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July 24, 2006

Webvisions 2006

I was at Webvisions this weekend, which was by and large pretty good. I didn’t go to any of the special workshops, though people I talked to seemed to really enjoy them.

Aside from the first morning’s sessions on blogging, which I walked out of in favor of a couple hours at Powell’s and lunch with Thomas, sessions were well-done. In particular, I liked Yahoo’s Bill Scott and Nate Koechley talks about the design patterns and Yahoo User Interface library.

The keynotes were actually all fantastic. I’ve never seen the funny and enthusiastic Jared Spool speak before. Frog’s Luke Williams gave a great talk that I told Adam sounded like “the big round shiny button version of Everyware.” It was ubiquitous computing seen through the eyes of a company that very rigorously understands the surfaces of things.

I’ve also never seen Hillman Curtis speak before. He showed some of his short films, including a great short one about Pentagram, and some other short interviews with designers and directors. Great examples of the creative power of constraints: he talked about limiting himself to shooting in natural light, forcing himself to build a film only out of four-second edits, or scheduling only one-hour appointments (and only bringing along one 60-minute tape) with his subjects to prevent himself shooting too much. Go watch these things, they’re really wonderful.

Posted by Andrew at July 24, 2006 11:39 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Dan Saffer at July 24, 2006 02:44 PM

Posted by: Chris Hand at July 26, 2006 07:55 AM