Speakers in the News »

4/07/06
REBECCA BLOOD

Read the interview with blogging pioneer Rebecca Blood (author of "The Weblog Handbook") on C4Chaos, Asked if she thinks blogging is an artform or just another fad, she responds, "Humans are hardwired to share information, for storytelling. This is how we survived on the savannah. This is how we still survive in our communities, at work -- and on the highway: by identifying patterns. By sharing information. First we did it around the night fire, then at the market, and then around the water cooler at work. Now we can do it online." Blood participated on the "WikiWiki, What?" panel at the 2004 SXSW Interactive Festival.

11:03am CST | +

4/06/06
MALCOLM GLADWELL

The March 2006 issue of the Observer (the journal for the Association of Psychological Science) includes a profile of "Blink" author Malcolm Gladwell. Notes Eric Jaffe about this best-selling writer, "At the New Yorker, Gladwell has carte blanche to choose his topics, a dangerous recipe for a person whose range of interests is defined best by what it lacks: 'politics, astronomy, physics — that's probably it.' His challenge is to translate his vast curiosity and eccentricities in a meaningful way. In an article about the reliability of photographs, for example, he ties hunting Scud missiles to mammography. When writing about the flaws of personality tests, he uses the story of a heroic soldier in the South Pacific to reveal problems with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Thematic Apperception Test. In a story about a cookie bakeoff, he connects software engineering, crisis rehearsals at nuclear power plants, and the texture of a tortilla chip. " Gladwell served as a keynote speaker at the 2005 SXSW Interactive Festival.

10:44am CST | +

4/05/06
danah boyd

Afraid of snakes? Sure. Afraid of appearing on the O'Reilly Factor and being unfairly attacked by blow-hard right wing host Bill O'Reilly? Absolutely. Thus, we extend our kudos to danah boyd, who was a guest on the Fox talk show last week to talk about her research regarding Myspace and her assertion that this social networking site is not nearly as scary as adults think it is. Remarkably, boyd survived the appearance completely unscathed (watch a video clip of the show via You Tube.) At the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival, boyd led the "Designing for Global and Local Social Play" panel.

10:19am CST | +

4/04/06
DIRK KNEMEYER

Caught the entrepreneurial bug yet? Want to start your own web services company? Before you do, be sure to read "Building Your Own Start-Up Company", a recent article written by Dirk Knemeyer and published in Digital Web Magazine. A Founding Principal of Involution Studios, Knemeyer says that assessing the financial viability of your new project is a key part of the process: "The trick of this process is that your estimates will almost certainly be way off. First-time entrepreneurs almost universally underestimate their costs and overestimate their income. When starting my company, we did a pretty good job estimating costs but our estimates on revenues were way off the mark. Despite our both being senior, experienced designers with robust networks, we essentially did not make any money—just covered costs—for the first six months. We began making good money again shortly thereafter, but we were lucky to do so. With any new venture, especially if you are creating a products company, expect to not make any money for a fair stretch of time, unless you are infused with cash from some outside source. That probably means a loan, either from a family member or with a bank. In some cases, you might even have an idea worthy of angel funding or venture capital. In any of these cases, be ready for the possibility of needing outside cash right up front." Knemeyer led a similarly titled panel ("Building a Start-Up Technology Company") at the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival.

10:37am CST | +

4/03/06
MATTHEW HAUGHEY

At the 2006 SXSW Interactive Festival, a panel session titled "Design Eye for the List Guy" focused on the potential redesign of the ever-present site craigslist. Other experts such as Matthew Haughey are taking the bait by re-designing the redesign. In a recent post on "A Whole Lotta Nothing", Haughie explains his approach to the project: "The one thing I really didn't like about the SXSW Craigslist redo is that the top bar is all wrong. The dark color pushes it back for me, in a banner-blindness sort of way. I didn't notice it at all for the first minute I looked at the new site. Then I thought about how I use Craigslist, and I'm a big searcher. I either search from the front page, or I dive into the appropriate Sale/Wanted section and search there. I know the tech behind Craigslist is pretty simple and they're not much of a search/IT company, but I would love it if they surfaced search in such a way. So I redid it. Here is the full size version. I took a screenshot of the redesign and moved stuff around in Photoshop to my liking. It's obviously a very Google-like redesign, but then that's how I use Craigslist." A frequent participant in the SXSW Interactive Festival, Haughey last spoke at the 2005 event.