speakers work for big companies willing to cover their costs. Be prepared to help out those who are self-funded, even if you only pay travel and a cheap hotel.

12a. Never stop putting the effort in. Your job is to put on a good conference with varied voices, and if you stop trying to find new speakers, and stop trying to ensure a healthy gender balance, then you’re failing. There is such a thing as ‘bad publicity’ after all – it’s when people say ‘sod you, I’m not coming to your crappy sexist conference’.

12b. GOTO 1.

Right… those are my thoughts off the top of my head. Any more tips for speakers and organisers?

UPDATE: For the record, I did get an invitation to Office 2.0 from Ross Mayfield (after this, but probably unconnected as I’ve worked with Ross in the past). I can’t go, because I have a prior engagement.