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Mon­day, March 15, 2010

I had never used Gowalla until I was stuck at the Amer­i­can Air­lines gate wait­ing for my flight (which never actu­ally took off). I saw a lot of SXSW-bound friends update their loca­tion to Twit­ter via Gowalla. So, I fig­ured, why not give it a try? It’s not like I had a lot else to do.

The Gowalla iPhone app is sim­i­lar to Foursquare in the sense that it tracks friends when they “check in” to var­i­ous loca­tions. But the Gowalla app has a nicer UI than Foursquare (in my extremely hum­ble opin­ion), and its abil­ity to list pop­u­lar events within its slick SXSW inte­gra­tion ended up being even more valu­able to me than the offi­cial SXSW app.

Foursquare had SXSW inte­gra­tion too, but some­thing about it didn’t seem as friendly to me. Maybe it was because Gowalla is an Austin-based com­pany and were famil­iar with the area. What­ever it was, it sure felt like they nailed it. If SXSW is smart, they’ll work with Gowalla to cre­ate their app next year.

So, on Mon­day night, Gowalla threw a party. I stood out­side in a driz­zle (which even­tu­ally turned into a down­pour) with Tracy, Rob, and Amber. When we got in, we were handed T-shirts right at the door, and mem­bers of the Gowalla team greeted and thanked us for com­ing. Wait staff cir­cu­lated with trays of hors d’oeuvres. The bars through­out served a drink called the Gowalla, which was deli­cious and potent. All the flatscreens dis­played Gowalla check-in updates. It was delight­fully geeky.

Most of the Tiki Room was open-air, and Mon­day was one of the few rainy nights that week which made things kind of soggy. Still, Gowalla threw one of the weeks’ best parties.

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Sun­day, March 15, 2010

About a year ago, I was unem­ployed and tried to fig­ure out how to best cap­i­tal­ize on my new­found free time. I pur­chased a book called Learn C on the Mac with aspi­ra­tions to mas­ter it and move quickly to a book about Objective-C. Then, I fig­ured, I’d pick up a book on iPhone pro­gram­ming and crank out award-winning games and best­selling utilities.

Then I sat down to actu­ally learn C. Let’s just say I dis­cov­ered that it wasn’t for me.

Instead, I focused on blog­ging, pod­cast­ing, writ­ing, free­lance projects, con­tract work, and grad school. The idea of becom­ing an iPhone (or iPad for that mat­ter) pro­gram­mer left my brain.

Dur­ing Jonathan Stark’s pre­sen­ta­tion, he demon­strated how the build­ing blocks of iPhone web apps, built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, can cre­ate some pretty fan­tas­tic apps when built with jQuery and jQTouch. Sud­denly, iPhone pro­gram­ming looked much more acces­si­ble to me.

In the weeks before the ses­sion, I saw some online demos of apps cre­ated with these tools. I’d even heard about Phone­Gap, the plat­form that allows web-based apps to be wrapped up and com­piled into native apps with Xcode. But Stark put all the pieces together in front of a live audi­ence, built a sim­ple iPhone app using tools, lan­guages, and frame­works that I already know and use, and tested it using the iPhone sim­u­la­tor that comes with the SDK.

jQuery and jQTouch, in con­junc­tion with Phone Gap, are much more pow­er­ful and robust tools than I had real­ized. My view of the process was too rigid. I don’t have to learn Objective-C in order to build the apps I want. I can build and pub­lish apps with the skills I already have.

Plus, Phone­Gap can build a web app for other mobile plat­forms, includ­ing Android. In other words, I just need to build the app with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript once, then build the native app for mul­ti­ple plat­forms. Totally slick.

Sure, this method doesn’t cover all pro­gram­ming sce­nar­ios. Some apps, espe­cially games, demand higher-level pro­gram­ming in Objective-C. But the beauty of Phone­Gap is that Objective-C code can run along­side the web app, so fea­tures can be added as necessary.

Even though I was aware of all the tools needed to pro­gram for the iPhone with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, watch­ing Stark put it all together looked a lit­tle like magic.

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Mon­day, March 15, 2010

Visual note-taking, or the method of tak­ing notes in a more illus­tra­tive, comic book style, is some­thing I’ve always done in one form or another, but mostly with­out real­iz­ing it. I’ve been scolded in meet­ings and classes for “doo­dling” when, in fact, I was actu­ally tak­ing notes. Until this ses­sion, I had no idea that some peo­ple were doing this for a liv­ing. The pan­elists each take casual in-meeting noes and cre­ate art, and they showed us how they do it.

Dave Gray, Austin Kleon, Mike Rohde, and Sunni Brown are all very tal­ented visual note-takers and artists, and I highly rec­om­mend check­ing out each of their sites.

After show­ing some gor­geous, fun exam­ples, the pan­elists ran us through a num­ber of draw­ing tuto­ri­als. Sim­ple stick fig­ures, a wide array of expres­sions from sim­ple lines, shad­ows, bul­lets, lines, frames, con­nec­tors, and let­ter­ing tech­niques were all cov­ered. Small pocket note­books (like the one pic­tured above) were handed out before the ses­sion so every­one could draw along. It felt like a really fun art class.

Not only was it fun, but it turned out to be one of the most worth­while ses­sions for me. I’d been tak­ing notes at most ses­sions up to that point, but the qual­ity of my notes really improved after this healthy dose of inspi­ra­tion. I ended up hav­ing a lot more fun with my note-taking, and I think that helped me cap­ture a more valu­able infor­ma­tion. In fact, most of these SXSW recap blog posts are writ­ten from notes I took using visual note-taking tech­niques I learned (or re-learned) in this session.

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Sun­day, March 14, 2010

The Inter­net is truly an amaz­ing place. Where else can an entire com­pany be built upon the sim­ple fact that peo­ple like silly pic­tures of ani­mals? And where else could that com­pany become so pop­u­lar that it is able to throw a party at SXSW, fea­tur­ing live-band karaoke all the cheese­burg­ers we could stuff into our LOL­ing faces?

The I Can Has Cheezburger party at the Cedar Door was awe­some. I sang Cheap Trick’s “Sur­ren­der” backed by a live band. The drinks flowed gen­er­ously. And yes, I did have cheezburger. My friends and I were lucky enough to score a table out on the deck where the karaoke band per­formed. Sur­rounded by great peo­ple, awe­some music, and a steady stream of drinks, this was one of my favorite parties.

I’m still crav­ing those buf­falo BBQ burg­ers. Where did those mag­i­cal sand­wiches come from, and how can I find burg­ers like that in Bal­ti­more? DO WANT.

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Sun­day, March 14, 2010

I wasn’t com­pletely sure what to expect as I waited for Jef­frey Tambor’s act­ing work­shop ses­sion to begin, but I had heard noth­ing but over­whelm­ingly pos­i­tive things about ses­sions from pre­vi­ous years.

As it turned out, the praise bestowed on his work­shop was much deserved. This year, Tam­bor ran the work­shop around two actors, Chris Doubek and Heather Kafka, from the SXSW film Lovers of Hate.

Imme­di­ately, it was clear that Tambor’s work­shop was free from pre­ten­tious­ness. I loved his phi­los­o­phy about get­ting the best per­for­mance from actors. “You can’t fix a scene unless you fuck it up first.”

So that’s exactly what he did. He had the actors per­form a scene from their movie, then encour­aged them to re-create the same scene, pur­pose­fully over-act, run through a gamut of emo­tions, and even had them sing their lines as if they were in an opera.

The key to have your actors to loosen up and run through their scenes in out­ra­geous ways, Tam­bor said, is to make them feel safe. It’s the director’s job, he said, to tell the actors, “You’re safe to fall. You’re protected.”

Once they’re safe, actors can feel free to play. “Keep play­ing, keep play­ing,” Tam­bor repeated through­out the panel. He said it’s impor­tant to access the three-year-olds inside your actors, and make them play.

How­ever, he cau­tioned that it’s impor­tant for these play­ful ses­sions to never be done in front of the crew. The crew can make actors feel exposed, vul­ner­a­ble, and closed from things they’d oth­er­wise try in pri­vate. Once the actors are “hot” and once the scene is at a level the direc­tor and actors are happy with, it can be per­formed in front of a crew.

Direc­tors shouldn’t be afraid to have their actors access dark places in their per­son­al­i­ties or pasts, he said. “No actor has been hurt by going to the dark places.” In fact, he said, they usu­ally love it.

The best advice he said he had for direc­tors was “Just be a human.” Under­stand­ing and relat­ing to actors as human beings is the quick­est way to earn their trust and make them feel safe enough to per­form at their peak.

So much of the art and craft can eas­ily get lost, espe­cially in stu­dio pro­duc­tions with lots of money at stake. Tam­bor made a very clear dis­tinc­tion between an ama­teur, which he con­sid­ers him­self, and a pro­fes­sional: “Ama­teur means ‘lover’. Pro­fes­sion­als want to get paid.” The best actors, he said, are ama­teurs in the strictest sense.

To the actors in the audi­ence, he sug­gested they always say “Thank you,” when a direc­tor gives notes, whether they like them or not.

It was fas­ci­nat­ing to watch Tam­bor work and share sto­ries and advice from his seem­ingly lim­it­less col­lec­tion. He made two actors, who were thrown into a brightly-lit room filled with strangers, relax and open up to emo­tions and approaches for a scene that they hadn’t explored.

He has such a pleas­ant and easy way of speak­ing, and he makes the core of act­ing, and the core of what we do every day, stag­ger­ingly obvi­ous: It is all about human inter­ac­tion. Once you strip away the pre­tense and arti­fi­cial hier­ar­chies of the world, it’s noth­ing more than humans inter­act­ing with each other.

I left the ses­sion feel­ing a bit lighter, and the peo­ple in the cor­ri­dors of the Austin Con­ven­tion Cen­ter didn’t seem like such strangers anymore.

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Sun­day, March 14, 2010

I’ve been doing web design pro­fes­sion­ally for almost a decade. I’ve worked free­lance and for com­pa­nies, both large and small. But the fact of the mat­ter is, I’m get­ting a lit­tle burned out on it.

I’ve been doing more and more writ­ing these days. Grad school for cre­ative writ­ing keeps me busy and I’ve been writ­ing more and more on this site.

Amidst hopes of shift­ing my pro­fes­sional focus from web design to web writ­ing, I was very inter­ested in attend­ing this ses­sion. Tt seemed to val­i­date a lot of the things I already knew (or sus­pected) about writ­ing con­tent for the web, and gave me a bit of con­fi­dence that I can make the shift. The panel con­sisted of Ian Alexan­der, Erin Ander­son, Tiffani Jones Brown, and Dan Mac­carone.

First, they touched on the fun­da­men­tals: It’s impor­tant to write web copy in a voice that will make users feel that you’re part­ner­ing with them. It’s essen­tial to have a call to action, such as links to related blog posts at the end of a post.

And then they described some­thing I had always believed, but I was sur­prised at how many audi­ence mem­bers found to be new infor­ma­tion. Web writ­ing should be part of user expe­ri­ence design, not a “fill-in-the-blanks” ele­ment. Copy should explain why every web­site action hap­pens, using a strict econ­omy of words.

All too often, copy­writ­ers get pulled into a project late in the design cycle. The pan­elists urged writ­ers to fight to be involved in the design process from the begin­ning. End­ing up at the end of the con­ver­sa­tion makes everyone’s job more difficult. Writers should write and wire­frame with a site’s infor­ma­tion archi­tect. Design and copy go hand in hand and are not sep­a­rate issues. I was very sur­prised at how many peo­ple in atten­dance didn’t think of web writ­ing that way.

For writ­ers look­ing to posi­tion them­selves as “web writ­ers”, well-written nav­i­ga­tion copy and calls to action are some of the best port­fo­lio mate­r­ial. This, I real­ized, is some­thing I should assem­ble if I want to make the move from graphic design to the writ­ing end of the UX spectrum.

When fig­ur­ing out how to fit writ­ing into the infor­ma­tion design and con­tent strat­egy of a company’s site, it boils down to some essen­tial yet sim­ple con­cepts. What is the prod­uct doing or solv­ing? The writ­ing should never let go of the prod­uct. While writ­ing, it’s impor­tant to under­stand the rel­e­vance of tech­nol­ogy, but also how writ­ing and design all touch it. Be aware of the tools, but don’t let the tools dic­tate the message.

I left the ses­sion feel­ing pumped. Though I’m still not sure exactly how I could make the jump from design to writ­ing, it seems like a much smaller leap now.

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

Late Sat­ur­day night, I fought my strug­gling eye­lids and caught a shut­tle van from the Austin Con­ven­tion Cen­ter to the Alamo Draft­house Lamar 6 for the pre­miere of Mon­sters. I had a blast watch­ing this film. Here’s the plot as given by the filmmakers:

Six years after Earth has suf­fered an alien inva­sion a cyn­i­cal jour­nal­ist agrees to escort a shaken Amer­i­can tourist through an infected zone in Mex­ico to the safety of the US border.

The film was billed as a cross between Clover­field and Dis­trict 9. I found myself mis­led by that descrip­tion. The film turned out to be some­thing quite different.

Writer/director Gareth Edwards uses a sci-fi/horror back­drop to drive a roman­tic story between reporter Andrew Kaul­der (played by Scoot McNairy) and his boss’s daugh­ter, Saman­tha Wyn­den (Whit­ney Able).

I felt like the title of the movie is all wrong. Mon­sters seems like too bland and generic-sounding of a title for a movie with mul­ti­ple lay­ers of story, action, and dra­matic ten­sion. It doesn’t quite fit the mood of the story. As we develop more of a rela­tion­ship with the two leads, and as they develop a rela­tion­ship with each other, we find that the story has less to do with “mon­sters” than it does to do with two peo­ple try­ing to make it home.

Once I found myself ori­ented within the movie’s uni­verse and tone, I was able to really enjoy it. When I stopped expect­ing it to be an all-out action piece and relaxed into the idea that action was ancil­lary to the character-driven story, I really started to dig it.

The spe­cial effects and cin­e­matog­ra­phy were quite impres­sive. Even more impres­sively, Edwards wrote, shot, edited, and cre­ated all the spe­cial effects on his lap­top. Now that’s one seri­ously tal­ented filmmaker.

On the shut­tle ride back from the the­ater, every­one seemed to dis­cuss the movie, but it sounded like opin­ions were mixed. I over­heard two friends argu­ing about it. One guy hated it, thought it rep­re­sented every­thing wrong with sci-fi and hor­ror cross­ing over into “main­stream cin­ema”. His friend couldn’t have thought he was more wrong, and said it was an inge­nious twist on old movie-making conventions.

Me? I thought it was totally fun. I went in expect­ing one thing and was pleas­antly sur­prised to dis­cover some­thing else. The fact that it was shot with such a tiny crew and cast with effects cre­ated entirely by a very tal­ented writer/director made it even more impres­sive. But I went into the movie with­out that knowl­edge and still had a great time. I’m not sure how it will hold up upon a sec­ond view­ing, but Mag­net has report­edly picked it up for dis­tri­b­u­tion, so I’ll hope­fully have the oppor­tu­nity to find out.

Oh, and a cute bit of infor­ma­tion was revealed with the Q&A with the cast and direc­tor after­ward. Scoot McNairy and Whit­ney Able, who met on the set of this movie, announced their engage­ment in real life. Adorable!

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

It’s not easy to describe Ze Frank to some­one unfa­mil­iar with his work. Most famously, a few years ago he posted a short video five days a week for an entire year. It was funny, thought­ful, and often included great songs he wrote and recorded. He sim­ply called it the show and it was a big hit. If you don’t know about it, I sug­gest a trip over to the Internet’s social stud­ies class­room, Wikipedia.

After the show, Ze moved to Los Ange­les, wrote a TV pilot, wrote a movie, tried to land act­ing gigs, and has found him­self explor­ing a vari­ety of his own cre­ative projects and exper­i­ments, much like he did in his pre–show days.

The ses­sion was billed as “liv­ing a cre­ative lifestyle”. I was hop­ing for a lit­tle more prac­ti­cal advice on how to pur­sue cre­ative projects that mat­ter while simul­ta­ne­ously find­ing ways to pay the bills. But instead, the inter­view, led by Scott Kirsner, evolved quickly into a dis­cus­sion about find­ing emo­tional value in the dig­i­tal con­nec­tions peo­ple make through social media.

Ze shared some heart­felt and really great sto­ries about peo­ple find­ing those con­nec­tions, and reviewed some high­lights from recent projects to illus­trate his points. He reached out to peo­ple that emailed him with prob­lems. He enlisted Twit­ter fol­low­ers to record vocal parts for a vir­tual cho­rus in a new song. He took over a woman’s Face­book account for a week (with her per­mis­sion) as a bit of a social experiment.

It was cer­tainly inter­est­ing, even though it quickly strayed from the topic of “liv­ing a dig­i­tal lifestyle”. But per­haps that was kind of the point. In order to really live a cre­ative lifestyle, there aren’t any firm rules. You sort of have to feel it out for your­self, take chances, and find what works as you make con­nec­tions with other people.

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

I was pretty dis­ap­pointed when, after hours of flight delays and my even­tual frus­trated switch to South­west from Amer­i­can Air­lines, I landed in Austin too late to get my SXSW badge and attend the pre­miere of Kick Ass. Walk­ing past the the­ater and its brightly-colored pre­miere dec­o­ra­tions was a lit­tle salt in the wound.

Sat­ur­day morning’s dis­cus­sion panel with the movie’s cast went a long way to make me feel bet­ter. Even though the ses­sion wasn’t com­pletely spoiler-free (Oops!), it made me even more excited about see­ing the movie when it comes out next month.

Ques­tions from the audi­ence ranged from tech­ni­cal and geeky to philo­soph­i­cal and artsy. Some film­mak­ers wanted to know exactly how much green screen was used. Oth­ers were curi­ous about what drew the actors and direc­tor to the story. There were great ques­tions about changes to the char­ac­ters from the orig­i­nal graphic novel to make for a more com­pelling film.

It wasn’t a sur­prise to learn that, orig­i­nally, the stu­dios all turned the movie down. They didn’t like the idea of Hit-Girl, a filthy-mouthed 11-year-old assas­sin. Pretty much every stu­dio exec they encoun­tered asked them to tone it down. So, instead of com­pro­mis­ing, they made the film inde­pen­dently. Find­ing a dis­trib­u­tor for the final prod­uct wasn’t that tough.

Of course, one of the high­lights of the panel was Chloe Moretz, the tal­ented young actor who plays Hit-Girl. Some­one asked about the acro­batic stunts nec­es­sary for her char­ac­ter, and she revealed that she went through months of train­ing and did most of her own action sequences because, as it turns out, there aren’t a lot of 11-year-old stunt peo­ple in Hol­ly­wood. (Who knew?)

Another audi­ence mem­ber asked if the cast had seen the final edited ver­sion of the film. Moretz said that she hadn’t, adding that she tech­ni­cally wasn’t allowed to see R-rated movies.

Direc­tor Matthew Vaughn expressed dis­plea­sure more than a few times that, at the SXSW screen­ing, one of the speak­ers in the the­ater was blown. In his opin­ion, it ruined half of the movie. After hear­ing that, I don’t feel so bad about hav­ing missed it. When I see Kick Ass for the first time, it’ll be right.

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