I recently found out about this event from a colleague:
It is no secret that one of the fastest growing technologies, smartphones and apps, fit in our pockets, everywhere with us, and keep us constantly connected.
That’s why eCoast, a division of the Greater Portsmouth Chamber and a dynamic network of high-tech businesses and professionals, is announcing the 2011 eCoast Mobile Summit presented by TechWorld.
This educational seminar will be held on July 14 from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel, and followed by the popular “eCruise” aboard the Isles of Shoals M/V Thomas Laighton from 5:30 – 9:00 p.m.
New Hampshire’s eCoast is on the leading edge of the Mobile smartphone revolution.
That’s why eCoast Mobile Summit will focus on this fast growing segment with an impressive array of speakers, topics and panels.
The summit will be divided into two distinct tracks one covering the technical aspects of software development and engineering with the other covering critical marketing and business topics.
The July event will take place at the Sheraton Portsmouth Harborside Hotel and features a full day of speakers, exhibits, and networking. Kicking off the event with his keynote will be best-selling author Chuck Martin.
Mr. Martin’s latest book “The Third Screen, Marketing to Your Customer in a World Gone Mobile”, which has just reached store shelves, will be provided to each attendee, and Chuck will be available during the day to personalize each copy.
Adobe may have been a bit of a sleeping giant for last few years, but at least they are awake now.
We’ve already seen Wallaby, now there’s Adobe Edge, a visual IDE for mocking up web experiences. I’m going to call it “Flash-less Professional CS 6 IDE”.
Adobe Edge preview is an upcoming tool for creating smooth motion and transitions for screens of all sizes, utilizing the latest web standards like HTML/HTML5, JavaScript and CSS.
Highlights include:
Visually create motion content in an easy to use, timeline-based interface
Create new compositions from scratch, import and energize web graphics, or add motion to existing CSS-based HTML layouts.
Trust that your content works reliably on desktops as well as devices.
I think what we’ll see happen in the next couple years is that Adobe will make their tooling perform cross-compiling across the board, depreciate the browser player, and make Flash a niche tool for Game development, video, and other use cases.
After all, Adobe is 1st and foremost a tooling, not a run-time company.
Remember Shockwave? Yep, Flash is going to get niche. Well, that’s the way I see it right now, anyways. Take it or leave it.
This year, because of numerous factors (which I won’t talk about here), I decided to forgo FATC and travel to New York to participate in some workshops offered by some other folks I know and respect within the interactive community.
Here are some thoughts poured out about the excursion, in no particular format. I’m going to save up my “story telling” mode for after eyeofestival in a couple of weeks.
Travel
Jet Blue worked out pretty well. No snags except for a return trip delay.
I’ve taken the Train to NYC before. I haven’t worked out all the math, but it might be slightly cheaper to take the train, if you’re willing to do the 4hr RT commute versus the 1 hour plane ride from Boston.
Lodging
I stayed at the Ace Hotel, something recommended by a friend. Not bad. It wasn’t exactly downtown but it was close enough for both venues. The single rooms are more than adequate for a couple nights stay. I’ve had smaller rooms.
Since I only stayed a couple nights I didn’t really have a chance to explore more of the area around the hotel, nor the amenities. Definitely on my list for next time.
Workshops
Creative JavaScript and HTML5 training (Thursday & Friday) – The workshop was great. Most of the emphasis was on getting up to speed with Canvas.
Seb ran through Canvas drawing, particle generation, 3-D, game development with HTML5, and more.
“HTML5″ is not something you can do entirely in a day or two, but Seb did a great job at conveying the important pieces. The instant results were also gratifying.
I have a lot of thoughts about Flash and HTML5, but I’m not going to post them here. Rather, I’ll leave it to a new post.
Here are some the quick experiments I did during class.
Our class was between 10 and 15 people, a good size for moving along with exercises and being able to cover a lot of material in a quick timeframe. Lisa also did a great job assisting Seb for logistical things, BTW.
Although we didn’t cover every part of the HTML5 spec, we did concentrate heavily on Canvas, where all the “magic” happens, and you can take your JS into many different creative directions.
I picked up A LOT of tips from Seb during this workshop, particularly with advise on tooling, frameworks, and other things related to HTML5. I’ll post about the stuff I find useful on my blog here.
Processing and Data Visualization (Saturday) – I made it down to Jer’s studio in Brooklyn for his Processing workshop. We had a smaller, more intimate group for this workshop.
Since everyone was familiar with Processing, we were able to jump right into the mix with Data Visualization and how to leverage Processing.
There were a lot of good takeaways in terms of how Data & Processing can work well together, and Jer gave some pointers on how to go about looking at data, as well, as ideas on how to get interesting results from it.
First we started out doing basic scatter plotting and then moved into bar, and then grid representations of periodic data.
From there, we moved into working with the “We feel fine” API, and visualizing data from a data feed. I really liked the step by step nature of building up the visualizing tool.
Lastly, we had a chance to experiment with the NYTimes API. We built a basic tool for looking at historical data based on search terms.
Here are some of the experiments we went through. The nature of the workshop made absorbing the material fun.
There were also some hints at what might be “Processing 2.0″. I’m not going to say anything here though. I’m sure Ben Fry will announce what he can, on or after June 26th (i.e. eyeofestival).
This past Wednesday (May 25th, 2011), I had the unique pleasure of attending my first ever UPA Boston event; the annual UPA Boston conference.
I think most people were calling it “mini-UPA”, but I’m not exactly sure if that was entirely correct, after seeing more than 400-500 people attending. It wasn’t exactly what I would call “mini”, by my standards.
oh, and for those that don’t know what UPA is? Here you go:
“The Usability Professionals Association’s Boston Chapter (UPA Boston) is a 501c6 nonprofit organization and is the local arm of a national organization.
UPA Boston provides a forum for usability practitioners to share techniques and experiences.
The UPA attracts a variety of people: newcomers to our field and experienced practitioners, as well as the distinguished professionals who have been defining and shaping the field of usability for decades.
The UPA also provides supportive information to senior executives, managers, team leads, and those who are usability advocates within their organizations.”
I decided it was finally high time to make it to a UPA event.
Being this was only a one day event, and it was local to Boston area … it made sense to see what was actually said at these types of events. By “these types of events”, I mean events that “user experience” experts attend. Design crowd, folks. Pretty much the people I don’t normally get too see too much at the … admittedly … developer focused events I go to.
Day 1/1
I had planned on driving in, but decided against it last minute, as I discovered that 95 traffic was going to be horrible going up to Cambridge.
Instead, I hopped on the 8am community rail into South Station. I took the Red Line from South Station to Kendall Square stop.
UPA had a scheduled Bus system running from Kendall to the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, which made it super easy to get there (instead of pulling out the mobile device to do the 20 minute walk).
Once at the venue, it was already started.
I actually missed a lot of the intro keynote type material, but I managed to pick up my badge and a workbook they had of compiled presentation material.
From there, I head into some sessions. Really, I hadn’t done my research or laid out a schedule of the sessions I wanted to see at UPA. It was all last minute … picks based on the material I saw in the workbook.
Being that I had no idea who the speakers were, I think I got an interesting mix of professionals and their talks at the conference. Here are some of the talks I attended, and my thoughts about the material (that I can recall).
Can “Smart Home” Technology Change the Future of How Older Adults Live?
This presentation wasn’t exactly my 1st choice (it was standing room only in some of the others), but it was interesting to hear about how technology is impacting the older generations, and particularly the elderly.
Several case studies of home automation were discussed. Frankly the presentation was a little rough around the edges, but it brought up some good points.
I wish the overall topic had been broader. “Smart Homes”, or “Future Technologies for the Elderly”.
To me, “Can “Smart Home” Technology Change the Future of How Older Adults Live? was just too narrow a focus to really answer the question. Maybe that was a good thing?
Rock! Paper! iPad! Comparing UX Tools on the iPad to Traditional Methods
This is what I expected it to be. A dude on stage talking about his experiences with UX Tools.
I like the audience polling aspect to the session, and the results definitely showed how hyped tablet form factor is for certain use cases when using it as a design tool. Well, at least right now, that is (yes, sometimes paper is better, and yes, sometimes a laptop IS BETTER!).
I did caught some new tools I hadn’t used before, so I’m going to take some time over the next month to download and give them a whirl. Most of the tools mentioned were already part of my workflow, though.
4 Mobile Apps, 2 Dev Teams, & 1 Enterprise Mobile Solution
Well, being the owner of a mobile and device development company, this presentation was certainly my cup of tea; even if the takeaways were limited for me.
The content wasn’t exactly exciting, but the story behind it was entertaining to hear from a enterprise company learning to cope with the needs of a fledgling mobile project … i.e. the challenges of fragmentation, etc.
Lunch (aka “Chow Time”)
Had a brief lunch with some folks and @graiz (Greg Raiz). I don’t think we covered anything particularly ground breaking in our chats, but it was fun, nevertheless … especially the “being outdoors on a sunny day”, part.
After lunch, everyone headed back to afternoon sessions.
Mobile App Design for Behavior Change
I thought this was one of my favorite sessions of the event I got to see. It’s hard to explain without going into all the behavioral research that was cited in the presentation, but it’s really cool to see some of the concepts applied to mobile apps.
The Nuts and Bolts of Running a Single Person Consultancy
As the owner of a consultancy, I wanted to see if I was missing out on any advise from fellow independents at the session.
A lot of points rung true, and there were a few new points I picked up. I put them down into Evernote, and here they are (as best I recorded them):
Ask for Help.
Bill by day or hour.
Be helpful.
Be clear about what you do.
Be versatile.
Be clear about deliveries and dates.
Be easy to work with.
Don’t get tied into too many clients.
Don’t take small jobs. 10 hours, etc.
Don’t respond to RFP’s.
Learn new stuff.
Keep your linked-in profile up to date. No portfolio. Showing live work is better.
Wrap up
Unfortunately, I had to head back before the conference was over.
I would have liked to hear more about the “Video Wall”, as well as stayed for the evening social event. Alas, it did not happen.
Perhaps I’ll get to another UPA event in the future. It’s always good for developers to get out and meet up with designers outside of the normal realms of work relationships. There is a lot to learn from both sides.
I hope to give a presentation at this group in the future. I didn’t really spot too many developer oriented talks at UPA. I hope that’s not intentional.
The cross communication between people in groups is essential, and I hate to see the obvious “digital divide” between “designers” and “developers” that inevitably happens. It’s high time this went away, IMO.
Things like UPA help that happen, through education and knowledge transfer.
Anyways … just some ramblings in a blog post from a Mobile and Device developer’s perspective.
As a user, however, the challenge there is that it’s more difficult to find material I’m always interested to hear about or learn more about. Search brings up a lot more material than I care to sift through, and of varying levels of quality, completeness, or correctness.
Scott Janousek is a Mobile and Device Technologist located in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States.
Scott creates solutions for many mobile platforms; including Android,
iOS, as well as other device form factors (e.g. tablets, smart TVs, photoframes,
and other consumer electronic devices).
